They Were Warm And I Assumed They Were Being Kind

They were genuinely warm about it.

Three of them, standing around one end of a table in a hall after a meal, picking it up and turning it over and asking how a particular part had been done.

That is not politeness. Politeness is one sentence and a change of subject. That was four or five minutes and questions.

And by the time you got to the car you had explained the whole thing away.

They were being kind. They knew it was handmade so they made a point of it. That is what people do at those things. One of them was probably just filling a gap in the conversation.

By the following morning there was nothing left of it. Four or five minutes of three people saying something true had been completely dismantled by a man on his own in a car.

There is a proverb about who is supposed to do the praising, and it turns out you have been overruling them.

Let another man praise thee

Here it is.

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. (Proverbs 27:2, King James Version)

It is usually read as a warning against boasting, and it is that.

But look at the arrangement it sets up. There are two mouths in the verse and it assigns the job to one of them. Another man praises. Your own mouth does not.

That is a division of labor, and both halves have to work for it to function.

You have been running only half of an arrangement, and Proverbs 27:2 gives the praising to another man rather than leaving it unassigned. The Holy Spirit is the one who split it that way, and the split means somebody else has been given a job you have been undoing.

Now think about what your own mouth has actually been doing.

Not boasting. The opposite, and there has been a certain quiet satisfaction in that. But the verse does not say your own mouth stays quiet on the subject.

It says the praising is somebody else's to do. And when three people do it and a man overrules them in a car on the way home, his own mouth has had the last word after all.

You have been having the last word on yourself, and it is written that the praise belongs to another man rather than to whoever has the strongest opinion. The Spirit of God is the one who assigned that, and He assigned it away from you for a reason.

And here is the reason, which is the practical heart of the verse.

A person is a bad witness about their own work. Too close to it, too aware of what went wrong, too familiar with the parts that nearly did not work. That is why the job was given to somebody standing further away.

You are the worst positioned person in that room to assess what you made, and Scripture hands the assessment to a stranger rather than to the maker. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows where the reliable view is, and it was never the one from inside.

What the discounting actually is

Now let me say what happened in that car, because it deserves a plain name.

You decided that three people said something they did not mean.

Put like that it sounds harsh, and it is not how it felt. It felt like modesty. But the actual content of the conclusion is that three adults stood at a table and said untrue things for social reasons.

You have been making a claim about them rather than about yourself, and it is written that the praising is done by another man rather than evaluated by the one it lands on. The Spirit of God is the one who turns a thing around so a man can see what he actually said, and this one looks different from that side.

And here is what it costs them, which is the part nobody thinks about.

When somebody says a true warm thing and it is not received, they do not usually know it happened. But something does not complete. The moment they meant to give did not land anywhere, and they go home having given something that went nowhere.

Three people did that at the end of a meal and none of them know.

You have been declining something that was actually handed to you, and the written word puts the praise in another mouth precisely so it can be received. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man see the other side of a moment he thought was only his.

And the deeper thing, said gently, because it is worth naming once.

The discounting is not really about the object. A man who takes warmth at face value has to then hold the fact that he made something worth that. Explaining it away is easier than carrying it.

You have been putting something down because it was heavier to carry, and it is written that another man is to do the praising rather than that anybody has to earn it first. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a warm thing carryable, and He does it by moving the authority off the man's own judgment.

Take them at their word once

So here is what to do, and it is two words and then a silence.

The next time somebody says a warm thing about something you made, say thank you.

And then stop. Say nothing after it. No it was nothing. No it took no time. No small correction about the part that did not go right.

You have two words available and nothing else required, and Proverbs 27:2 leaves the response to the praise entirely unlegislated rather than giving the maker a line. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes two words sufficient, and He makes them sufficient because the job was never yours.

And then do the harder half, which happens in the car.

When the dismantling starts, and it will start within about four minutes of leaving, do not argue with it and do not agree with it. Say one thing out loud: they said it, and it is not mine to overrule.

You are able to leave a thing standing that somebody else said, and it is written that another man does the praising and a stranger rather than thine own lips. The Spirit of God is the one who stops a dismantling in a car, and the car is where this has been happening for years.

And one more thing, which is a practice rather than a moment.

Write it down. Whatever they said, in their words, on the day. Not for vanity. Because a man who discounts things in cars has no record of anything, and a written line in somebody else's words is harder to explain away six months later than a memory is.

You are able to keep what another mouth said, and the passage puts the praising in a stranger's mouth rather than in the maker's memory. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a written sentence outlast a drive home, and it outlasts it by a long way.