Tidy the House First

Her mother's house had a chair by the stove that people sat in, and if you sat in it you got prayed for, and that was simply understood by everybody within four miles.

She kept that going in her own house for a long time. Not formally. She never called it anything. But people came, and they sat, and at some point she would put her hand on their arm and say something out loud to the Lord about them, and they would go home lighter, and a good many of them still say so.

Twelve years ago, in the spring, standing at her own sink with the window open, she told God that this house would be that kind of house for as long as she was in it. She said it plain, the way she says everything.

It stopped about seven years ago. She could not tell you precisely when.

There was a bad stretch with her son, and there was her own health, and there was the year her sister came to stay and it was not restful. And somewhere in there she stopped putting her hand on anybody's arm. People still come. She still feeds them, because that has never stopped and never will. But the other thing is gone and everybody has been too polite to mention it, which is its own kind of loud.

And now here is the condition, and it is so ordinary that she has never noticed it is a condition.

She is going to sort herself out first.

She would put it as: I am in no fit state. She means it in the way you mean it about a house before somebody comes: you would not have the minister in with the kitchen like this. So she is going to get herself right, get back to reading in the mornings the way she used to, get the thing with her son settled in her own heart, and then she will come back and pick it up.

That was seven years ago and the tidying has not begun, because it never does, because a house cleaned before the visitor comes is a house that stays uncleaned when nobody is coming.

You may have your own tidying. And you may not have noticed that it is a rule at all, because it feels like nothing more than ordinary decency.

The verse with a but in the middle

Now, I am plain and I like plain sentences, and this is the plainest one in Paul on this subject.

He is writing to a young man about how people get saved and how they ought to live, and he says it in one breath, and there is a hinge in the middle of it.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.Titus 3:5

You are held by something measured against His mercy and not against the state of your house. Titus 3:5 rules out the good works we have done and then names the washing and the renewing, and the Holy Spirit is named in that verse as the one who does the renewing.

Not by, but according to

Everything is in those two little phrases.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done. And notice he does not say works of unrighteousness. He is not talking about bad things we did. He is talking about the good ones. The tidying. The mornings we did read. The years we did put our hand on somebody's arm. Even those are not what it is done by.

But according to his mercy. According to, which means measured by, drawn from, in proportion to. The size of what you get is measured against His mercy and not against your kitchen.

You are held by something measured against His mercy and not against the state of your house. Titus 3:5 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of a letter to a young minister and stands it at a sink with the window open.

And then look at the two things He is said to do, because they are both washing words. The washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. The cleaning is in the sentence. It is simply on the wrong side of the door from where you put it.

You have been trying to do the washing in the porch so as to be fit to come in and be washed.

You have been doing His work in the wrong order and calling it manners. Scripture puts the washing after the mercy and inside the house, and the Spirit of God is named as the one doing the renewing, which is not a job that was ever handed to you.

Nothing goes back on

Now let me be careful, because this is where a preacher tidies one rule away and sets down another.

I am not taking the tidying off you and handing you a shorter list. I am not going to say you do not have to be in a fit state but you do have to be willing to be, or you do have to at least start the mornings again. That is the same rule in a smaller apron, and you would be at that sink tomorrow measuring yourself against it.

The condition comes off. Nothing goes on.

You are held inside on His terms this evening, and His terms were met by His mercy and not by anything you got straight first. His word says it and does not soften it, and that is what not by works of righteousness which we have done actually means, and His Spirit has been in this house every one of the seven years.

And the chair by the stove? It may come back. It may come back next week, in the middle of a conversation, without you deciding anything, which is how it started in the first place. But that happens from inside, and it is not the toll on the road in.