He fixed the door within two days and he did not put the rent up in March.
That is the part that makes this difficult to describe to anybody, including your wife, who has pointed out both of those facts more than once and is right both times.
There is nothing wrong. The lease runs another two years with an option. The man who owns it inherited it from his mother and has told you, twice, unprompted, that he has no interest in selling.
And you still have not bought the lamp.
There was a lamp you both liked in the spring. Not expensive. And you stood in the store and said something about seeing how things go, and you have said a version of that about nine things in three years.
The garden is the other one. Your wife wanted to put something in along the back fence, the kind of thing that takes three years to look like anything, and you said something about it being a lot of work for a place that is not ours.
You did not decide to say that either. It arrives on its own, and it has been arriving for three years in a house where nobody has ever once suggested you leave.
Where the brace came from
Let me offer you something, because a man in this position usually assumes the whole thing is irrational, and I do not think it is.
The brace is not about this house. It is older than this house.
Somewhere behind it there is a time when a place did end. A landlord who sold. A parent's move. A year when the family had to go somewhere else at short notice and nobody explained it properly to a child. Something taught a lesson, and the lesson was: a house can be taken, so do not get comfortable.
That lesson has been running ever since, and it does not read leases. It does not care that this man inherited the place from his mother. It has one rule and it applies it everywhere.
You have been carrying an old lesson into a new house, and a brace that predates this address has never once been a judgment on this address. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been in every house you have ever lived in, and it is written in Psalm 90 that Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
And here is the cost, which is the part I actually want to deal with.
The lamp did not get bought. The back fence did not get planted. Nine small decisions in three years, every one of them sensible on its own, all of them going the same way.
Stacked up, they are three years of living in a house you have not furnished, in case.
You have been declining to live somewhere in case you have to leave it, and a lamp has never once been a thing that made a departure harder. Psalm 90 calls God the dwelling place across generations rather than any building, and the Spirit of God is the one who moved the permanence off the address.
Thou hast been our dwelling place
Here is the verse, and it is the oldest prayer in the book.
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. (Psalm 90:1, King James Version)
Moses wrote that. A man whose entire adult life was spent moving, in tents, with a people who did not have an address for forty years.
And what he says is not: give us somewhere. It is not a request at all. It is a statement in the past tense about something that has already been true for generations.
Thou hast been our dwelling place.
The place they had been living, the whole time, through every move and every camp and every stretch of wilderness, was God. Not metaphorically as a consolation for having no house. As the actual answer to where do you live.
You have a dwelling place that has never once been the same thing as an address, and no lease anywhere has ever been able to grant or revoke it. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been it in every house you have rented, and the written word puts the dwelling place in the past tense across all generations.
Now I want to be careful, because this could be heard as a consolation prize, and it is the opposite.
If God is the dwelling place, then the house is not carrying that weight. It does not have to be permanent to be lived in. It does not have to be owned to be furnished. The thing that has been withheld from it was never its job in the first place.
That is not a reason to care less about the house. It is what makes it safe to care.
You are free to furnish a house you do not own, and putting something in the ground has never once been the same as a bet on how long the lease runs. Psalm 90 was written by a man in a tent and calls God the dwelling place, and the Spirit of God is the one who made that the load bearing thing rather than the building.
So here is what I believe is going out over a man who did not buy a lamp.
You have been braced in a house where nothing is wrong, and a feeling with no evidence behind it has never once been a report on where you live. Psalm 90 says Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who has been that in every house you have had.
I am not going to tell you nobody will ever ask you to leave. Somebody might, one year, for an ordinary reason, and no promise from me would survive that.
You have been living in case, and three years of in case has never once made a leaving easier or a staying safer. The written word gives a man in a tent a dwelling place that no move can touch, and the Spirit of God is the one who is it.
You are permitted to spend on a house that is not yours, and a lamp has never once been an act of faith in a landlord. Psalm 90 moves the permanence off the building entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put it where it cannot be revoked.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You were taught something once by a hallway full of boxes, and no lesson learned at eleven has ever once been binding on a man at forty. It is written Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place, and the Spirit of God is with you in the house you are actually in.
Declare this over yourself
- Lesson from boxes in a hallway, you are not binding in this house, and my landlord has never once given me a reason for you. Psalm 90 says Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations, so by the Holy Spirit I retire you in the name of Jesus.
- Phrase about seeing how things go, you have cost me nine small things in three years. The written word gives a man in a tent a dwelling place no move can touch, and by the Holy Spirit I put one thing in this house that takes years, and I tell her why.
- Father, You were the dwelling place of a man who lived in a tent his whole adult life. Your word says in all generations, so by Your Spirit I stop asking a rented house to carry a weight that was never its job.
Psalm 90:1
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