Let Me Show You What Went Wrong With It

There are usually four or five.

The grain runs the wrong way on the underside. The second joint is a hair proud. There is a mark near the base from where the clamp sat and you did not notice for two days. And the whole thing is about a sixteenth out of square, which does not matter, and which you will mention.

You deliver them in order while they are holding it.

And you are not being falsely modest. That is what makes this different from the man who apologizes. You are not fishing and you are not performing humility. You are giving them accurate information about an object, because accurate information is what you would want, and because a person receiving a thing ought to know what it is.

That is a defensible position and I want to grant it before I take it apart.

Here is the question I would put to you.

What are they supposed to do with the list?

They cannot use it. They are not going to correct anything. They will not remember four faults by Thursday, and they were not going to find three of the four on their own.

So the list is not information for them. Information is something a person can act on.

The list is doing something else, and I think you know what, because a precise man usually does.

It is establishing that you saw everything. That nothing got past you. That whatever they eventually notice, you knew first.

He that refraineth his lips is wise

There is a proverb about the quantity of words that is unusually blunt, and the second half is where the instruction is.

In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise. (Proverbs 10:19, King James Version)

In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.

That is a plain statement about volume rather than about content. It does not say that in the multitude of false words there wanteth not sin. It says that where there are many, something goes wrong somewhere in them, more or less inevitably.

You are offered wisdom without giving up one true thing, and Proverbs 10:19 makes no comment at all on accuracy. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a holding back into an act of precision.

And then the alternative. He that refraineth his lips is wise.

Refrain is a holding back. It is not silence and it is not lying. It is a man with more to say who does not say all of it.

You are being offered wisdom in the form of a holding back, and Proverbs 10:19 puts the trouble in the quantity rather than in the accuracy. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a proverb about too many words and lays it down in a front room where something is changing hands.

And notice that the verse does not ask a man to be wrong. Everything you say about that object is true. The proverb makes no comment on that, which is precisely its point.

You have wisdom available without giving up one true thing, and it is already settled in the written word that the refraining is the wise act rather than the correcting of anything. His Spirit is the one who says he that refraineth his lips over a man who has never handed anything over in silence.

What the list does to the object

Now let me stay with what happens in the room, because that is the actual cost.

You hand over an object and a description of an object, and the description is more detailed than anything they could have seen.

So they now hold a thing they cannot look at freshly. Whatever they might have felt about it on their own has been replaced by a guided tour, and there is no way for them to unsee the mark near the base now that it has been pointed out.

You have permission to hand over a thing instead of a tour, and it is already settled in Proverbs 10:19 that refraining the lips is the wise act. The Spirit of God is the one who lets somebody see an object with their own eyes first.

What crossed the room was not the thing. It was a view of the thing, and that view is the most critical one in existence anywhere.

And this: the sixteenth out of square is not a measure of you. Neither is the clamp mark. Nobody who has ever received a handmade object has thought about that object as much as the man who made it, and that is a mercy rather than a failure in them.

You are not obliged to hand over your own assessment, and heaven has never once required a giver to disclose. Proverbs 10:19 calls the refraining wise without asking a man to say anything false, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates honesty from a full accounting.

And do not swap it for a compliment about it. This is not an instruction to say something warm about your own work, which you would find impossible and which would sound wrong coming from you.

You have permission to say nothing at all about it, and this is yours: refraining is a holding of what is there and not a denying of it. It is written in Proverbs 10:19 that he that refraineth his lips is wise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes silence a form of precision rather than a lapse in it.

Hand it over and name nothing

So here is the ask, and it is precise, which will suit you.

The next one you give, name not one fault.

Not four. Not the worst one. Not a small one offered as a token so it does not look like the others are being hidden. Zero.

Hand it over and say here, or their name.

You have wisdom available without surrendering one true fact, and Proverbs 10:19 puts the trouble in the quantity rather than in the accuracy. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a holding back into precision rather than a lapse in it.

If they ask a direct question about how it was made, answer the question that was asked and stop at the end of it. Do not continue into the list, which is where the momentum goes.

The faults will be in your mouth. All four of them, formed and ready, and they will get louder the longer nobody mentions them.

Let them stay there.

You are able to hold four true things in, and it is already settled in Proverbs 10:19 that a man refraining his lips has kept every one of them and is called wise for it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes silence an act of precision.

And make the next one this week in twenty minutes, badly, so there is another one coming and this is not the only object standing for your standards.

You are covered while four true things stay unsaid, and Proverbs 10:19 is the ground under that. The written word calls the refraining of the lips wise without one word against the truth of what is held back, and the Spirit of God is present in a front room where a man is holding a list in.