I Did Not Want To Bother Anyone To Check

You had it open for about twenty minutes and you were on your own the whole time.

You read it several times. You looked at it from different angles. You put it down and picked it up. You did that whole business a person does when they are trying to be certain about something that will not become certain.

And there were two people in the house.

That is the thing worth looking at. Not the message. The fact that you did the whole twenty minutes alone with somebody in the next room who would have looked at it in nine seconds.

And you know why you did not call them. It is not that you forgot. It is that showing it to somebody would have meant saying, out loud, that you could not tell.

And saying that out loud felt like a bigger thing than the message ever was.

So you carried it alone, and you nearly answered it alone, and afterward the part that stayed with you was not the near miss.

It was the twenty minutes.

In the multitude of counsellers there is safety

There is a proverb about where safety is located, and where it puts it is not inside the person.

Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellers there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14, King James Version)

In the multitude. Not in the wisdom of the individual. Not in the sharpness of one person's judgment.

Safety, in that sentence, is a property of a group rather than of a man.

You are covered by something that was never located inside one person, and no man has ever once been expected to carry the whole of his own safety alone. Proverbs 11:14 says in the multitude of counsellers there is safety, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true for somebody who spent twenty minutes alone with a phone.

Notice the first half too, because it is blunt. Where no counsel is, the people fall.

Not, the people manage but less well. Fall. The verse treats going it alone as the actual failure mode, and it does not soften it.

You have been told plainly what happens when a man works it out on his own, and no verse in Scripture has ever once praised the person who did not ask. The Holy Spirit is the one who removes the honor from doing it alone, and it is written that the falling belongs to where no counsel is.

And notice who the proverb is written for. It is written for kings and leaders, for people whose judgment was their profession.

If the ones whose whole job was deciding needed a multitude, then needing one is not a weakness in anybody.

You were never in a category that was exempt from needing counsel, and no man whose judgment was his profession has ever once been told he could do without. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the wisest people in the same position as everybody else, and Scripture writes the proverb for those who decide for a living.

What asking actually says

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not get somebody to call out to the next room.

Ask what showing it to somebody actually communicates. You believe it says, I cannot tell.

Here is what it actually says. It says, this is worth two people's attention.

That is a completely different sentence. It is a statement about the message and not about the man, and the person you show it to hears it that way, every single time, without exception.

You are saying something about the message and never about yourself, and asking for a second look has never once been heard as a confession by the person being asked. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a man what his own question sounds like from the other side, and Proverbs 11:14 puts the safety in the number rather than in the ability.

And here is the second half, which nobody ever says out loud. The people who are best at this show things to each other constantly.

It is the ordinary practice everywhere. Two people look, and one of them notices the thing the other did not, and neither of them regards it as an admission of anything.

Nobody ever told you that, because it is one of those practices that is so normal to the people doing it that they do not know it is worth mentioning. That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you.

You have been holding yourself to a standard that nobody who is good at this holds themselves to, and no second opinion has ever once been the mark of somebody who could not manage. The written word puts the falling where there is no counsel, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man what everybody else is quietly doing.

Four words to one person

Now the small thing, and it is four words.

I am not going to give you a way of judging these on your own. That is exactly the job this proverb takes off a man, and handing it back would be the wrong move entirely.

Show one message to one person this week and say four words. What do you think.

You are able to hold something out and ask four words, and one question has never once been an intrusion on anybody standing in a kitchen. Proverbs 11:14 puts the safety in the many, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man asks for a second pair of eyes for the first time.

Say the four words and nothing else. That is the whole instruction.

Do not say, I know this is probably obvious. Do not say, I am hopeless with these. Do not walk them through the twenty minutes that came first.

Because all of that turns four words into a confession, and it puts the other person in the position of having to reassure you before they can even look. Four words leaves them with one job, and one job is what you actually want them to do.

You are giving somebody one job rather than two, and four words held out with a phone have never once obliged anybody to say something kind first. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the preamble out of a man's mouth, and it is written that the safety is found in the multitude rather than in the confidence of the one asking.