The Days I Did Everything Right

It is worse on the good days. You have noticed that and it makes no sense to you.

On a bad day you would expect it. Bad day, hard evening, that has a logic anybody could follow. What you cannot account for is that on the days you did everything right, when the work went well and you kept your temper and you were the man you meant to be, that is the evening when it comes hardest.

You have never told anybody that, partly because it sounds like nonsense and partly because it makes you seem ungrateful for a good day.

Here is the shape of it, and once you see it you will not be able to unsee it. On a good day you have earned something. There is a debt owed to you, by yourself, for good conduct. And in the evening you go and collect it, and the only currency available in the house at that hour is food.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. You have gone at it for years, in ways nobody knows about, and you have gotten up every time. Somebody who did not care would not be settling accounts at all.

So this page is not going to give you a rule for the evening. There is no strategy on this site and there will not be one.

I want to show you a verse where God asks a question about spending, and it is the most practical question in the Bible.

Collecting a debt you owe yourself

Consider the arrangement, because it is an economy and it has been running for years.

Good conduct earns credit. Credit has to be paid out. And it has to be paid out in something available, immediate, and private, because nobody announces that they are paying themselves for a good day.

So the payment happens at night, in the kitchen, in whatever form the kitchen offers, and it never satisfies, because a debt for good conduct is not the kind of thing food can settle.

You have been paid in the wrong currency, and no evening has ever once been able to settle a debt like that. Isaiah 55:2 says wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ancient question about spending land on a man in his own kitchen.

And notice why the good days are worse. On a bad day there is no credit, so there is nothing to collect. The whole mechanism only fires when you have done well, which means the better you are, the harder the evening, which is an arrangement nobody would design and everybody would recognize.

You have been running an economy that punishes a good day, and no such arrangement has ever once come from God. The written word asks why the money goes on what is not bread, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a man able to look at his own spending honestly without being ashamed of it.

Wherefore do ye spend

Isaiah asks it as a straight question about value.

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. (Isaiah 55:2, King James Version)

Money for what is not bread. Labor for what does not satisfy.

He is not scolding. He is doing arithmetic out loud. He is pointing at a transaction that keeps happening and noting that the goods do not deliver, which is exactly what you have observed every night for years without ever putting it in those words.

You are looking at a transaction that does not deliver, and no evening of yours has ever once returned what it promised. Isaiah 55 asks the question rather than issuing a rebuke, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest question about spending feel like being helped rather than caught.

And read what He offers next. Eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself. He does not say stop wanting. He does not tell them to need less. He offers better goods to people who are already spending.

You are being offered better goods rather than told to want less, and God has never once asked a man to stop needing anything. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an offer like that available at the hour it is needed, and the written word says eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

Ask for what you are actually owed

Now the part I came to say.

On the good day, in the evening, name the thing that is owed. Out loud. Not the food. The thing underneath it, which is probably something like rest, or credit, or somebody noticing, or an hour where nothing is required.

And then ask God for it. Directly. That is the whole action.

You have something to ask for that is not what you have been taking, and no debt of yours has ever once been unpayable by Him. The written word invites people who are already spending to spend on something that actually delivers, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ask like that possible in the moment rather than afterward.

And here is why naming it out loud does the work. As long as it goes unnamed, food is the only thing on the shelf. Named, the actual thing has a name, and a thing with a name can be asked for, and the asking can be done by a man standing in a kitchen at the exact moment he was going to collect.

You have a name for the thing now, and no unnamed need has ever once been able to be handed over. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a named need askable, and Isaiah 55:2 is the written word underneath it, where the spending is questioned and something that satisfies is offered in its place.