Everything Has A Small Cost Attached

He has got very good at the reply.

Ah, I can't that week. Sorry, I've got something. I'll try and make the next one.

It is never a lie exactly, and it is always the same, and he has been doing it for about fourteen months and nobody has noticed because everybody is busy and people stop asking eventually without ever quite deciding to.

Here is what is actually going on and he has not said it out loud to one human being.

Everything has a small cost attached to it.

Not a big one. That is the thing. Nobody is inviting him to anything extravagant. But the walk is a lift, and the lift is petrol, and the thing afterwards is a coffee, and the birthday is a card and something, and the meal is a meal, and the trip is the bit for the minibus, and every single one of those is small and every single one of them is currently impossible, and the arithmetic of saying yes takes about four seconds and always comes out the same.

So he says no. Cheerfully. Every time.

And somewhere in the last fourteen months, without a single moment where he decided it, the same reply has started coming out when it is God.

He does not doubt God. He would be annoyed if you suggested that.

He has just stopped turning up. Because he has begun to assume, the way you assume the floor will hold, that there will be something at the door.

And you know that assumption, because you have started reading every invitation for the part that costs.

There is no price on this door

Let us settle what governs this whole page. It is not a technique, and nothing on it is being asked of you.

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb in that famous sentence and it lands on Him. He is the one under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. It is written that He said, put me to the test (Malachi 3:10), and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that an offer a person can actually accept rather than a line they can only quote.

And here is the promise this page keeps to the bottom, and this whole site keeps on every page. There is no appeal here. Nothing is being asked of you: not something, not a token, not a small thing instead, not your time in place of anything. Nothing. If you came onto this page doing the four-second arithmetic, you can stop, because the answer is nought and it stays nought all the way to the last line.

Now the sentence itself, in its own room.

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10

That was said to a whole nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had gone empty and the families who worked there had gone home hungry. It is a sentence about people eating. It was never a switch on a wall, it was never a door charge, and it has never been about what is or is not in your hands.

Now the door, because that is what you have actually been standing outside of.

God has never once put a price on the door He is inviting you through, and He is not standing at it doing arithmetic while you walk up. Read what He actually calls out, because He shouts it like a man at a market stall: come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come, buy and eat, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1). That is not a discount. It is a stall with a man behind it saying the word without twice in one sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line like that off a page and gets it as far as a front step.

And it is not a one-off. It is how the whole book ends. The very last invitation in the Bible is let the one who desires take the water of life without price (Revelation 22:17). Last page. Last offer. No charge.

You are welcome exactly as you are today, and there is no version of you that would be more welcome, including the one with something in his pocket. It is written that by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8). Look at how hard that sentence works to close every door back to payment: not your doing, a gift, not works, no boasting. Four separate locks on the same door. It is His Spirit who makes that read as relief rather than theology.

Now, the thing that has quietly happened to you in fourteen months.

God has not moved further off because your hands are empty, and He never once required them to be full. It is written that while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6). Weak, and at the right time, and for the ungodly: three phrases that between them rule out every possible entry condition anybody could invent. The Spirit is what makes that stop being a fact you know and start being a door you can walk through this afternoon.

And notice how He calls people.

Jesus said, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Not bring. Come. The only qualification named in that sentence is being tired, and you are tired. The Holy Spirit is the One who makes that true in a person rather than merely accurate on a page.

Now the guardrail, and it matters more on this page than on any other on this site.

Nothing here is going to suggest what you could do instead. There is no smaller thing you could offer, no service that would stand in for it, nothing to volunteer, nothing to sign, and nobody here is going to admire you for managing. Your situation is not a lesson and it is not an illustration for somebody else's article, and you are not being looked at. You are being spoken to. The Holy Spirit is what turns a sentence that is true into a sentence that is true about you.

And nobody here is going to predict a change in it, because nobody writing to you has been given the right to say that. What is written is what is being said: God is close, there is no entry price, and He is not rationing His nearness.