I Was Different Out There

For six days you were a better man, and then you walked through your own front door and he was gone by the evening.

Everybody noticed. Nobody said it in those words, but your wife said something about you being relaxed on the third day, and one of your children laughed at something you said in a way that told you it had been a while.

You were patient. Twice you were funny. You did not check anything. Somebody asked you a question at a table and you answered it properly rather than while doing something else.

And then home, and the bags in the hall, and by about eight in the evening you could hear yourself using the voice you use here, and you knew exactly what had happened and could not do anything about it.

And here is the question you have not said out loud to anybody, and it is a serious one, and it is why this article exists.

Which one is the real man.

Changed into the same image

There is a sentence at the end of the third chapter of Corinthians about being changed, and the grammar in it answers your question better than anything else I know.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18, King James Version)

You have a verse in the written word where the changing is done to a person rather than by him, and no evening at home has ever once been able to undo something God is doing. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says are changed rather than change yourselves, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is named in that verse as the agent of it.

Look at the voice of the verb. Are changed. It is done to us. Nobody in that sentence is changing himself by effort, and the very end of the verse names who does it: even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

That takes the whole question of which man is real out of the category of your performance.

You are being changed by somebody other than yourself, and no six days of it has ever once been a version of you that you were maintaining. It is written that we are changed into the same image, even as by the Spirit of the Lord, which puts the working on His side, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a relief rather than a theory in a man at eight in the evening.

And then the phrase that answers the actual question. From glory to glory.

That is a direction. It is not a state, and it is not a level a person holds or falls off. It describes movement, in stages, with the implication of a great many of them.

You are somewhere along a direction rather than at a level you fell off, and one bad evening has never once put you back at the start of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man in a direction rather than scoring him, and 2 Corinthians 3 has the changing going from one glory to another rather than holding at one.

So the honest answer to your question is that neither man is the real one, and both of them are you, and the man out there was further along the same road rather than a different person visiting.

You are one man on one road, and no evening in your own hallway has ever once split you into two of them. 2 Corinthians 3:18 has the changing move from glory to glory rather than between two states, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a man together across a front door.

Conditions, not character

Now the practical part, and it is the piece that will actually help.

The man out there was produced by conditions. Not by an effort that was being made and has since stopped.

No work in anybody's head. Nothing to arrange for six days. Nobody able to leave the house. Sleep. And the specific thing nobody names: no interruption every four minutes with something that needed a decision.

Take those away and the effect goes, because the effect was downstream of them.

You are not a man who let something slip, and losing it in one evening has never once been evidence about your character. The Spirit of God is what separates conditions from character in a man's own assessment, and it is written that the changing is done by the Spirit rather than sustained by the man.

That is the good news and the hard news in one sentence. Good, because you did not fail. Hard, because you cannot get him back by trying, and I suspect you have already tried, probably about four days after you got home, and probably for about a day and a half.

You are able to stop trying to hold a thing that was never held by effort, and giving that up has never once been you settling for less. It is written that we are changed even as by the Spirit of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does in a man what a man cannot do by resolving.

So the question is not how to be him. It is narrower and much more possible: what did he do, and can one of those things be done here.

Because a condition cannot be imported. But an action can.

You are able to bring one action home even though the conditions did not come with you, and no version of that has ever once been pretending to be somebody you are not. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in one imported action in an ordinary week, and 2 Corinthians 3:18 has the change moving from glory to glory rather than arriving all at once.

One thing he did, done here

So here is the assignment.

Name one thing you did out there. Then do that one thing at home this week.

The naming first, and be specific about an action rather than a quality. Not: I was patient. That is a quality and you cannot do a quality. Ask what you actually did.

Probably something like: you answered a question without doing anything else at the same time. Or you sat down outside for twenty minutes with nothing in your hands. Or you played something with your youngest for half an hour. Or you were the last person to leave a table.

You are able to name an action rather than a quality, and no quality has ever once been available to be done directly. 2 Corinthians 3:18 has the changing done by the Spirit while people behold rather than while they strive, and the Spirit of God is with a man working out what he actually did on a Thursday somewhere else.

Then do that one thing, once, this week, in your own house.

And expect it to be harder here, because the conditions are against it. Doing twenty minutes with nothing in your hands is easy where there is nothing to do and difficult in a house with a list in it. That difficulty is the whole exercise and it is not a sign that it will not work.

You are able to do one thing against the conditions, and doing it once has never once needed to become a new way of living to have counted. It is written that we are changed from glory to glory, in stages, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in one action in one week rather than in a transformation.

And do not announce it, and do not attempt two things, and do not do it as a test of whether you can be that man here. One action, once, and then let it be over.