This is not an article about working out a price. You already know the price.
You have known it for about two years. You worked it out properly at some point, probably late at night, probably on paper, and the number was slightly higher than you expected and you thought: yes, that is right, that is what this is worth.
And then somebody asked, and you said the old one.
Not because you forgot. You had the right number in your head at the moment you said the wrong one, which is a strange thing to do and which almost everybody in your position does.
So this article is not about arithmetic. This is about the eighteen inches between knowing a number and saying it.
She makes it and she sells it
There is a line in Proverbs 31 that goes past very quickly, and I want to slow it down, because of what is not in it.
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. (Proverbs 31:24, King James Version)
She maketh it, and selleth it.
That is the whole sentence. There is no hesitation in it. There is no anxiety about the selling, no note that she found the commercial part uncomfortable, no suggestion that the making was the honorable half and the selling the necessary evil.
And this is a passage that is describing a woman who is being praised in public at the end of the chapter. The selling is in the list of things she is admired for.
Proverbs 31:24 puts making and selling in one clause with no seam between them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person notice how easily that sentence sits.
You are permitted to sell what you make, and there has never once been a seam between the two. Proverbs 31:24 says she maketh fine linen and selleth it, with no discomfort anywhere in the line, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes a split a person has put into their own work.
What happens in the eighteen inches
So what is actually going on between the number in your head and the number in the room, given that Proverbs 31:24 has no hesitation in it anywhere and the Holy Spirit is not the one flinching.
You are pricing the relationship rather than the work.
The person asking is standing in front of you. They may be somebody you like. They may be having a hard year. You may know exactly what they earn, because in a small place everybody does. And in the second before you answer, all of that arrives, and you quietly adjust downward to protect something.
That feels like kindness and it is a kind instinct, and it has two problems.
The first is that they did not ask you to. They asked a price. Deciding on their behalf that they cannot afford the real one is a judgment about them that they were not consulted on.
The second is that a discount given from anxiety rather than from generosity turns into resentment about four months later, and the resentment lands on somebody who has no idea it exists.
Proverbs 31:24 has a woman deliver goods to a merchant without any negotiation of her own worth being described, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a price from an act of care.
You are pricing work rather than people, and the two have never once been the same transaction. The written word records the making and the selling without one word about hesitation, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps kindness and pricing from being confused.
Generosity is a decision, not a flinch
I want to be careful, because there is a version of this that turns people hard, and that is not what I am after.
Give things away. Genuinely. Do work for nothing for people who need it, and do it gladly, and do not count it.
But do that as a decision, made in advance, out loud, and known to be a gift.
What is happening at the moment is not generosity, it is a flinch. It arrives at the point of asking, it is not chosen, it is not named as a gift, and the person receiving it does not know they received one. All the cost and none of the joy.
Proverbs 31 has plenty about a woman's open hand, and it does not put that in the same clause as her trade, and the Holy Spirit is entirely comfortable with a person being both generous and correctly paid.
You are able to be generous on purpose, and a flinch has never once been the same as a gift. Proverbs 31:24 keeps the selling clean and lets the giving be its own thing, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets somebody be both without confusing them.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody today.
You are allowed to be paid properly, and the selling has never once been the lesser half of your work. I am not making you commercial. Proverbs 31:24 puts making and selling in one untroubled clause inside a passage of public praise, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who removes a seam a person has put into their own trade.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You can be generous and correctly paid, and those two have never once been in competition. The written word says she maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person hold an open hand and a clear price at the same time.
Write the real number down. Use it on the next one.
Declare this over yourself
- Adjustment I make in the second before I answer, you are not kindness and you never were. Proverbs 31:24 says she maketh fine linen and selleth it, so by the Holy Spirit you do not price my work in the name of Jesus.
- Habit of buying the right to be thought reasonable, you have cost this house enough. The word puts the selling inside a passage of public praise, and by the Holy Spirit I am done paying for that with somebody else's holiday.
- Father, You put making and selling in one clause with no seam. Your word says she maketh fine linen, and selleth it, so by Your Spirit I write the real number down today, and I use it on the next one.
Proverbs 31:24
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