I Cannot Tell If The Price Is Fair

There are two doors and you cannot walk through either of them.

Behind the first one is paying the number, which you suspect is too much and cannot prove is too much, because you have nothing to compare it against and no idea what that work actually involves.

Behind the second one is doing it yourself, which you are fairly sure is beyond you, and if it goes wrong the whole thing costs more than the number did.

So you stand between them. It has been five weeks. Nothing has moved, and the thing still needs doing, and the standing still is starting to feel like a decision.

Let me put this down before anything else. Not knowing how is not a character flaw, and neither is not knowing what a fair price looks like. Nobody is born knowing that. It is information, and information is a thing that can be got.

Where no counsel is

There is a proverb about exactly this position, and it names the cause rather than the person.

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

Look at what the proverb blames. Not weakness. Not indecision. The absence of counsel.

That is a supply problem, and Solomon states it as one. The falling happens where the advice is not, and the safety comes from the number of people asked, not from the quality of the person asking.

You have been standing in a position Scripture describes as a shortage of counsel rather than a fault in a man, and having nobody to ask has never once been the same as being unable to decide. Proverbs 11:14 puts the cause in the absence and the safety in the number, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as a diagnosis rather than as a rebuke.

And notice the word multitude. Not the right one. Not the wisest one. Several. The safety in that verse is a plural thing, and it comes from getting more than one view.

You are being pointed at a number of voices rather than at one perfect adviser, and needing several opinions has never once meant a man cannot make up his own mind. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies counsel where a person has none, and it is written in Proverbs that the safety is in the multitude.

The third door

Here is what has been missing from the room, and it is not courage.

This has been treated as a choice between two options, and it is not. There is a third thing available and it costs nothing, and it is the one Proverbs is pointing at.

Get more numbers.

Not to haggle. Not to find somebody cheaper. To find out what the actual range is, which is the one piece of information that would let you decide anything at all.

You have been choosing between two doors when the answer was a piece of information, and being unable to judge a price has never once meant a man has to guess. It is written in Proverbs 11:14 that the safety lies in the number of voices, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person from deciding to finding out.

And here is what three numbers do. If they are all close, the price is the price, and the frozen feeling goes, because there is nothing to suspect any more. If one is far below the others, that is information too, and usually not good information.

Either way you stop standing between two doors, because the thing that was holding you there was not the money. It was not knowing.

There is a second thing worth asking each of them, and almost nobody does. Ask what the job actually involves. Most tradespeople will say, and after three conversations a man knows more about that job than five weeks of standing in a hallway ever taught him.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. If the three conversations reveal that the job is in the dangerous category, then door two closes permanently and that is a good outcome. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly, and save for as long as it takes.

You are entirely right to let one door close for good, and finding out that a job is not yours has never once been a wasted five weeks. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man peace about a settled boundary, and Scripture puts the safety in asking around rather than in getting it right first time.

Three numbers, side by side

So here is the ask, and it is two phone calls.

Ask two more people for a price, and write down the three numbers side by side.

That is the whole assignment. Two calls, or two messages, or two people at a hall or a yard or a church. Say what the job is and ask what it would come to.

You are able to make two phone calls this week, and asking a second and a third person has never once been an insult to the first one. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies what a man does not have access to, and Proverbs 11:14 puts the safety in the number rather than in the wisdom of any single voice.

And write them down on one piece of paper, in a row, where you can see them together. Numbers held in the head do not compare properly, and the whole point of this is comparison.

On each call, ask the second question. What does that involve. Then write down one thing learned from each of them.

At the end of the week you will have three numbers and three pieces of knowledge, and both doors will look completely different.

You have permission to find out rather than to decide, and gathering information has never once been the same as putting something off. It is written in Proverbs that where no counsel is the people fall, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in that hallway with you.