Forged By Faith

1 John 2:15 NIV amends adoration All because all along all we’ve learned is that all we need, all we should then want, it’s all apparently only right here. And indeed, in some sort of strange entirely unseen way it is because so too is He who is all we need. He is here. He is now. He is so close in fact that we hold what He sold His flesh, His very life, to call His home. For the Scripture tells us that He died to go before us so as to, once having reached that place where He came and preached we may now come, He sent back the Holy Spirit that would guide our lives into living in the light of that Way that loved us so much as to come down here and die for us. Ridding Himself of the sinful flesh so that our sinful flesh might wonder what it might be like to live that life in which we wanted more than merely whatever pleased the surface and thus superficial. Alas, the surface and superficial has literally been all we’ve known to care about for however long we’ve walked about the same. An...

1 John 2:16 NIV rejects the objectionable Which is arguably the part which poses the most profound problem of all those waiting to be found within what is a faith that leads us forever away from everything that is objectionable as the same are what have long been quite possibly our greatest objects of affection. For the truth is that we haven’t merely come to somewhat enjoy some of the things that are only slightly displeasing to God. We’ve not sort of dipped the toe into sin, kind of just testing, playing around with it only now and then. No. We have all chosen to dive headfirst and headlong into what it is to die unto that life for which He created us to live, living then as if nothing at all of all that He intended and thus clearly desired for us to be. Indeed, as the Word puts it, we’ve all of us what is an obvious form of godliness having all of us been made in the image of the only God there is, but so too have we all denied the power, the purpose, the promise thereof in what’s b...

1 John 2:17 NIV reconsiders the ruins Because for all our lives we’ve all been told that anyone who’s doing anything other than whatever is common or normal or elsewise popular is all but simply wasting their lives as, apparently, within this life we’re all here to find nothing but fun and fame and a true fortune then to be made out of what is a life given unto a stage living from which we perform for the masses all the signs and shows and songs they want to hear and see from you and me. Mostly only those who seem to agree that everything that everyone is doing is both just fine to be done and thus too something we may as well then do. After all, everyone can’t be wrong, can they? Well, according to the Word of God, yeah, yeah we are all in fact wrong. And now granted, there’s always some sort of measure to that in which we're all at what are various depths of depravity, delusion, disillusionment, indifference basically the lot. We are all in truth a quite different degree of lost....

2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV seeks beyond the surface Inside what is a life in which we slowly begin to realize that not merely are looks often deceiving, sometimes they’re just plain imaginary. And this is a hard thing for us to consider considering how we’ve all walked for years in what is this fear of relying upon anything other than our sense of sight. For so long it’s been but our eyes which have led our lives and that always in accordance with the coordinates given us by the things we’ve seen or sought not to. Indeed, life, as far as we know to live it, it’s been lived in love with our eyes keeping our heads above the surface seeking ways in which to avoid the suffering and find the successes. Yet anymore all I for one seem to see are but the messes from which we shall not walk away. At least not without some sort of price being paid. Thankfully said price was paid by He who came with the express intent to pay it in a kind of permanent that rendered pointless the entirety of all that w...