Forged By Faith

Psalm 120:6 NIV breaks with belonging Here at least. And indeed, this, to me it seems, is perhaps the scene I’ve seen become something of a show that continues to go on and on inspiring me to do the same but only in the opposite direction. And this is because I daily become more and more aware as to the thoughts and attitudes of where we are. I see every day more than plenty of things that I honestly do not think are as they ought to be, aren’t what they ought to be, things said and done then by people who care not to be what they ought to want to be. No, daily in this world I see only less reason to continue thinking that I’m supposed to belong here. And as of 38, well, I’ve all but run out of reasons to ever still think I might even like to someday try again. Rather I’ve found myself thinking more and more as to the elsewhere that we’ve all been called to come and should honestly hope to be. Every single day I have at least one moment in which I find myself longing to just go home. T...

John 15:19 NIV hears healing in their hatred Because it’s entirely easy to see what makes this world happy. For indeed, down here such things as happiness, agreement, interest and acceptance are anymore so flimsy and faked that it feels as if they no longer mean a thing. And that’s simply because they’ve been allowed to become matters that mean something different to everyone. All of us have taken it upon ourselves to define a life that always sells only this idea of our being the ones who determine alone what’s good and what’s not, what right is and what it isn’t, even going so far as to mix up our own version of truth served with a side of insisting others just play along. And we have. And we did because we thought that that’s what love would do. That it was supposed to seek of highest priority the comfort, the enjoyment, the approval that we know so well that everyone in this world wants so much. And that’s something that’s been made dangerously clear to us. Indeed, this society tel...

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...