Forged By Faith

Romans 7:24 NIV The realization They say that the first step to solving a problem is admitting there’s one to solve. And indeed, fact is that we can’t fix whatever we can’t see is faulty, fractured, fading, forsaken, forgotten, floundered, frail or fake. But the first problem that we’re all sure to have in regard to fixing any of the others that we can’t see that we do have as of yet is that for so long inside each of our lives we’ve lived trying our best to assume our best was both something we could achieve all by ourselves and that, once we had, we’d have what would amount to a patently perfect life. Issue is though that we have tried. For a long time! Granted, there’s no possible way that I can know your age, your story, even your name as it seems that many of those amazingly few who do read these things through even this far are to be but forever mysteries to me as on this side I can only see a handful of likes and a couple shares from time to time. And true, perhaps those are the...

Isaiah 64:6 NIV The reality It’s that our very best is but a betrayal of even God’s worst. That our most upright action is only one taken in what is an obvious opposition unto He who is positioned upon the throne against which we’ve thrown our lives as if tantrums against Him and His call for all to come unto the Son and receive from the same the salvation found in only the Name of Christ Jesus who died to free us not from lives lived as if these perfecting angels we think ourselves to be. No, rather He came to set us free from a life given so fully unto sin and slavery that we indeed grew to love this life more than He who gave us the opportunity to live it. And the same who’s now seen us lose it to living as if He doesn’t. Which is what now forms the foundation of our collective fear of forever being something found not in the many places we’ve assumed it found or still continue to imagine we might find it now. No, the reality is that we’ve searched for so long through so many other ...

Jeremiah 17:10 NIV The response And alas it’s one of those proverbial “uh-oh” realizations in that we somewhat start to realize the need for our to be ever careful as to all we ask for. Especially from a God known for responding in what are ways that seem, at times, quite well outside our version of what we like to call ‘logic’. Indeed, there’s this now longstanding misunderstanding between God and man, one defined by man thanks to the desires of man, that has been vastly proven to come at the very undoing of not only all the man has done, planned to do, has become, but indeed everything also in between. Yes, when we ask God to have His way in our lives and thus for His will to be done, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when His will both proves us wrong, leaves us feeling horrible about it, and yet somehow seems to plant this light that becomes this hope that just might inspire us to seek out the other ways we’re walking and the other things that we’re doing that aren’t quite leading us...

Psalm 139:23 NIV The request It’s one that few ever make and barely more even dare listen to, live by, walk in or crawl toward. And why? Because of the subject of yesterday’s verse as is considered inside offensive ways found in our lives as are then lived in a blatant if not in fact blanket opposition unto He who will do as we request so long as said desire does align with the heart of Him and thus His will for us. Indeed, He’s told us that should we seek Him will all our hearts then He shall give us all our hearts desire. Seeming to say that should our hearts desire Him we’ll be given both all of who He is, thus all of what this means, and, from that, the new hearts He’s promised elsewhere. As in both elsewhere in Scripture and too not here where we live as if it was never written. Or at least all of us do for a time in what’s then a life given unto being of that common kind that is here common amongst man in which man is the goal, the aim for all pleasure and thus our being pleased ...

Psalm 139:24 NIV Patience on purpose And that on His part on our behalf so that we can end with our own, both purpose and path as have been lived at best in part of heart as half has been held as if hostage here where it seems that the vast majority of us both want to stay and thus plan the same. Which is precisely why our plans must change! It’s because, despite however good, fun, lavish or enjoyable our lives may have seemed to us, or how much better our plans for them would make them, losing our ability to believe in even better is what got us here. Where? Nowhere we should want to be living as they who are people nobody should want to stay in what is now a place that is nothing we should wish to keep thanks to all we’ve done to sink down this deep into the doing of all these things that we’ve done for so long now that our greatest worry seems not doing them anymore. Indeed, we’re such a people of trends and traditions that we can’t bear the idea of losing them, leaving them behind,...