Day 2622 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
2 Timothy 2:13 NIV
There have been many times in our lives when we've proven faithless. We've lived as traitors. We've run from God, shirked His ways, and ignored that small voice that tells us we're doing wrong. We have all been God's enemies as we've chosen the path of sinfulness over the pursuit of righteousness. But living a life running from the only version of peace and hope that exists has only left us broken. It will always leave us empty. It will only lead us to this desolate place of realizing that we messed up. Badly.
We've been talking about how God deserves and demands our whole heart. No room for diving it up and giving it out to several different goals or dreams or desires. But that's exactly what each of us have done. We've given our lives to so many other things thinking that they would bring us happiness and joy. We've followed the paths that other people were walking in this assumption that they were all headed the same direction for a reason.
But as we get farther down those broken roads, we start to realize that maybe we were wrong. Maybe they're not all smarter than us. Maybe they don't know where to find what we're looking for in our lives. Maybe they're also lost and controlled by the allure of worldly sin and just following wherever it leads them. And when we start to understand that the wrong turns we've taken can't possibly lead to anything good, we're left with this terrifying reality that we're so far from God that we have no idea how to find our way back.
That's the amazing part of our faith and the gift that we have in Christ. All this time that we've spent running from God, He never ran from us. All those days that we chose all those other priorities, He still came searching for us. All those other things that we've given our hearts, our minds, our time, and our lives to pursue never caused Him to let go or give up on us. Because in all of our time of being faithless, treacherous, traitorous, and blinded by the lies of so many sinful opportunities, God remained faithful because that's who He is.
He doesn't change just because we do. He doesn't throw away His plans just because we've set fire to them and walked away so that we could play all the sinful games we've played. He doesn't give the hope that one day we'll turn away from all the filth and folly and realize that everything we've ever looked for, everything we've ever hoped for, everything we've ever needed has always only been found in Him. So He remains faithful because He sees who we can be through the cross, not who we've been on the wrong side of it.
The simple fact is that God is faithfulness. He is love. His is peace. He is kindness. He is forgiveness. He is power. He is freedom. And no matter how long, how far, or in how many other places we may search, we will never find any of those things without Him. And that's a fact that you and I and every other person on this earth has learned or will one day learn the hard way.
But thankfully, He's still there. We're still breathing. And therefore we still have time to humble ourselves to learning the lessons that we have to learn if we truly want a better way of life. We still have an open door to a life spent living for something and moving toward something. We still have a chance to turn from our wandering and give Him a chance to show us that He has always been who He has always promised to be. But until we reach the end of ourselves and come to understand that our way of living for the selfish priorities we've had will never lead to what we truly need, we'll not be able to see that He is all we've ever needed to begin with.
Friends, we can't let what we've done and who we've been keep us chained in these broken lives that we don't want to live anymore. God is faithful and He will fulfill His promise to forgive us and set us free from the weight of shame and regret that we've been carrying. But He can only do so if we're willing to lay them down and humble ourselves before His throne. It means us stepping down off of our own, but it's the only way to finally see just how faithful and true God really is.
Please don't miss that opportunity. Our sins will keep convincing us that we're too far gone. But God sent His Son to this earth to prove that nobody is out of reach and that He really can do what it takes to bring us back from the dead and give us a new life lived for more than what our pasts have been. No matter when we make that choice and give Him that chance, all we really have is the hope that He really is all that He claims to be. And thankfully, He is!
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