Forged By Faith

Romans 8:13 NIV Do it now. That's been the basic consensus of our last few posts. We've talked a lot about that dreaded "d" word that most of humanity goes out of its way to avoid having to admit is a reality. But the fact of the matter is that death is in fact a part of each of our stories. There's no buying, begging, or bartering our way out of the fact that this earth will one day cease to be our home. Death is only scary because it has this sense of finality that weighs awfully heavy on the human mind. But when we look at what it's finalizing, we can maybe learn to see it as not the end but the start of something better. You see, to many death means the end of life. No more sunrises. No more parties. No more ice cream cones. Just a complete ceasing to exist. But that's the world's understanding of it. This place sells this lie that our lives in this place are all that matter. We're led to believe that these years we have on this globe are all w...

1 Corinthians 15:55 NIV Why do we fear death? Is it because these lives are so amazing that we just don't want them to end? Is it because we're afraid that we'll never see our loved ones again? Maybe it's because we still have things we want to do and see and accomplish. Is it that we're trying everything we can to avoid the very idea of death knowing that we still have things we need to work on, change, and fix in our lives? Or could it be that deep down we know that we're not ready to face what comes next? I have a hunch that most of the fear that humanity finds in the idea of death is because of that last point. It's fun to live as if we're free to do as we please. It's commonplace to tell our consciences to shut up and leave us alone so that we can run wild and live unhindered. It's enjoyable to play all the worldly games and lavish in all the selfish and sinful depravity that this place offers. But no matter how good we think we become at ig...

Psalm 146:4 NIV Yesterday's post left me considering arguably the most avoided topic among humanity. It's that one thing that nobody really seems to talk about. It's that thing that none of us really want to sit around and consider. It's something that seems so far off in the distant future that we don't even need to admit that it's there. But the fact of the matter is that our lives on this earth bring with them an expiration date that is unavoidable. As much as birth and life are a part of our story, death is also a part of this journey that each of us will meet. Each of us will in fact breathe a final breath of worldly air someday. Granted, that day may be decades away. But, there's an equal chance that that day is tomorrow. We don't know. Only God above knows when our end will arrive. But, just because we don't know when doesn't mean that we should live as if it's not coming at all. However, when we look around at how humanity acts and th...

Matthew 16:25 NIV We've all tried to find happiness, peace, meaning, and purpose for our lives by pouring ourselves into brainstorming our idea of perfection and then giving ourselves over to doing whatever it takes to build those ivory towers that we can climb up in and simply enjoy the rest of our stay on this earth. But as we keep digging into this worldly soil in order to pour a foundation that those pedestals can stand upon, we don't seem to realize that we just keep digging the very pits of shame and selfishness that have led us to being miserable and unsatisfied. We just keep digging ourselves deeper into the darkness that we’ve long been so desperate to climb out of and leave behind. In trying to carve out a life for ourselves in this place, we slowly but surely forget that we're not meant to build lives here. This isn't the ground in which we're called to plant our roots. This earth isn't where we're going to stay forever, and yet so many of us live...

Ecclesiastes 3:12 NIV Among all of our struggles and weaknesses and issues, our tendency to overcomplicate basically everything is easily one of the most common practices in all of humanity. It's almost as if we set out to find the hardest, most painful, most insane way of doing whatever it is that we're trying to do. If there's an easy path, we'll pass it by. If there's a simple way, we'll convince ourselves it can't be that easy. If there's a warning sign, we'll ignore it. We just seem to have this idea in our minds that life is complex and therefore simply must be complicated. And so when it comes to something like happiness which is honestly extremely simple, we find the most arduous path to reach it. That's been the basis of our discussions for several days now. Every single one of us are searching for the same things. We’re all looking for happiness and to live lives that have meaning. And yet, when we look around at the lives people are li...

Romans 15:13 NIV Psalm 37:4 reminds us to, "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 105:4 says to, "Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always." Philippians 4:4 makes it pretty simple in saying to, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" You know why Scripture tells us so many times in so many places across so many years of writing to look to the Lord, to fix our hearts upon Jesus, to make serving our King and striving for His Heavenly reward our priority? Because it's in Him that everything we're trying to find is truly found. And in Him alone! As we discussed yesterday, we have this foolish problem of treating happiness and joy and peace and fulfillment as if they're things that can be found within other things. We live as if happiness exists in something that we can purchase. Peace is found in having everything we want so that we never have to worry about feeling as th...

Isaiah 12:3 NIV I've noticed another alarming trend that seems to impact all of us. It’s that we tend to view happiness as something to be found rather than a choice to be made. I was thinking about this the other night, and what I'm absolutely sure of is that happiness is a choice. The problem is that we rarely remember that we can make that choice. Instead, we usually just allow our circumstances, our feelings, our complaints to make our choice for us. And when things like that get to do the deciding, well, I can all but guarantee that happiness will not be the outcome that’s reached. What I've found in all of my studying of humanity and nit-picking my own life and the choices made within is that everyone wastes so much time looking for happiness as if it can be found in a certain place, a certain thing, a certain outcome. We live as if happiness is hiding somewhere around us and we have to go on playing this game of hide and seek with it until we've tracked it down. ...

Psalm 118:24 NKJV A new day. Something that's arguably one of the biggest gifts that’s most commonly taken for granted. We all take another day for granted. We just assume tomorrow will be there. We assume that today is just another step in this journey that seems to last forever, and so we can afford to waste it on things like anger or laziness or complacency or a whole host of other worthless pursuits. How many days have you given away because they didn't start off just right? How many days have you chalked up as just another bad day because one little thing went wrong? It's something that all of us do more often than we probably realize. We judge the day by how it starts or what happens as the hours and minutes tick away. We base our happiness on whether or not we get our way and are afforded the luxury of ease and tranquility. We jump to this foolish assumption that we can just throw these remaining hours away because tomorrow will be better. We have all wasted so many ...

Luke 5:8 NIV You know, there have been many days where I've found myself sitting here staring at my laptop wondering what it is that I'm doing. Moments of doubt. Times of feeling completely unworthy to even think I have the right to share the Word of God. Days when I've made so many mistakes that I can't really find anything to say other than "I'm sorry" and yet still feeling the need to share something different than simply how I feel at that space in time. Today is one of those unworthy days. I actually had a completely different post in mind for today. One continuing along the lines of happiness and choices to see the good in life. But I don’t really think I have any right today to speak to things like happiness and making good decisions. So I'll save that for tomorrow because today I found myself in yet another moment of proving my unworthiness. I found myself doing something I shouldn't. I found myself in the midst of yet another mistake. I fo...

Romans 8:6 NIV What we allow to consume our minds controls our lives. You see, our minds are some very powerful things. They work basically non-stop. Always thinking, always figuring, always planning, and plotting, and dreaming. Our minds control our actions. They dictate our words. They are the very foundation of who we are and how we live and the choices we make. And so we need to be extremely careful about what we allow to take up space in our minds. But all too often we just kind of float through life simply assuming the best and not worrying too much about anything in particular. We've been dumbed down into thinking that most things are for the most part mostly harmless and insignificant. We've bought this idea that it's okay to take everything lightly and not worry about things like consequences and mistakes and punishments. We just want to live this wild, carefree, and careless kind of life that doesn't require us to be responsible and intelligent. Don't get ...

Isaiah 26:3 NIV Perfect peace. Now that sounds like a pretty nice thing to have in life! But it also sounds like something that all of us have tried and yet failed to find along this journey. Peace seems to be one of those ideas that’s often nothing more than a distant hope that we never really manage to find. Even when we do everything we can to deal with life and keep things from getting to us, we're still surrounded by things that attack our peace and leave us instead with doubt, and worry, and fear, and confusion. That's just how life goes. But just because these lives are often far from peaceful doesn't mean that peace is impossible. The problem is that we just go about finding it in all the wrong ways. We claim to want peace, but we also give away our time to focusing on how frustrating our circumstances are at any given moment. We want to find peace, but at the same time we’re still focused on trying to find our way to this perfect life that we have always desired. W...