Day 2805 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 55:8 NIV

I'd like to start off today's post with something that I dare say you don't hear very often: I'm tired of me.

Yep, I'm sick of my way. Sick of my goals. Tired of my fondness for foolishness. Worn and weary from all the years spent chasing a ghost. Fed up with daydreaming about some perfect life when I've been handed something far better than my idea of perfect. Done with playing as if I know better and can manage to plot a course to something better and higher and more valuable than what God has in store.

Because, at this point in my life, I can say with all honesty that all time spent focusing on what we want only causes us to miss witnessing and enjoying and embracing all of the blessings that are being showered down upon us every single day. While we're busy focusing on everything we want that we don't really need, we're failing to see all the gifts God is sending us that we really don't deserve.

This world is so consumed with self that people don't even see that they're chasing dreams that still lie a million miles away from the peace and the joy that is found in a relationship with Christ. Even should we gain every single thing we could ever desire and experience the fulfillment of every goal and dream we can imagine, it would all still fall short of what we've been given in Jesus. Even if this world bowed down to us and we literally lived the rest of our stay as king of the world, we'd reach the end of our time only to find that we're leaving a kingdom behind with none to look forward to ahead.

Over the last several days we've been discussing the evidence of God and how humanity continually opts to doubt it. We have such a hard time letting go of our innate humanness that we run the risk of spending our entire lives spinning our wheels trying in vain to doubt something that is undeniable. We risk spending our time living as fools for trying to run away from God only to realize that our lives are circular rather than linear, and that our end will see us once again in the hands of the One who first formed us in our mothers' wombs.

This world is running from God and grasping at any and every reason and excuse and lie and fallacy to help them remain convinced that it's not dangerous. People want so badly to live their lives however they want to live them, and they will literally ignore every warning and overlook every mistake that is made in the process. Folks just can't seem to get the hint that our way is pathetic, empty, hopeless, limited, foolish, and worthless.

Like I said, we can spend our lives hoarding everything our hearts desire only to discover that there's no room in the casket to bring it with us. We can build kingdoms made of our goals and accomplishments only to find them left to ruin as we leave them behind because they're rooted in this world and our souls are not. We can try to make that otherwise. People have for centuries tried to plant roots in this temporal soil as if they'd be here forever.

Guess what, they're all gone. And all those dreams, all those possessions, all that praise and glory and honor they may have gained for themselves, it's all gone too.

Friends, as I've been saying, the fact that anyone could find humility living among a race that knows only selfishness and rebellion and foolishness is proof that God is working in those who have ears to hear and eyes to see and hearts willing to look beyond the scope of the here and now. God must exist because there's literally no other reason for anyone to ever live in any way that goes against the selfishness that comes naturally and that's praised in this place.

I was thinking about this verse after I read it last night, and still this morning. And it seems completely foreign to me to have the ability to say that I'm tired of doing this my way. That's just not a mindset that we hear many confessing. For the most part, this world can't get enough of self. People can't come up with enough dreams to chase. Folks can't make a list long enough of the things they want to have. Society knows no limit. There's always something more, something bigger, something better, something more valuable in which we can chase.

And with the vast majority of this world chasing all that stuff, why would anyone pull themselves out of the race and forfeit all the glitter and gold that seemingly everyone else is competing for? Don't we know that we'll never get what everyone else has if we don't hurry up and beat them to it? Don't we know that we'll miss out on winning the trophies if we stop running with the pack? Do we not realize that our lives will be empty compared to the lavish luxury that the world craves?

Yes, we do, and that fact, in all of its weirdness, is what brings Christians joy in this place. It's realizing that this world doesn't tell us what's important or valuable. It's having our eyes opened to realize that we really are living for more than stuff. We find hope in a freedom not defined by the ability to do whatever we want and gain as much as we can hold but in the promise of something bigger than we can imagine. We realize that there's just something more than everything we could crave or gain or own in this place.

The beauty of our faith is that it helps us finally see the limits found in a limitless life. It helps us see that all those years spent chasing all those desires amounted to absolutely nothing. How many things have you wanted that you ended up getting only to quickly realize you still wanted more? That's the limit of how this world works. That's the limit of how we work. We will always want, but we can never find enough in this world to satisfy.

So yeah, I'm tired of me. I'm tired of chasing only what this world has to offer only to realize I don't need it. I'm tired of the endless disappointment found in getting my way. I'm tired of building all this up just to find that nothing here can truly bring joy that lasts.

Thankfully, God's ways are not our ways. He doesn't think like we do. He doesn't desire the things that we've been taught to crave by a world lost in materialism and the need for worldly gain and glory. He doesn't plan our lives according to whatever may catch our eye. He doesn't lead us to a whole bunch of really beautiful and exciting and surprisingly hollow promises. He leads us away from all the junk that clutters our minds and our hearts so that we're no longer weighed down by what we think is good enough.

Friends, self will always be king in this world. People will spend the rest of their lives here chasing everything everyone else is chasing only to reach the finish line of life and leave it behind. They will spend every waking moment planning their course and carving their path and marking all the successes and ignoring all the disappointments. They'll spend this one life focused on this place and sadly only get everything they want with nothing they need.

Please don't follow that normal. Don't worry about getting everything you want. Don't keep learning how to live from a world that only knows how to put self first and reject anything else. We need Jesus to be our Lord and Savior, not ourselves because we can't save us. Salvation comes only in humbly turning to Christ, and to do so means turning away from how we've always done things.

It's not easy. Not normal. Not something we can learn from watching the world around us. It's only something we can accomplish through getting ourselves out of the way and letting God take control. We don't have to do so, but if we want something better than all the hopeless junk we've found so far, we've gotta do something different. And the only kind of different that can truly help us is found in God.

His ways are not our ways. His thoughts, not our thoughts. And that right there is among the greatest blessings we could ever hope to find because, let's just be honest, our way hasn't led to very much. Largely just mistakes, failures, frustrations, disappointments, and a whole heap of regrets. And if that’s all our way can give us, then our way definitely can't lead to Heaven. So in this life and the next, we need more than our way. Thankfully, that's exactly what we find in God!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold