Day 2835 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 4:6 NIV

You know what's amazing? We still didn't get it. We still managed to walk away unchanged. We still turned our backs on the cross, turned back to our old lives, and completely failed to see the gift that we'd been given in the death of Christ. We still carried the same hardened hearts that knew only how to live how we'd always lived following the desires we'd always had. We were still who we were the day before we saw the cross.

We still didn't get it.

We've been talking a lot about Christ's crucifixion and the reasons that we need to look at it from every way possible, but how we often either fail to do so or simply choose not to do so. We either don’t or won’t because it is hard to look at. It is hard to think about. It’s something that we'd all prefer we not really witness. But the fact is that it can only begin its work in us if we allow ourselves to watch every terrifying moment and seek the reasons and purposes for the pain we see this Man suffering.

But as I said, what's amazing is that even when given such a horrifying spectacle to behold, we somehow managed to shrug it off, ignore the story, miss the message, and remain unchanged. And what's maybe the saddest thing about the whole scene at and of the cross is that Christ Himself knew that even that image of His suffering wouldn't be enough for some. For many. For most. He knew that it would take something personal for us to fully take hold of the message He came to bring.

Christ knew that even His graphic death upon that cross wouldn't be enough to completely change us. He knew that even going through something as horrific as that form of suffering still wouldn't break down the walls that sin had built around our hearts. He knew that it was only the beginning. He knew that it take even more for us to actually get it. He knew that He had to die in the flesh to be made alive in the Spirit so that the Spirit could then dwell within us because then and only then could the work truly begin.

He knew that it would take more than an image our eyes could only see. He knew that it would take more than words our ears could only hear. He knew it would take more. So He went further by walking out of the grave into our hearts by becoming the Spirit that can dwell within us wherein lies the only place that true and lasting change can begin and endure.

Our struggles against the appealing allure of sin are nothing new, and they've sadly not wavered much over the years in which we've toiled against them. Even in light of the cross and reading the story of what Christ went through, we still find our hearts turning back to the very things that we know He paid for with His life. Even when we study the violence unleashed upon the innocent body of our King, we still give wickedness this power to persuade us to do what we now know isn't okay.

We've given sin so much room in our hearts and power over our choices that we've not much room left for Christ. We have spent more years following sin than we have Jesus, and within that truth lies the reality that we're still more sinful than righteous. We're still more lost than we are found. We're still more used to who we've always been than to who we can become through His sacrifice. We're still leery of change and tend to avoid letting go of that which we've always found exciting and pleasurable.

What I'm trying to say is that we're still infants who are just learning how to walk in the footsteps of Him who came to go before us leading to life out of the death we've always known. We are still internally wrecked, and having given so many years to the damage of sin, it's just going to take a whole lot of time and a whole lot of focus and a whole lot of help to repair all we've allowed to be broken.

And that's exactly what Christ died to give us. He died to be made alive in the Spirit. He died to live in us. He gave His life that we may find life in Him through the gift of the Holy Spirit who He left behind to lead us home.

Our problem is that we're far too reliant upon external support and inspiration and motivation. We look to those around us to tell us who to be, what to think, how to live. And we've always been that way. That's the very reason that we've become so worldly. We've only known this world and these lives within it, and all these years we've done nothing but learn from those around us how to live. And so we've learned to live in sin, and now sin is all we know.

If we could only see how reliant upon external support and motivation we've become, we'd be able to understand why we tend to struggle so badly in this war against sin. Our hearts aren't able to stand up to the enemy fighting against them. Our souls are weakened and weary from all these years we've spent living as slaves to sin. Our bodies don't know how to fight back because we've always simply laid down and allowed wickedness to walk all over us for the entirety of our lives so far.

Thankfully, Christ knows that. He knows that we can't do this alone. He knows that if left to try and figure it out by ourselves, we'll simply quit and run back to who we've always been because that's what's comfortable and easy. He knows that we're sinners who are prone to sin because all we've ever known is sin. He knows that sin has taken root so deeply in our souls that He has to go to the source and begin His work from there. He knows it's going to take something internal, something personal, something we can literally feel in order to break those habits, shatter those chains, and ignite the fire to fight back.

That's why He died in the flesh: To become the Spirit that can exist within us. He knew that invading our ears with His words wouldn't be enough to get the message through. He knew that invading our eyes with His graphic death wouldn't be enough to help us see who we've been and how badly we need to change our ways. So He chose to invade our hearts and attack sin at the source, ripping it out by the roots so that it can’t keep growing back.

He knew nothing external would ever be enough to inspire us to make the kind of changes we need to make to find salvation. External motivation only helps so much. We can read all the encouraging quotes, listen to all the motivational sermons and songs, watch all the magnificent performances as we can possibly fit in the hours we have. But until something inside of us changes, nothing will change.

Sadly, we rely on external inspiration to motivate us not willing to realize that it's simply not able to actually make any changes. Inspirational quotes mean nothing if we don't take them in and use them as building blocks to start working on change. Help and advice from our family and friends doesn't do a thing if we don't actually listen and desire to do what they're lovingly trying to help us do. Watching Christ die on the cross means nothing if we don't take that message into our hearts where we finally realize that He died our death.

External support means nothing if the internal foundation isn't there.

And that's why God sent Christ to die in His flesh and be made alive in the Spirit, because the Spirit can dwell within us. It can become our internal foundation. It can form our internal support. It can strengthen our frame, solidify our weakened resolve, and be that constant companion that we absolutely need in this war for our souls. Too much is on the line to rely on external crutches and quotes and ideas. It has to be part of who we are, not just what we see or happen to hear.

For our entire lives we've lived as children of the father of lies. We've always known only sin. We've given our lives, our hearts, our minds, our souls over to enslavement to lies and desires and distractions. We've lost our identity, given it away in exchange for a hollow illusion of freedom. We've forgotten Who made us and what He made us for. We've forgotten that we're children of God, not the world, and He sent Christ to remind us of that.

But still, He knew that simply dying on the cross, if you can call that simple, wouldn't be enough to invoke change in hearts that simply didn't want to change. So He went even further. He did even more. He defeated death, left behind an empty tomb, and refused to settle for anything less that sitting upon the throne of our lives.

So He chose to hang on the cross, give His life, be taken down from it, and then be laid in a tomb from which He walked out into our hearts where He could literally and physically and finally begin to do the work that the cross accomplished in giving us a fresh start where we can now learn to live our lives differently than how we've always lived them. He started with the external, but still went further by becoming internal, so that we could actually find the gift that He died to give us.

Friends, as we've been talking about a lot here lately, we have to look upon the cross. We have to force ourselves to witness every horrifying moment of Christ's death. We have to see every second of it because it begins the work by opening our eyes to the truth. But we can't stop there. Just as Christ went further, we go further. We don't stop at looking at the cross, we take the message of it into our hearts and give them over to the One who did all that for us. We open our souls to the Holy Spirit and humble ourselves to doing, changing, losing, finding, becoming whatever it takes to live our lives as a testimony to the fact that we get it now.

True change can only come when we decide in our hearts to change. And that's hard. It's rare. It's long and challenging and foreign and painful and scary and uncertain and unstable and inconsistent. Change is hated and avoided because it's so hard. But what we don't understand is that it's only hard when we try to change only relying on external support and motivation. If we decide in our hearts to change, then there's nothing we can't do, and that's why He died to live in our hearts.

We are no longer to be of this world. We are no longer children of the father of lies. We never were. We have always been children of the One True God, and Christ came to this earth and endured a painful death to remind us of that fact and to call us up and out of the darkness where we thought we belonged. But He didn't just call us out of the dark. He became the light and tore the veil that had covered our hearts so that He could retake the throne in our souls and undertake the work of making us new, from the inside out.

Let Him do His work. Take it in. Don't just read the Word, soak it into your heart. Don't just say some words and call it prayer, mean every syllable. Don't just sing catchy worship songs, praise the Father who sent the Son who became the Spirit who reminds us that we're more than what we've always thought we were.

We can't afford to keep the Gospel at a comfortable distance. We have to let it into our hearts because that's the only way it can make the changes needed to help us change our lives back to who we've always been but sadly forgotten. He didn’t just die to show us that sin owes a death. He died to be made alive so that we could see that God can do the same thing in us. He died that we too might die to sin, and He lovingly entrusted us with His Spirit who is our constant companion along this life-long journey of rebirth and renewal found only through repentance.

It’s going to be long. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to take more than we have to give. But we don’t do it alone. And that’s the whole point of all this!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold