Day 2889 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 11:32 NIV

Why is there so much sin in the world? That’s a question we hear asked all the time from both those outside as well as those within the body of Christ. Why, if God is so good, so righteous, so loving and kind, why does sin and evil exist? Why do so many unfortunate things happen to so many? Why does there always seem to be this negativity in life from which it seems impossible to escape?

And honestly, I’ve even found myself wondering lately why it is that I seem to discuss it so often in these daily Bible posts. Why this ongoing focus on sin?

Well, I feel the need to kind of clear some air. To provide a reason. To explain a mindset. To hopefully expound upon the tone and temperament of these daily posts that I share.

As I'll assume you've noticed, these daily posts aren't always the happy, upbeat, excitedly encouraging messages that you find across many, if not most, faith-based social media platforms and pages. Instead, and for reasons I'll attempt to explain today, these posts I share tend to be aimed at the side of life that we usually have no problem ignoring, downplaying, and shrugging off.

Which in itself is a reason.

But the main purpose as to why these posts seem to be geared more toward our accountability and our amazing aptitude for failing to accept it is summed up in something that hit me out of nowhere during my workout yesterday afternoon:

You have to understand where you've been in order to fully appreciate what's been done in order to give you a chance to go somewhere you shouldn't be able to hope of ever going.

This has actually been something that I've found beginning to weigh heavy on my mind of late. Why so frustrated? Why so seemingly angry? Why this apparent need to speak against all that we tend to find enjoyable and comforting? Why does it seem that so many of these daily posts lean more toward the rebuking than the consoling?

Why this clear focus on sin and our penchant for the tolerance of it when so many are out here sharing messages focused on the happier, more light-hearted, more joyful side of all things faith?

Well, in all of my thinking about those questions brought about in light of the general tone of recent posts, I've found that it's because I fear we usually seek to gloss over the hard parts of everything. We avoid anything that makes us uncomfortable. We try to steer clear of anything that speaks to responsibility, to failure, to consequence. We have no problem appreciating the things that please our itching ears.

But when it comes to the things that call us out and attack our complacency, we pull back.

And in a world where it's so incredibly easy to find messages that soothe our wayward hearts and encourage our further wandering, it's all too easy to ignore the parts that make us consider our shortcomings and weaknesses and problems.

But just because it's easy to overlook our struggles, and just because we obviously prefer to do so, that simply doesn't mean that they don't exist. It only means that they're allowed to fester under the surface while our eyes and ears and hearts and minds are focused solely on the things that allow us to feel good about ourselves, our choices, and how we're living our lives.

And in short, if nobody ever speaks against the comfort of life that we obviously prefer, then we will never acknowledge our issues. And if we never acknowledge our issues, then we can never begin trying to fix them. And if we never begin trying to fix them, then we'll never be able to realize that we can't fix them by ourselves. And if we never realize that we can't fix our problems by ourselves, then we will never seek the One who came to help.

Christ came to this earth to tell of the reward of Heaven. But that wasn't the only aim of His mission. In truth, that purpose is fully intertwined and interconnected with His speaking against the sins that hold people captive. And He didn't speak against humanity's sinfulness in order to make people feel bad about themselves, to lose hope in their apparent inability of change, nor to prove how unworthy we are in order to squeeze our praise and appreciation for Him out of hearts made of stone.

He spoke against our sinful nature so that we could understand who we've been, but also to help us see the vast difference in the life He's called us to live in order to help us find the hope of Heaven. He came to teach of us not only the promise of a better place, but to help us see that we must change in order to find the path that leads there.

Oddly enough, our sins and our hopes are more conjoined than we imagine. Because to have hope of something better, you must first be able to see that what you've already found isn't enough. In order to appreciate the hope of Heaven, we must grasp the equal reality of hell. And in order to find ourselves upon the narrow path, we must come to terms with our enjoyment of the wide road.

Salvation hinges entirely on our ability to realize how badly we need it. After all, we cannot accept His mercy as the gift that it is if we don't realize the love it takes to offer it. And until we realize that our sinful nature has rendered us unworthy of His righteous love, we'll simply never be able to understand just how kind and caring He is.

That's what this verse in Romans is talking about. God gave all of humanity over to their deceitful desires. He granted all of us the divorce we craved and allowed us to walk away from Him. He gave us the freewill to seek our plans, our goals, our dreams, our cravings. Not because He wanted us to become as lost in sin as we've become. But because He knows that our hardheadedness only learns the hard way.

And so He let us go chase after all manner of selfish indulgence because He knew that we could never be able to see just how much better His way is until we hit rock bottom of the dreams we thought were so much better.

It's much like any parent. As much as they would love to ensure their child never felt any pain, they also realize that sometimes pain is the only way to learn the hard lessons in life. We don't learn to not put our hand on a hot burner just because someone tells us it will hurt. Hearing something is great, but feeling that burn is far better because we will make sure to avoid it going forward.

We don't come to understand peace through the avoidance of hardship. Peace grows more priceless when you've endured war and know the difficulty of life. We don't learn to appreciate love by never enduring hatred. We appreciate love all the more because having felt the sting of hatred, we realize how much more beautiful love really is. And we don't value salvation from a life we don't see as being in need of it. We come to see His salvation as a priceless gift through our ability to see that our sins have rendered us unable to afford it.

God didn't give us the Law because He wanted to see us fail. He gave us that Law so that we could see just how serious He is about the things that go against Him. He didn't speak through the prophets just to give us a book. He did it to give us His truth by which and upon which we can build our lives. And He didn't send Christ to die just to satisfy His wrath. He did it to help us understand just how much He loves us.

It's all simply a matter of perspective. Sadly, in consideration of our society's preference for appeasement, these daily posts likely come across as unnecessarily harsh and even possibly hateful. But friends, we can't understand what that cross means until we finally realize that it should have been us hanging on it. Because as wonderful as it is to talk about, salvation means nothing if we don't realize all the mistakes from which we need to be saved.

God gave humanity over to sin so that we could finally learn to see His grace as the undeserved blessing that it is. If we never sinned, then we wouldn't see much value in His forgiveness. And, considering it's most clearly a choice, our refusal to acknowledge our sins does mean our inability to understand the gift of His mercy. And honestly, as comfortable as it is to ignore our mistakes, doing so only keeps us from fully grasping the gravity of the Gospel.

Friends, you're free to take these posts however you choose. That's the beauty of freewill and our ability to choose for ourselves who and what we listen to. But just know that if we only focus on only the good all the time, the bad won't simply go away. In truth, we need a balance between the two. But in this world, that balance is all but unwelcome anymore.

For us though, if we truly intend to follow Christ, then we too should strike a blow to our body so that we don't become disqualified for the prize to which we've been called.

It's part of our human nature to avoid pain. And we can all agree that the truth is painful. And in this touchy-feely, emotionally sensitive, and overly offended society that has been created, I fear the truth of the Gospel will be avoided. And if we truly wish to find His salvation, then that is wholly unacceptable.

The point is that it's not all about making us feel good right now. Even God didn't do us that way when He chose to let us go do it our way in order to get that foolishness out of our system. The end goal is salvation that leads to Heaven. But friends, that salvation comes through repentance. And if we never attack our sins, then I'm afraid repentance will be impossible.

We cannot avoid what's hard. Just imagine how hard it is for God to look down and see His creation still running away from Him in search of a worthy replacement. But His allowing us to leave Him behind only helps us learn that life in all its fullness is only found in His presence.

Sin may not be fun to talk about. I get it. It's not fun to think about. But if we don't, it will keep us away from Him. And knowing what we know from all the foolish lessons we've learned doing all this our way, we should know that's simply not what we're willing to settle for anymore.

God allows our disobedience knowing that it’s the only way for us to come to see the value of being obedient to Him. We have to run through this world in order to find that there’s nothing here to be found. Sin doesn’t exist because God isn’t who He says He is. Sin exists because we’re still trying to find something other than Him to fill the hole created by our selfishness.

My point in not only this post but in every single post that focuses on our sins and our need to repent of them is that God created us for more. But that we can only see that once we’ve finally exhausted all attempts to find fulfillment in the desires that seem so perfect to our wayward hearts. God gave us over to our sinful nature so that we could reach the bottom of that hollow existence and finally realize that a life of true meaning only exists within the Author of life.

So yeah, sin gets talked about a lot in these posts. But that’s just because it is our enemy and we simply can’t fight an enemy if we can’t recognize it.

And if we can’t recognize it, then we can’t recognize the mercy that saves us from it. Because in the end, His mercy only matters once we’ve realized we need it. And we can only realize that when we’ve finally opened our eyes to seeing just how miserable our lives filled with sin have been. And we simply can’t learn that lesson if we refuse to admit where all we’ve gone wrong.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold