Day 3020 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 36:26 NIV

Our penchant for preferring to focus only on the half of God that brings us a sense of peace and security will eventually find us shattered as the other half proves more concerned about our renewal than our rest.

The simple fact is that many of God’s promises involve the bestowment of something new. A new life. A new spirit. A new heart. A new hope. A new home yet still to come. And as many of His promises bring the hope of rebirth and renewal, much is made of the rewards held in such tremendous blessings and new beginnings. But, there’s a half of this story that is often untold. And it’s that half that we talked about a bit yesterday.

Misunderstanding the duality of God is setting many a soul on a collision course with a divinity they know nothing of, a divinity that will shock them with the work He works in their lives. Many are preaching this message of a God who works miracles in the most peaceful of ways. To them, He is a God who exists to only complete the good work He's began, not one that carries out that work over an ever so arduous and extended period of time.

No, folks are trusting in God to simply wake them up when the hard part is over. And within that slumber, they're missing out on arguably the most vital aspect of the works He's working in our lives.

The many things He is doing in us are for more benefit than simply a finish line. The things He's teaching us involve more than just our eventual ability to pass some test with flying colors. His methods involve things that teach us more than the lesson itself can offer. But so often those extracurricular blessings are lost between the cracks of our expectations of a life filled with only results and as little effort or alteration as possible.

But you see, it's in that effort and alteration that we learn most about God. While we may have grown sadly accustomed to life as we've always known it, life focused on the goal and not the road, life concerned solely with the outcome and disgruntled by the process necessary to reach said culimation, God doesn't settle for such drive-thru faith. No, He's in this for every step, not just the one that finally carries us over the finish line that we often feel too distant to warrant our persistence.

What we need to learn about this path of faith is that it is just that, a path. And as with any path, it's long. It's winding. It's unfolded across an expanse of both time and distance. A path requires every single step taken to complete it. But faith has been watered down into a means to reward rather than the road to salvation. Many have discounted the countless opportunities and requirements for growth and change made crucial along this journey, simply because we remain a people largely interested in only the destination.

The point is that while the promised destination we've been welcomed toward is indeed too immaculate for our conception, it is only promised after this life has been lived. And no matter how much our hurried selves would just as soon rush to that ultimate promise, this road, this path, this life is absolutely vital to the growth needed to understand why that reward up ahead is both so incredible and so incredibly undeserved.

You see, our sense of entitlement teaches us that we should be able to simply have the reward without the wait. We should be able to jump to the dessert portion of this banquet without having to finish our vegetables. We should be able to simply go to sleep and wake up with all the hard work having been done, leaving us only the newness we've asked Him to give us.

But that's not how this works. That not how He works. Because it simply can't work like that. No, this only works in a way that takes hold and plants root if we're aware of everything that's being done, being changed, being asked, being removed. We cannot simply ask Him to lull us into a gentle rest while He tinkers away at our hearts, our minds, our lives like some speedy surgeon who patiently waits for us to awaken with no recollection of anything that's happened.

We need to know what's happened, what's been required, what we've gone through, because it's only when we've gone through it all that we can testify to all that He's gotten us through.

As we talked about yesterday, He is very much the God that many focus on in their teachings and speaking. He is a God of endless love and mercy and kindness and provision. But friends, He too is a God who asks us to put our faith where our feet and walk it out every single step for however long and difficult this journey may be. He is both the God who sent His Son to carry our cross, but too the same God who asks us to take up our cross and follow along the path paved by His Son.

And if you don't know, don't remember, never been told, the path Christ walked didn't bring only peace and rest and ease and comfort. It brought pain, misery, torment, trial, suffering, anguish, and the perfect display of pure faith shown throughout. Because that's just it, faith isn't merely the key that opens the door to the life of prosperity and peace we so wish it to be.

Faith is the promise of light that leads us through all the darkness that lies along the way.

What so many are being led to believe is that He makes all of our changes for us. That He is simply going to operate on our souls without requiring us to even fully surrender them to His plans. That He merely exists to make our existence as simple as possible. But that, again, is only half of who He is and how He works. The full picture is one that few seem to want to consider, as the considering of it requires their agreeance to a kind of humility that makes the perseverance possible that's needed along this way.

I think this realization is shown quite well in a verse like this here in Ezekiel. It's one of those that many have probably heard and few perhaps even know by heart as it's one of those hopeful promises that springs peace to life through the reminder that He's working a good work in us. But what we likely fail to see in a hopeful message such as this is that it might not be easy on us. It might not be comfortable. He may not offer the anesthesia that we would obviously prefer during heart surgery.

In fact, it might bring pain in ways we didn’t know pain could hurt. His work might bring an agony that we've never imagined possible before. His removing our hearts of stone may mean ripping them from our chests via the many trials and tribulations of a life spent fleeing from all that everyone else is racing toward and fully enjoying. This new heart of flesh may take some time to fully learn how to finally beat in tune with His will.

And that makes no sense to souls who've bought this idea that this path is one of only ease and success and gain.

The truth is, as I've said in recent messages, that this life of faith into which we're called to walk is one of more loss than gain. And we just can't see that on the surface. We can't realize how many things we'll be asked to leave behind. We can't imagine how many relationships will fracture, falter and fail as we are transformed into new people that are no longer a good fit around those who still live like this world is their home.

We can't imagine that we may actually be asked to prove our faith in much the same way as those who walked this path before us. But friends, that courage, that tenacity, that kind of relentless trust in Christ is the lesson we learn, the gifts we find, the point of this process. But if we just merely wake up one day and all our problems have been solved for us, we gain nothing but a finish line we can never fully appreciate.

That's why God works in the ways He does. That's why this path is one of pain, patience, trial, temptation, change, courage, humility, hunger, effort and extreme. Because we don't learn if nothing is asked of us. We don't grow if it never rains. We don't gain anything from this faith if we never lose anything for this faith. And that's something that must be learned across time and trust.

He will remove the old, but we'll be asked to let it go. He will give us something new, something better, but we'll need to see why we need such radical change in order to understand why it's better. He will lead us to those gates, beyond which peace unending is waiting, but the road there is one that will most certainly make that peace more perfect through the opportunity leave behind the pain that comes first.

We cannot cut God in half and expect Him to only be the fulfillment of promises. He is also the worker of rebirth. And as much as our lazy and complacent selves would prefer just the easy part, we need the part that demands and deserves our personal investment in doing what's needed to become something more than what we've become. And what better way to learn to appreciate all that He promises by having all that we'd be happy holding onto ripped from our lives?

There is gain in this path, but to get it requires letting go of all that's taking up the space where His plans belong. The good news is that He's already won the victory and He's been so kind as to send forth His Spirit to help lead us continually along this difficult path filled with requirements we've never imagined coming. Our job is to keep going, to embrace that Spirit of persistence and patience and willingness to endure whatever may come knowing that it comes only because God's allowed it.

And He allows life's difficulty knowing that pain and loss and confusion and frustration are all great teachers that help us learn the lessons we need to learn in order to fully appreciate all He's done and all He's doing to get us to the finish line. That finish line matters, but so too does the road that gets there.

So please don't settle for a faith that expects Him to do all the work. Because if nothing is ever asked of us, then we've no opportunity to show that we really do trust in Him. He may not work in the ways we wish He'd work, and that's a truly great thing. Because we don't learn to trust when it all makes sense. We learn to trust when it's all falling apart and we've got nothing left to cling to but the assurance of what we've yet to see.

That's faith my friends. It's the ability to embrace the unknown knowing He has a reason, not asking Him to alter His work so that it makes more sense to our limited ability to understand anything but what we prefer. It’s leaning entirely upon His promised faithfulness to the plans He’s called us to strive toward, not resorting to anger or disappointment when those plans are further away than we’d like or don’t unfold along a path that’s as easy as we’d prefer.

What we all need to come to terms with is that whenever God gives us something new, the ripping out of the old is made an obvious necessity. And it's not painless, this heart transplant. No, He asks us not merely to step up to the line behind which we remain comfortable and at least somewhat content, He asks that we step across the line of all we've known and leave the old shattered on the ground behind us. And He asks us to trust Him when He does shatter all that we’ve known.

Because He only does it in order to help us finally let go of what will only ever amount to shattered hopes anyway. His new heart, this one made of flesh, will help us understand things like that as it brings with it a radically new perspective. But while that new heart is one of the many new things He promises, we still have to agree to let go of the old one. And as much as we’d clearly prefer otherwise, ripping out the old might not be the most comfortable or smooth undertaking that many assume it to be.

But in the end, it doesn’t need to be smooth or easy to be effective. And actually, when it comes to faith, what we find by and large is that the more chaotic and crazy something is, the stronger our faith grows because of it. That’s why this is all such a gift, because a gift isn’t always what someone would choose for themselves. It may very well be something someone else knows they need, but that they could never bring themselves to admit or accept otherwise.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold