Day 3071 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 10:3 NIV

Having been given all we truly need in order to become all we’ve never been able to be and yet still seeking ways in which to prove ourselves already sufficient is a kind of foolishness only possible in minds so warped that eyes can only see inward.

Humanity's preference for self-righteousness is creating a chasm which will potentially forever remain uncrossed, with many a soul caught in a place they only think they want to be. All of this effort to climb ourselves to Heaven is not merely time and effort being wasted. It’s time and effort being doused with gasoline, set on fire and rolled down a hill toward a fireworks factory. We’re creating our own destruction every single time we seek to construct something that we think will appease God’s expectation of righteousness.

He sent Jesus because we cannot be the righteousness He created us to be before we traded that image in which we were made for an arbitrary facade which allows instead for our ongoing failures to be seen as either insignificant or nonexistent.

But why do we need this personal validation of perfection so badly. Why this need to appease our inner desires for control and sufficiency and a masquerade behind which we hide the insurmountable evidence which speaks clearly to the contrary? Why such effort given to fashioning a false replacement when true righteousness has been given to us through faith, therefore not requiring so much time spent in foolish pursuits that we're promised will ultimately fail?

Living in this this world has done some real damage to our understanding. Each of us have become this collective of wrong turns made due to poor advice given from minds corrupted by sin's deceit planted by the lord of this age convincing all of us that we're of greater ability and authority than could ever possibly be true. If we cannot create life then who are we to determine the proper way to live life? Yet it’s questions like this that confront our arrogance so violently that we've no choice but to leave them unasked.

Instead we keep our foot to the floor racing down this idealism speaking only louder as the sin around us grows more amplified and applauded. Never once are we forced to slow down, reconsider, contemplate humility nor what might be found only when we stop trying to find everything only within ourselves. This kind of breakneck living is going to do just that, break us to pieces that may shatter with too little time to accept the healing we've been offered.

That's what begins to not make sense when you stop thinking you know everything. We've been offered a gift that God doesn't ask us to work for. In fact, His Scripture tells us plainly that our efforts spent trying to earn salvation are not only unnecessary but they're in fact harmful to the overall point and purpose of His goodness. He's to be the benevolent party in this picture. And so our attempts to absolve our guilt by ourselves only deny Him His right to the glory of this story.

And there's the foolish problem in our undertaking spent trying to construct a version of righteousness that we can uphold. It all becomes all about us. We become the authors, the authorities, the audience even. But in truth, all we're really doing is putting on a show for ourselves, because we're the only ones buying the nonsense. Deep down all of us know full well that perfection became impossible long ago and that all we have now as a result of our ongoing errancy is a list of shames and regrets too long for us to admit.

Unfortunately though, even worse than not allowing ourselves to admit it, it seems that list of mishaps and misunderstandings has now even spilled over into this opinion that it's too long to even acknowledge. And within that, we find not only the necessity of attempting to create an alternative righteousness we can fulfill but also the inability to accept the only version we've been given by which we'll be judged.

Because we can only deny Christ when we remain adamant to attempt to show ourselves able to assume His place in order to satisfy our need for glory.

Well, let me tell you a little story about my attempts to gain my own glory. You know what I've gotten from all my years spent trying to prove myself worthy and able and enough? I've a list of dreams I've decimated, plans I've undermined, experiences I've missed and will sadly never know, and a past which reads like a horror story as opposed to the heroic epic I assumed I could write.

I have a realization that I chose to miss doors God had opened because I was too focused on looking for the ones I wanted to kick down. I have a weight of guilt so deep that I can't go a day without wondering whether or not God can really still love someone like me who's done all that wrongs I've done against Him. I have a mountain of sorrow over knowing I missed things I'll never get to know all because I thought I knew it all already.

Through all the time spent chasing my version of life, of truth, of righteousness, all I've managed to find that stuck around is a mountain of a million what if's that will forever remain a mystery that reminds me of the dangers of doing this my way.

What is our way? What's so stinking great about our way? Why this refusal to let it go even after all the evidence we've gleaned from a life thus far misspent which proves we're entirely unable, unintelligent, unworthy, unbecoming? The further I go down this new direction striving away from all I've striven for, I just keep finding new realizations that speak to the stupidity of all I've done.

There's such an assumption within the arbitrary needed to found our foundation of doing this our way. How do we come up with all this nonsense? The teachings based upon mere human expectations. The rules created by a need to satisfy some list somebody came up with at some point. The rewriting of truth done only to make the lies we're living seem like a life worth living. The names and numbers and numbskullery of it all is just nauseating.

It's like these posts. You've likely noticed they're quite lengthy, which is entirely unwelcome in a world of such short attention spans and unwillingness to read or think or consider or learn. It makes no sense for me to write these things as long and drawn out as I do. But somewhere along the process of doing this every day I stumbled upon this assumption that anything less than 2,000 words was unacceptable in God's sight.

Who am I to determine what's acceptable in His sight when thus far I've lived a way of life no longer even acceptable in my own opinion?

It's meaningless! It's foolishness. It's evidence of our refusal to stop coming up with ways and things and ideas that we think will somehow measure up according to a measuring stick we can't even see. It's like we keep writing in these weird little addendums to the Bible in order to have a few parts we know we can uphold, hopefully making up for the rest that we continue to fail. All because we don't want to admit that we're fallen failures who literally and obviously cannot help ourselves be anything else.

Friends, brace yourselves: Anything we try to accomplish according only to our own understanding of how this ought to work from our perspectives is nothing but a joke. We factor in all these unnecessary limitations in order to make ourselves appear able to follow a narrow path, not the narrow path, but a narrow path of our own making ironically paved just right in order to accommodate our inadequacies.

Can't we see that it's all done in order to protect our ego and to avoid the necessity of admitting our flaws and rebuking our faults and repenting away from our incessant failures? Not once in Scripture does God command us or even insinuate to us that it's up to us to make this work by our finding a way to do something that we can make work. This is about Him, and until we allow it to be about Him, we don't have Him.

We don't have Him.

And without Him, all we have is our best efforts to prove we can accomplish what He’s already done for us. Which our pasts have already proven impossible.

As the next verse in Romans chapter 10 teaches us, "Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes." Christ fulfills the law we've utterly done all we could to destroy and deny. He is the atonement we cannot survive without. He is the grace that fills every place we've carved in search of something of value inside ourselves. He is the culmination so that we don't have to try to be anymore, because God's already seen all our failures done in trying to be enough.

He is our righteousness. He is our perfection. He is our sacrifice. He is our only chance, but we'll never understand that if we keep coming up with these nonsensical efforts given to finding a way around the humility that is demanded of us if we're to ever find our way to the foot of our cross where He hung in our place.

It seems that there's this intense rejection of the idea of submission that has plagued humanity from the very first of us. We don't want to be weak. We don't want to be wrong. We don't want to be in need of the help of another. But friends, WE ARE! We are weak. We are wrong. We are wicked. We are warped. We are dumb. There's just no other way to put it. We're fools.

But not because we've broken everything we've tried to make. Only because we keep trying to make something that will let us off the hook of He who came to be the leader of a group of fishermen.

We have to let ourselves be caught, otherwise we'll forever be sinking in the depths of our own idiocy.

There's a day coming in which submission to Christ will no longer be a choice. It will be done. We've this moment, this day to accept it as a choice before it is ultimately pressed upon all of us. God's kindness has kept His wrath relented. But this world is acting in a way that's begging Him to unleash the fury. And one day He will oblige our arrogance. And we'd be fools to not seek refuge while we can.

Because what's coming isn't a flood for which we can build a boat. It's not a little shaking of the ground we can hope to endure. It's not a few lions locked in a den. What's coming is the end. But because of Christ being our righteousness, what's coming can be the beginning of something beautiful. How that day goes is a direct result of the choice we make today.

We can't be what God deserves from us. No matter how hard we try. We'd be wise to stop being fools and simply accept the gift we know we need. Our way will not work, as He alone is the Way. Probably best to get ourselves off these cardboard pedestals we've built and embrace the call to our knees.

Because while undertaking all these attempts to make our own versions of truth, of righteousness, of faith, of morality might seem like we’re climbing the stairs to Heaven, but all we’re really doing is building a staircase to nowhere. Sure, we’ll get higher, but friends, pride does lead the way to a fall. And this final fall will prove absolutely devastating.

The bottom line is that God’s not a God of compromise. Love? Yes. Mercy? Absolutely. Compassion? Without question. But He is also a God of supreme glory, the kind of glory we’ve not shown Him in how we’ve tried to write this story. He’s not inviting us to come to the table with a pad a paper upon which we can scribble some hurried and hectic thoughts aimed at bargaining for our salvation. He’s telling through the cross that death is demanded for life to be found.

Only this gift of eternal life we’ve been offered requires we die to selfishness and everything it’s inspired us to try so far. Our righteousness, or whatever hollowed out replica we come up with thinking it’ll prove us righteous will never amount to anything other than an eternity wishing we’d have stopped listening to our inner idiot telling us God would meet us half way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold