Day 3077 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 5:8 NIV

If only our eyes could see that to be saved from suffering accomplishes nothing, but to be saved through suffering allows a soul to take hold the true gravity of life.

Alas, we carry minds bent to a place unable to understand the gift of longsuffering. We exist amongst a people and a mindset which tells us that pain is the ultimate enemy to be avoided as if it has no purpose or meaning or benefit. And as we grow being watered down by the misspent misunderstandings of a place that's chosen to know nothing of eternal worth, we slowly become falsely matured into a way of life unable to appreciate much if anything.

And within our inability to understand the purpose of pain and how it deepens the meaning of life we find yet another barricade blocking our path to the fullness of this faith we proclaim.

For several days now we've been discussing discipline and both how God uses it to refine us as well as how we've been taught to instinctually despise those attempts to be refined. As a species, and I say that with an aim at the animalistic because that is in fact in many ways what we've chosen to become, we reject and rebuke every effort undertaken that we feel undermines our understanding of what a life ought to be.

As if we’ve any idea of what life ought to be!

We have no idea as to what life is as the meaning of it is something everyone feels they need to search for despite the answer literally coming to walk among us. Indeed, in light of our various pasts all alike filled with time wasted on everything that only brought our eternal existence into jeopardy, we have every reason to admit we need help as we clearly don’t know what we’re doing let alone how to even pretend to do it well.

No, we know nothing and somehow yet still even less than we think we know.

This fact is shown perfectly in that we hate help that comes in forms unbecoming our ideas and ideals. And thus our hearts bear an utter contempt for all of God's good work being done in our lives, simply because it's an altogether different concept of 'good' than our warped minds know to realize. In fact, though we'd hesitate mightily to admit it, we ourselves bear at least a few agreements with "those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

And yes, I've used that verse in at least a couple of posts over the past couple of days. Why? Because it's one we can see undoubtedly unfolding before our very eyes in this place at this time. We are living in times at the very least nearing the end. And so it's time we stop monkeying around as if God's doing the same.

As the world grows colder, darker, heavier under the weight of increasing sin and shamefulness, God is too ramping up His effort to speak to us so as to save us from being swept away in the tide. I believe in an awakening, a revival, a rebirthing of what's long lain dormant and ignored inside. I believe that He will shake us from our slumbering stupor in order to inspire our striving for the salvation awaiting in His Son. Not because of anything we’ve done or even can do, but merely because of who He is and what He’s already done to prove Himself merciful.

Speaking of said Son of God, He set forth an example not only of humility and kindness but one of complete obedience unto death. And yet we've seemingly settled for misconstruing His command to take up our crosses and follow as meaning nothing more than as an image on a chain around our neck. No friends, our crosses are to be worn as a yoke around our neck. We're to forsake our prior yoke of slavery spent enslaved to self and sin and to instead accept the offer to become slaves of God.

If you’re still reading this I applaud you as so many words already in this post that are all but unwelcome in the hearts and minds and ears of those around us. I can only imagine the offense many have already taken to this post in just the few preceding paragraphs. Obedience. Discipline. Death. Slave. Oh the humanity!

But one of the many things we’ve forgotten along this path pretending we know enough is that it's good for us to be offended. Good for us to be shaken. Good for us to be in pain, in turmoil, in trial as in those things we find a semblance of the existence of He who's gone before us down this path that we normally feel not the need to tread along. Nobody wants to do what's to be done. Lest we forget, Christ himself prayed not once, not twice but in fact three times for His Father to "take this cup from me."

Knowing what was coming, even Jesus asked for maybe another way. He too knew the inklings of this flesh. He too endured temptation and invitation to skip the brutality of His story. But unlike us, He didn’t waver as He knew what was coming and what it would mean for us to have the opportunity to walk by faith instead of only what we see up ahead.

And that's not all He said in His prayers in that garden, is it?

"Yet not my will, but yours be done."

That's the surrender we'll not find by ourselves. It's the humility that no human will willingly embrace by themselves. To lay down our pride, our vanity, our ego, our preferences, our prejudices, our opinions, our very lives if such is asked. To physically lower ourselves to the taking up of a means by which we know we'll die demands a heart no longer its own.

And friends, we're not our own. Not anymore. But yet, every doubt, every fear, every moment of either angst or anger displays a displaced concern still set upon ourselves and what we think is best for us. A consideration which only seems considerable as we still hold to this ability to leave our pasts a field of lessons and growth still unharvested.

So much anymore is made about our being Christ like, and with very good reason. That is the path we're to follow, the life we're to lead, the example that we ought to do our everything to follow as strictly as possible through this place racing in opposition. But sadly the aspects which many expect are only those which on the surface seem to align with the wants and wishes of this world. To love, to accept, to extend kindness and compassion.

All of those are very good things indeed, and things that we are to embody as Christians. But we're not to pick and choose the parts we want to follow. There are still a great many attributes that aren’t ever really printed on encouraging posters or pamphlets. Things such as our humility, our obedience, our surrender, our willingness to suffer in this place that will hate us as it first hated He who is our Savior. We shall have no other gods before Him, even the selves that we so often try to protect.

Jesus knew what had to be done, and though His flesh fought as ours does, His Spirit overcame where ours often doesn't even try. And that is why we must be made new through this willingness to suffer whatever hardship or hassle may come our way down this road following His Way. Obedience isn't something that has anything to do with us. It's our demanding ourselves out of the way so that we can no longer hinder what needs to be done.

And there is suffering in that. We've talked about the external misery we're promised to face bearing the Name still hated by most. The persecution, the rejection, the loss of friendships and opportunities as we'll be deemed unfit for acceptance as they still reject Jesus. But the internal turmoil is what we all would just as soon avoid. The guilt, the sorrow, the surrender.

We don't want to let go of things we can hold, so it’s no wonder how mightily and violently we struggle to surrender our hold on life as we want it to remain. We'll not only lose friends and family and a welcoming embrace from the world around us, we'll also lose our hopes, our dreams, our desires, our comforts, our successes. Along this path we'll learn to count our very breath as loss if it leads us closer to the One who hung on our cross.

Son though He was He embraced obedience. If we'll not do the same, then we've no share in Him. We can want salvation. We can beg for forgiveness. We can throw our tears upon the mercy of His kindness. We can shout His Name and seek His fame for as long as we've left remaining. But if we don't lose our lives, then we'll never find them. We have to lay all of ourselves down so that none of ourselves remain able to come between us and our only hope.

God demands and deserves righteousness, a righteousness we can never be nor become but through obedience the likes of which perfectly shown by our Savior. Our righteousness comes through our faith, a faith so deep that like Abraham it's willing to sacrifice a child, so deep that like God it does.

What's our sacrifice?

What are we losing that we might find more of Him in our hearts, in our lives? What are giving away, willing to endure, eager to undergo if it means that we find ourselves closer to Him? "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded." What can we possibly give in response to the God who sent His Son to show us what obedience really looks like? What can we give to the One who took our place and felt our pain? What can we give to the One who rolled the stone blocking our path to Heaven?

All we have is everything we are, and until we're willing to give all we are, we're only holding ourselves back from the relationship this must be in order to be enough.

Friends, we may not understand what obedience or humility or surrender really are as they're not things this world knows much about. And what this world doesn't know is what this world hasn't taught us as we've grown and learned across our years already spent here. It's time to learn what this place will never care to accept. Not because it'll be easy or comfortable or something for which there's a support group at your local VFW.

We do this because He did it for us. And if we're not willing to suffer, to hurt, to lose, to die for what's been given to us, then we don't deserve to have it.

Salvation is a gift, but it's one that should come with a clear shift in the life of the one who truly accepts it. It's not about just not sinning as much going forward. It's about a heart that literally beats to the tune of a song sung in Heaven rather than one made of earthly instruments. It's about a soul tied to Christ with an eagerness to forsake everything that tries to pull us away from Him.

He humbled Himself to taking mortality upon Himself that He might die the death we all owed for our lives lived in the death of sin. Our part is joining Him in the tomb so that we too can walk out of it with our old lives left behind. Obedience. Not our will but His be done.

That's the only way we can follow this path so narrow even our feet don't fit.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold