Forged By Faith

Isaiah 43:19 KJV Eventually all which has been lost, left set adrift atop a sea of uncertainty and sorrow, will wash up onto the beaches of what may well feel a war-torn reality. It’s just inevitable. Inevitable because it's promised by He who authored reality and the inevitability of eternity into being. Thus it's something that all of us either have or will experience for ourselves at some point. Problem is that that point seems to have at least some hinging upon the decision between our embracing the willingness to embrace it or our continuing to swing over onto the opposite path where we simply continue trying to avoid it for as long as possible. Now don't get me wrong, I do understand why we want to avoid the crippling fall back into the reality from which we've been running. It's because it's crushing to see the many missteps and missed opportunities now forever a part of our story written by our pride thinking we had both the right and the ability to stea...

Joel 2:25 KJV It takes realizing that you've lost what you can't get back to appreciate the grace that gives back what you shouldn't have lost. And yet, because that realization is tied inseparably to humility it remains a gift unreceived by the masses so messed up that they only know a way of life spent raging against the Way which brought us life. And deeper still, it's that same path onto which we've all sadly veered as we've stared at the veneer pasted upon the surface of the superficial existence that we've grown accustomed to accepting for ourselves. Yet still we wonder why we so often feel somewhat empty or off. We wonder why our lives haven’t turned out as perfect as the plans we made to live them. We wonder why the advice we’ve been given hasn’t led to us living the dream we see everyone else enjoying. Might it be because it's all only this hollow outlook sought out by the majority of this world still descending into deeper and darker depravity?...

1 John 2:16 KJV The combination of how we've grown due to where we've grown amongst whom we've grown has meant that we've grown so vastly crooked that we simply know not the life for which we were born. In fact, all we know of life is the way of life in which we've seen everyone else walking and racing and hiding and trying and pretending to not be hiding or trying nor feeling the need to despite the obvious need to. Indeed, down here everyone puts on this show selling this image of inhibition that while seems the epitome of freedom will eventually turn out to be only the opposite of freedom. Which is a truly crushing feeling that all of us will find once we find no reasons remaining to keep running or hiding from the fact that we’re both not living right nor living at all. Alas, sadly, running and hiding manages to keep us going until we slam into that crushing feeling, a collision violent because we were only racing against the inevitability of its arrival in fron...

Mark 4:7 KJV Growing up and getting older sound concepts one in the same, but a tragic result of modern life is that in many ways all of us complete the latter while missing or mishandling the former. This whole realization hit me like a demolition crew the other night as my family and I watched a movie I've seen countless times over the years. It's this story of a kid who wishes to be a grown up so that he can have the fun and freedom he foresaw within those who'd already arrived at an older age than he happened to be. Drops a quarter in an unplugged game granting that that night he gets said wish, awaking the next day a 13-year-old in the body and life of someone 30+. And as I watched this film I now all but know by heart, I found my heart moved in a way that I'd never experienced nor expected. Couldn't help but realize that it had been watched through new eyes now opened to the tragedies of hastening life only because we think ourselves ready to live what we can ...

Revelation 18:4 NIV No, it's not that the warnings aren't there or aren't clear, seems just that they've fallen upon deaf ears riding above concrete hearts. Human instinct has us fully reliant upon our surroundings as we grow. We learn to look to those around us to guide us, to find us, to help us find us. It's a way of life that seems innate, inevitable, inherent, hopefully inerrant. But much to our coming dismay, having grown leaning upon the world to show us how, we'll all find ourselves unraveling all the knots at some point. Or rather, as warned, having them unwound within without our agreement. You see, all of humanity is set upon this collision course which will feel a right catastrophe to our complacency lost within the ways of a world so wicked that even the light of love isn't welcome. We've all found ourselves having fallen in line simply because it's the line everyone else walks and so it's the line we've learned to hold as we go ...

Ezekiel 16:22 NIV I am convinced that among the very worst things which can happen to a person, to think ourselves something significant is possibly the most grievous. And yet, in this world today bearing this mindset now set inside all of us to varying degrees and differing depths, seems as if we walk among endless royalty. Chests puffed, chins lifted, noses pointed so high into the sky that to look demands we look down upon the vermin which dare share our air. Yes, we have indeed become all that and the proverbial bag, but my friends, what is all that exactly? What are we? What have we become? What have we done that's allowed us to think ourselves so vastly important that the world's better off now that we've arrived? What in our pasts points to a point or purpose which we've alone fulfilled, filling our minds with this concept of our growing sovereignty? Must be something spectacular for us to carry ourselves with such austere posture, perfected perspective and the m...