Day 3101 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Titus 2:12 NIV

What God asks of us in exchange for His grace is indeed radical compared to what we've been conditioned to accept. But that’s because He knows death is no way to live.

And yet we find ourselves in a rather sad state of affairs as we’ve collectively reached the place where the good God began is seen as the punishment we only want to end. All because we've been conditioned to enjoy our fallen condition, and so that's largely almost all of what most of us can see anymore. It's this tragic outlook that has us seeing through eyes still blinded by all that shimmers and shines upon the surface as if all of life consists of the superficial.

And within this great unraveling we find little reason to accept God's undoing of all we've done seeking to do as we wish in order to find what we want. We've become a people consumed by ourselves and our selfishness, and as such, we no longer have any regard for what He's planned or promised, much less the high regard He deserves in response to what He's already done and given as down payments toward those promises.

It's incredible that we've built a culture which only cares to cultivate itself under the assumption that within doing so we'll somehow find fulfillment somewhere inside ourselves. It's like we honestly believe that there's some secret happiness which exists within our ideas and ideals that, when finally found, will unlock the most perfectly pristine life we could have only ever dreamed of living.

But through it all we keep making these miniscule concessions that are sadly so small that they're entirely meaningless. At least on the surface. We don't see the loss in losing things like responsibility or maturity or decency or morality or honesty. We see no downside to surrendering a promise which has long stood upon the shoreline of a distant hope that always seems still so far out of reach and therefore out of touch.

Sure, Heaven sounds great, this place where crying and mourning and pain and fear and doubt and weakness and weariness are not to be found. It sounds amazing to have that hope in something so impossible in comparison to this world and the lives we're stuck for the moment living within it. Yes, it does indeed sound quite lovely, this home filled with so much love and peace that it surpasses our ability to remember any of the hardships or hassles or harms that we've suffered along the journey there.

But it has one major flaw, at least in our perspective which is built upon impatience: It's not here yet. We're not there yet. We can't see Him so where is He? And if we can't see Him, can't hear Him, won't try to feel Him, well then, how or why should we trust in Him? How can we possibly make it to a place we can't find if all we know of He who leads us there is that He asks us to lose everything that's in us of what's here?

It's an impossible question, an unreasonable request, a command so confusing that it must be denied as it just doesn't make any sense to leave behind what we've already found in exchange for the hope that someday we'll wash up on the shore of that distant home. We can't see it, so we can't possibly be certain of it. We must see to believe, seeing is believing as that's how the world works and it's always seemed to do just that. It works.

We crave some and then we go find it. We pick out our next desire and set off to fulfill it. We check one box, become bored again, and then, well, it's onto the next down the list as we live on this line of thinking we're fishing for fulfillment when in all actuality, we're the ones who've been caught. We're the ones who've been reeled in. We are the ones who have been yanked from our peace down into the depths of the depravity founded within the darkness around us.

And while finding ourselves too weak to fight back, we've made a home down here, and that darkness has in turn made a home in us.

Yet we wonder why the necessity of this change, this transformation, this alteration, this new life set upon a new path in a different direction toward a better destination. Why do we have to undergo our undoing when it seems so much harder to trust a new path as opposed to the one we’re already posed upon?

But that’s always been our problem, if not the main at least one of the main of the many we have. We hate the pain that comes with seeing all we've gained become counted as loss. We don't understand why we need to walk away from everything, say no to everything, reject everything we've learned to live trying to have and hold.

We don't understand why God's so mean as to demand we deny ourselves. But simply because we don't understand that we've reached a point wherein we don't realize the damage we've done and are doing in what we've never realized is our undoing. Because we think that inside doing things our way that we'll be the ones who walk away victorious. And when vain victory is on the table, our pride cannot compute the call to concede.

Our whole lives have been lived within yes. Sure. Why not? What do I have to lose? Why not try? May as well. Live it up. You only live once. Live your best life. Do whatever makes you happy. Seek only happiness. Happiness is all that matters. Happiness is the only reward in life. This life is ours, let's make it what we want it to be.

Except these lives are not ours. We are not our own. We never have been. You see, though we've made a mess of ourselves, we did not in fact make ourselves. Although we've lived our way, our will isn't powerful enough to make that a way of life. No, truth is that we've been selling ourselves to the lowest bidder since we learned to walk. We've traded away little bits and pieces of our souls in exchange for the gaudy happiness that we've learned to idolize.

We've exchanged the image in which we were made for a reflection of indiscretion. And we're now so broken that that reflection is unable to be seen through all the cracks in that mirror we've shattered so we'd not have to see what we've become.

And it's all of that that He came to set right, to set free. He came to set us free from the enslavement in which we've been living all this time. But rather than loving the love that would do such a kindness, we did everything unkind in return. We rejected Him. We refused Him. We recused ourselves and fell back into the reclusive versions of ourselves. We chose the hideouts in which we've hidden our hearts and our hopes so that we'd never have to admit that doing so was so incredibly stupid.

Yet, through it all, His kindness remains willing to lead us should we one day find the courage to leave us. And while that's a hard request for us to consider, consider the alternative and see if it still seems as difficult.

The truth is that all of us have had plenty of time to have found whatever it was that we've been looking for. I've personally ran around this place seeking and enjoying many a disgrace. 35 years I've been here doing this thing my way thinking my way a highway to the happiness that this world's chosen as its god. Got nothing. Found nothing. Went nowhere. No, as I sit here I confess that I've achieved nothing short of shame and regret along this jaunt.

And the weight of considering how much different, how much better this all could have been, I could have been now weighs so heavily that I don't really remember what a good night's sleep is anymore. Don't remember the happiness I set out to find because I never managed to track it down nor make it stay. No, all I remember now is all the lefts I took that never took me anywhere nor to anything that's ended up feeling right.

That's why the radicality of His resurrection. That's why the demand of death should we want to try His path. It's not because He wants to see us lose everything we love, just that He knows that everything we've learned to love will make us lose in the end. Not that He enjoys seeing us unhappy, just knows that happiness cannot last in a way of life that will be lost.

It is not that He wishes us to suffer, because if He did then He wouldn't have sent His Son to handle that part of our pardoning. No, it's just that He's tired of seeing us suffer under the weight of the chains we've forged that keep us in place while convincing us that we're moving closer to freedom and fulfillment.

He knows that fulfillment is only ever found in the fullness of His promises. And that's why He's given us so very much that helps us remember and rejoice in those promises. The Son of God, the Word of God, the Spirit, the grace, and yes, even the grave. They all in unison teach us to stop learning the wrong lessons from the wrong teachers that have been leading us in the worst possible direction.

It's that grace and the space in which it belongs inside that helps us see beyond ourselves. It reminds us of all that's been done to save us from ourselves. It asks us to lay down ourselves so that we can take up our crosses and die upon them with every step of this journey spent walking by faith instead of the eyes that can't see much of anything anymore.

Indeed, the changes He makes will make no sense. It's the entire opposite of all we've known. It's the great unraveling of all we've done and sought to do because and before all we've done and sought to do becomes our undoing. And while the pruning away of all we don't want to lose will feel like a loss, what we gain through learning that less is more is more than we could ever imagine in lives filled to overflowing with nothing but excess.

The truth is, the truth that He's trying to help us see and understand is that we need little in life to be happy. Contentment isn't found in overabundance. No, to feel whole requires nothing more than one Name that He can and will lovingly write upon our hearts, after He softens them enough to withstand the heat that is.

We'll never find anything thinking we have to find it. In fact, our being found is all that matters, and it has always mattered more than everything else we've found and tried to find only to find ourselves lost and unsure where to look next. We don't have to look anymore because He came for us. He reaches for us. He calls out, cries down from the cross, whispers from within the tomb to come and see.

And it's scary. And it's hard. And it's confusing. And it feels like we're losing it all. Yes, but when it all is lost then we've only everything to gain. And that's the point and purpose of the pain of this path. He helps us lose everything so that we can gain everything. Only what we gain this time is found in and founded upon Him, not in ourselves or a world we're soon to be leaving anyway.

All this time we've gotten it wrong in thinking that fulfillment meant filling our lives with frills and finery. We've lived convinced that we knew what would bring us joy and peace and contentment. But we looked in only all the wrong places. But thankfully our getting lost has never meant that He's lost us. No, just means that we've lost it all trying to find it all.

Because no matter what we've gained or might try to gain going forward, if we lose Him and His promise and His hope of a better home, then we've lost more than we can ever know. But if we lose what we're losing anyway, then we've the chance to share in all He is, all He's done, all He promises through all He's overcome.

Friends, I pray that one day we find the courage to learn to say no. Not because it's easy or common. It's not either. It is hard. It is strange. It will make us seem as if we've lost our ever-loving minds. And that's a kind of feeling that finally teaches us a glimpse of freedom. Because when this weird and wacky world thinks we're crazy, and when we learn to not care what this place thinks anymore, then we find a hint of the happiness He's long wanted for us.

To not be home down here, but to long for the home that's too big and too perfect and too peaceful to lower itself to the standards upheld down here.

He will teach us to say no, and we'll learn to love every opportunity to do so. Obviously not because we'll gain a lot in doing so, but because we know that in doing so we're closer to the hope that isn't held here.

The fact is that this age is indeed wicked and warped and violent and intensifying in all the above. We need to learn to walk away from all that's falling apart. Again, He will teach us so that we can be His hands and feet that carry His message to a world in need of His grace. It might not leave us feeling at home in this place, but that's okay. Because part of this process will in fact leave us not wanting to anymore.

Not when we've been invited to spend forever in paradise as opposed to a few more feeble and fumbling years inside this paradise lost.

I'd say that's worth losing everything in order to find. But it's not on me to answer for you. I'm just here to point out that the question's been asked and the door opened.

In the end, each of us is responsible for our lives, but, and let’s not forget this part, so too are we responsible to those around us. Our lives are not our own, and how we live is message that everyone else can see more of than we imagine. If we hold to this belief that we’ve found eternal life, it then falls upon our shoulders to tell others.

Again, not because of hoping to gain because doing so will indeed invoke pain. No, we do so because He’s began a great work in us that’s undoing all we’ve done wrong. And simply put, if it means enough to us to undergo such unraveling, then we ought to be good stewards of God’s grace and the courage it brings so that others can find themselves sharing in this chance to lose everything before they too lose everything.

Either way, either the past and what we've sadly made of it stops with us and what He's started in us, or we find ourselves only falling in line behind the rest of those embracing the crumbling.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold