Day 3105 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 42:8 NIV

We don't need to know all there is to know about our God in order to know enough to understand who He is, how He works, what He expects and what He deserves.

You see, He, knowing our incessant inability to be anything other than impatient and underwhelming in regard to effort and output, saw fit to narrow all this down to an amount of information that all of us can and should be able to understand and therefore apply to our lives. He made it simple, made it easy, made it clear. But clearly we've still managed to entirely miss the point.

And this fact is easily one of humanity's greatest under-achievements. Why? Because again, He made it easy. How easy? A couple pieces of stone carved with Ten Commandments. Ten requirements. Ten rules that ask nothing of us but that we glory and honor and revere and respect both God and all He's made. Ten Commandments.

But sadly, ten is apparently too many still. And so, being the benevolent and patient Father He is, He sent His Son to simplify it even further. Just jump to the New Testament and you'll see that, straight from the Man himself, He breaks it down to just two!! "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these."

Two commandments! And yet we still messed it up and still mess it up and somehow continue to make a completely mockery of everything we do in our every effort proving we can't get two things right.

Where do we keep going so wrong in all this?

I dare say it's because contrary to what our beetle-headed selves down here tend to assume, the point isn't about some seemingly growing or shrinking or shifting list of rules we're expected to follow. It's not about an ongoing overreach of some God we can't see, can't feel, can't know, apparently can't please. It's not about living only to avoid the suffering of which we're constantly warned about coming our way some day.

The point is not even trying to please God.

The point is that He is trying to point out that we've lived having never once acknowledged Him for who He is, how He works, what He expects and what He deserves in response for all He has done for a bunch of scumbags who shouldn't even be alive to try.

Because the problem is that we are alive, we are aware, we have been taught, and then we have been warned because we have always tried to avoid being taught, and so we've now no reason nor excuse upon which to lean that will prove enough to make our lack of reverence and respect anywhere near as reasonable as we've sadly sought to make it seem. We will have no answer to the questions we'll be asked, and that should open blinded eyes.

Should.

Because that’s the purpose of truth, to confront the endless lies we’ve believed and believed we had the authority to create in order to continue to believe ourselves either entirely innocent or of equal enough standing to God to make Him flinch. And we’ve therein become blinded to reality, this reality spoken of here in particular.

See, if we were to open our eyes, soften our hearts, humble our minds, and actually accept that all of this has never nor will ever revolve around us, we'd realize real quick that we've lived as if God weren't there despite His overwhelming efforts given to kindly show Himself unto us. We'd realize the gross lack of respect shown in our words and actions and movements up until this point in time. We'd realize that we've fallen so short of anything close to decent or acceptable that shame is honestly too good a feeling for us to feel.

And once understanding all that, well then we'd finally understand why the warnings, why the promises of punishment, why the danger we're in and why the dire necessity to accept what Christ has done with the only response we can possibly give: A heart surrendered and a cross lifted.

But that's not at all what we've done now is it? We've not shown Him our gratitude, only a disrespectful attitude. We've not given Him our praise or priority, only a pompous reply as if He wasn't there to hear or see. We've not given Him anything in light of the simple fact that none of us should be alive. Because that we are demands we honor He who saw reason to author our existence into existence.

And He will have that honor.

But sadly, honor is all but a distant and fading memory of a theory that people once kind of considered every now and then. Honor is this bygone ideal that's just too daunting and damning and destructive to the things we're trying to be which demand we remain who we've always been. Yes, honor isn't easy as it begs humility, and well, there's nothing quite so antithetical to humanity than humility.

You see, humanity's got a lot of issues, some more worrisome than others, but all truly just as unnecessary in light of the fact that God's given us His Word which is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. We should know better than we've settled for pretending, not because we risk losing something in all our tomfoolery, but because we stand to lose everything when we find ourselves confronted with the fact that we'd never given Him anything.

Sadly, what should have always been given to Him has instead been given to basically everything and anyone other than Him. That’s the ripe danger in all this. The promise is that He will not give to anyone or anything what He alone deserves. The problem is that we will, in fact, we have. We’ve worshipped other people, material possessions, political platforms, even standardized social opinions.

We have always proven perfectly content to deny Him His due, and to even take it a step further by giving what He is due to everything but Him. And so, rightfully, He’s basically left but only to take what’s His from hearts that have never found reason to give it. He will have His honor and receive His recognition as the only God there is. And He will have it soon.

But we’ve assumed otherwise for so long that we can’t quite compute the change needed nor how to actually make it in lives that we don’t really wish to change. We just like how things seem to work as they’ve always seemed to work so far. And if we’re good with it how it is, and He’s not yet actually shown His full displeasure before our eyes in this time, then why should we assume He doesn’t agree with our outlook?

I guess our biggest problem has always been that one can inevitably only assume others like themselves, because that's all we know. The heart of an addict assumes everyone else to also be addicted to something. The ears of a liar assume little truth in anything they hear. The mouth of fool believes everything to be foolishness. The mind of a sellout assumes all others think along a similar line, willing to also sell themselves in exchange for something.

But assuming God to lower Himself to doing as we've done will ultimately prove the gravest of mistakes. Why? Because He's the One who kindly offered to save us from the graves we've been carving out for ourselves throughout our lives spent living in sin. And so for us to deny Him the praise He's due is to deny ourselves the lives He offers undeservingly.

Thus the dire necessity of humility which allows us to acknowledge our utter lack of knowledge about He who spoke wisdom into existence, as we ought to now know we owe Him more than denying His existence.

And yet, that's all we've ever known to do, to be, to attempt and to believe. We sell our souls to images, ideas, ideologies. We pack our houses with toys and trinkets that only serve to distract us from the only things that matter. We plaster our walls and halls and cars and clothes with images attempting to show us part of this place so we feel as if we've a place to fit.

We carve wood and sculpt stone and mold metal into gods we revere and honor and respect even though they've not a breath in them nor a thought about us to be found. We fill our lives with everything hollow, and in doing so, refuse to accept that the reason we still feel empty is because the hole inside is in the shape of the cross. We give our time, our attention, our energy, our appreciation to anything and anyone that we think will make us feel better.

But it's always done based upon only what we can see, feel, hear, understand. And I guess that's the problem, because we can't understand God as He is so radically different and higher and better and undeniably more powerful than we. And so we relegate Him to a distant hope, a coming possibility, a possible consideration only needed in times when all else lets us down.

What about our letting Him down? We ever consider that side of this? We ever think about what we're doing in light of what He's done? Is any time in our day spent praising Him for the mere fact we can have hope in something better than what we've been building?

Truth is that He should have all of our time, all of our focus, all of our effort, all of our gratitude. But instead, He's Sunday. He's stained glass and a steeple. He's a book buried under dust somewhere in our closet. He's a song we don't mind listening to every now and then. He's an image on our wall or a cross hanging from our neck. He's an idea, and one rarely considered at that.

And we've the audacity to act shocked at the warnings of wrath and the promise of punishment.

We've given Him nothing, in fact even less than nothing because what He deserves is what we've given to a million other things. And the terrifying part is that time can't be regained, our pasts cannot be redone, our choices cannot be unmade and our souls are therefore stained. We cannot go back and get this right. In fact, even knowing the little of the little that we do, we'll not get it perfect going forward either.

Thankfully, He knows that. Thus the cross. He doesn't ask us to trade places with Jesus, only that we live our lives clearly showing we know He took ours. He doesn't ask us to pay Him back but to stop charging against our souls a recurrence of the debt He already paid. No, He knows we've nothing to offer Him as we've already given pretty much all of ourselves away.

That's why faith is counted to us as the righteousness He desires.

All we can give Him is our faith, our trust, our hope, our hearts, our lives, our minds, our present, our praise, our past hoping that He can truly wash it all away. Yes, all we can give Him the remnant of what we've not yet sold off. And in His kindness, that's all He asks for. That we love Him now as we've not done so before. That we honor Him going forward knowing we haven’t in the past.

That we finally put Him in His proper place upon the throne in our lives, because to do so demands we remove everything else that's taken His place so far.

Friends, my point is that we've lived without purpose, but that having done so is only possible because we've lived without regard for He who gave us life. Because you can't understand anything else until you have a baseline appreciation for the simple fact that none of us should be here. And that fact is truth even before we start talking about all the nonsense we've done since we've been here.

He alone is God, not us, not our neighbors, not our jobs, not our dreams, not our plans, not our opinions, not some collectible, not a valuable piece of property along the shoreline, not a person in political office, not a building with cross standing on the roof. He is God and it's time we give Him the honor He's owed before He gets it through other means.

Again, the promise is that He will not give His honor or glory or praise or worship to anything or anyone. But that problem is that we have. We have given countless other things what only He deserves, and that's what will stop whether we stop or not.

Friends, we don't have to live in fear of being proven wrong for all we've gotten wrong. We can embrace that embarrassment now and find healing in return. He is merciful, He is kind, He is good. But He is God and one day or another we will all acknowledge that fact.

May we take this fleeting opportunity to do so while we've a bit of time left to prove we mean it through changed hearts and lives altered as a result rather than being left only eternity to realize we were more wrong than we could ever let ourselves see.

He is God and He will be praised. Don’t force Him to force from hearts that refuse Him. There is no scenario more dreadful than to fall into the hands of the living God. So may we choose to run into His hands before this place is crushed by them.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold