Day 3106 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 23:30 KJV

It's altogether easy for us to miss the point and purpose of truth as we're now so used to dodging as many bullets as we can see coming, and the affront of truth is aimed right at the maniacal misunderstandings which deep down we know to define us.

And so, right from the start, any semblance of a truth which doesn’t adhere to our more ironic version must be met with a firm decision to deny its legitimacy.

Yes, to we beasts of increasingly singular interest and concern the warnings strewn throughout Scripture do indeed seem overzealous to the point of coming across as entirely offensive. Having long been taught an idea now firmly entrenched which has us believing ourselves the only deity in the vicinity, who is this God to step in and demand our surrender? Who is this God that seeks to prove Himself what we’ve long thought ourselves to be? Who is this God that threatens us with damnation when we don’t see reason to agree we’ve done anything wrong?

And so clearly considering the fact that we're all somewhat still on the outside thinking in, I guess it does stand to reason all this hesitancy, confusion and even rejection. It's too much, it's simply entirely too much. He is too much and His truth therefor uncalled for.

At least to minds that think themselves both prowler and prey.

Which is what we’ve managed to make of ourselves. Sadly, that we can remain convinced of such inconsistency is an obvious concern. Or at least it should be. How is it that we’re apparently free to do as we please and yet still feel this obligation to disoblige the truth a welcome in our hearts? How can we be a people who’ve found this ultimate victory in this apparent ability to believe ourselves the masters of our own destiny and still toss around blame when held to the flame?

If we’re truly above the recourse we feel ourselves not deserving, then why the clear fear of it maybe one day coming?

Seems an impossibility, this mindset set upon us being both king and pauper. We want everything yet pretend we need nothing. We make mistakes only to resolve to pulling out tired excuses whenever they prove unable to be ignored. We act as if we’re gods, but then we shake our fists and scream at the sky whenever our power founded upon our arrogance runs short of being able to provide all we want in life.

How we managed to become so mentally mangled is a topic entirely too large and of deepening depth to consider in great detail for today. But surmise to say that it's an accomplishment solely our own. It's something we were taught from the lord of lies as his seed has truly blossomed inside every human heart and warped mind that's lived upon this hollowed ground.

Yes, hollowed, because we've mined this rock for all we could find hoping to find for ourselves meaning and purpose and value, and even life. We've searched high and low, near and far, above, below, inside, outside, upside down trying to find a way to prove that living how we've long sought to live is an acceptable if not reasonable if not fully justifiable way in which to live this one life we've been given.

And that's the part we always seem to discount and deny: This life is not of our own making, our only role is what we've made of it. Yes, our lives were not given unto us via our own choosing. We didn't knit ourselves together inside our mothers. Our mothers and fathers didn't even get to pick the details and designs of which we display. No, all of this that makes all of us all that we are is from God.

But alas, if and when we begin to look inside of the hearts we tote in these earthen vessels, we find a noticeable lack of God. We've lost Him, but not because He became hard to find sometime shortly after He founded us. No we lost Him because we were told from the very start that should He remain involved, well, our every selfish plan would inevitably fall apart.

And so we chose to run not walk out of the Garden into which His plans had planned for us to belong. We hardened our hearts and stamped our path blazing out of His purview so that we could finally see to the fulfilling of all we wanted to do. We've become in every way the only semblance of a god in our lives, only because we've wanted so badly to be Him that we've forged countless ways in which to think ourselves to be Him.

This fact is shown undeniably in countless ways, and yet, the heathen we’ve become from the heathen from which we’ve learned remains somehow able to deny it all.

All of these little ideas we've found and fancied over the years and decades and centuries and millennia have all consecutively been bought and believed, chosen and achieved because they gave to us the ability to remain convinced we were the only ones to which we'd ever have to answer. Which is clearly and ironically a perfect pursuit as if we see ourselves as the singular judge and jury, well then, there shall never be an executioner.

Funny that.

If we can become the determiner of our destiny, then we needn’t revere another. If we can somehow gain and retain the glory to which we feel entitled as the kings we feel ourselves to be, then never shall we need bow before a rival authority. Indeed, if we are who we think we are, then not another thought matters. Because if our truth is undeniably true to us, well our heathen arrogance assumes it true to all.

And that’s the stone over which we will all fall before all is said and done. Because God will prove to not move, and so I guess all that’s left is for us to. But again, funny how blind eyes can’t see that coming.

The problem which has caused our egomaniacal blindness is that it’s almost as if we've known all along what we were doing in all we've done that's always been and will one day finally become only our undoing. Yes, as we discussed yesterday, we've always done all we could to deny God His rightful reverence. We've denied Him, debated Him, even took a swing at our one chance to destroy Him in what we did to His Christ.

Indeed, we fashioned that cross and twisted those thorns with a smile on our face and pride swelling in our hardened hearts thinking we'd win and move right along back into our way.

But the coming catastrophe is promised not because the God we denied is only vengeance and retribution, no, it's because we've pushed Him into a corner and He's rightfully not going to stay there. He, as the verse we covered yesterday pointed out, will not agree to surrender His praise or worship or glory or honor to anything or anyone.

Despite the fact that we already have.

You see, that's why I felt the classic jolting of the King James a necessary change for today from the normal NIV we normally peruse. It hits differently. See, the NIV uses words like lusted and defiled in this verse. But I feel as if the entirely unsoftened "gone a whoring after the heathen" just really gets this point across in a more undeniable way. Purely eye-opening. Hopefully.

Yes friends, we've played the whore to the wholeness of this world. If it has been or can be found down here, we've lusted for it. If it shines bright and glimmers just right we've yearned to have it for ourselves. If others have it, if another wants it, if anyone anywhere has found something in which they find pleasure, well, then so too do we then need that same pleasure.

Thus a way of life given unto idolatry in forms endlessly repeating and yet just novel and new enough to keep our interest piqued. The list of things to which we've knelt and poured out our praise is as endless at the concept of eternity seems. Cars, clothes, castles. Fame, fortune, followers. Trinkets, toys, team colors. Icons, iPads, idiots. Celebrities, technologies, the hope of legendary autobiographies. Dollars, cents and the death of common sense.

Indeed, we've chased it all, all because we’ve always known we needed something to fill the void we must pretend isn't present inside hearts void their Savior.

But the day is coming, and coming soon in which our Savior will be ultimately proven the only hope we’ve ever had. Yes, not ourselves, not our friends, not our pastors, not our fortunes, not our fame, not a million trophies all bearing our name. There is but one Name under Heaven, and neither we nor nothing we’ve made nor nothing we’ve sought to gain shares His Name.

No, in the end it matters not what our preferred proclivity might have been. Matters not why we chose it nor why we chased it for so long. What matters is that through all of our time spent craving a god so empty that it wouldn't ask anything of us, we had to keep rejecting He who does. We've had to continue selling our souls in order to hold fast this hope of one day gaining the whole world so that we'd finally have everything we needed to prove ourselves everything we've always claimed to be.

But friends, in all this buying and selling of what's never been ours to risk or ruin, we've lost all that's ever mattered. We've lost ourselves, our souls, our sanity, our sanctity. In every effort we've given to make for ourselves an identity more fitting of who we want to be in order to be apparently free to be what we've become, we've surrendered the image in which we were made.

We gave God away in exchange for the lies that told us we could be Him or find something to replace Him and therefore not need the fullness of Him. Because, and let's be honest, our broken selves do not want the fullness of Him. As a people who've long lived a lie, we know the fullness of Him will demand repentance. We know we've had to have angered Him in such a way that makes every warning found in His Word as terrifying as we feel it is.

And our weakened resolve simply cannot bear the weight of all our mistakes, let alone the reality of the punishment they so perfectly deserve.

But friends, that's the promise: We will. It's not a warning. Not a threat. Not a heavy-handed burden unduly placed upon us. It's a reckoning from He who has always deserved the reverence we've given to everything else but Him. And that's why the punishment and the promise of its approaching. Because He will not step down from His position as the only God in existence.

And that simply demands a collision with every soul who refuses to accept the humility He will have from us.

Friends, I think we're past the point where we need to realize where we're at. We've tried it all. We've bought it all. We've sold it all, soul included. All of us wandered every path we could possibly find looking for a way to outrun or outwit this God who to us has always seemed impossible to contend against. Perhaps we should agree to lose to Him before we lose Him altogether.

The fact is that we've little of value left remaining after all we've sold and shared of ourselves with this warped and wicked world. We should jump at the opportunity He's given us in Christ, to welcome us back and not reject us and destroy what's left. We will not have forever to turn from our ways and seek Him. And so we should probably do it while He's willing to take us back. Because like it or not, that door's closing.

And like it or not, so too is life as we’ve known it on this globe we’ve pretended our home. We will not stay here, lost in the embrace of the many lovers and lusts that define our disgrace. Either we step away or be torn apart as we’re torn away. The point is that we are at the end of the road where the choice is ours but the promise is His. He will win.

Will we?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold