Day 3107 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

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 most refined of vernacular. Except that there's ironically to be found the off chance that at least one or two of those fancier words have yet to have been heard by some. But language acuity aside, we've yet more examples of what prove plenty of options from which to discover we've not arrived anywhere close to being all we think ourselves to be.

So upon what do we base all these braggadocios boastings? Our weakness? Our vanity? Our worldly prosperity? Our material treasures? Memories of societal pleasures? Our nakedness as we lay bare in order for the world to better tell us who to become? Our lewdness, rudeness, foolishness or frivolousness? Our lists of past mistakes our chosen present perspective of perfection can’t make go away? All the words we speak yet know we shouldn’t say? All the thoughts we don’t share as those around us wouldn’t like to know who we really are?

What are so proud of?

I reckon that's one of the dangers found in a life given over to prostitution. We find ourselves walking within this warped reality in which we feel as if we're needed, wanted, somehow something special, truly a gift to be given and a desire to be held. As we've sold off more and more of us to a wickedness which wants all that we’re willing to give away, we've found ourselves looking deeper and deeper for more to part with.

And somehow we keep finding it. We keep finding more to sell off, trade away, give away in exchange for more attention and applause and approval. We may have but a remnant of our souls remaining, but as they say, where there's a will there's a way, and that our way has led us away from His will is both undeniable and ongoing.

Yes, we keep on going in all the wrong directions thinking ourselves the ones who've drawn the maps toward this illusion of discovery we still anticipate arriving upon someday soon. We still hold this idea of a best life we need to be living, but the differentiation in regard to what is best is apparently best left to each of us to determine for ourselves.

Because again, since we're so good at knowing everything and being everything, well then, we're clearly the ones to lead the way toward whatever it is that we've oddly not yet found. And that's quite possibly the most glaring peculiarity in all this. If we're something so perfect, then why aren't our lives? Why isn't our hope? Why the frustration and aggravation if indeed we've managed to reach a place in which we're the gods we've always seen ourselves to be?

Is it possible that the only ones buying our nonsense is we ourselves?

All this pompousness and haughtiness and the darkness demanded for these delusions of ours to remain ongoing point to and prove that we're nothing but a performance. We're trained monkeys dancing to a music box. We're clowns entertaining the crowd we think ourselves to be leader of. We're lions who've forgotten our roar as it was long lost beyond the cages into which we've agreed to remain.

We've forgotten who we are, all because we've never found reason to remember whose we are.

That's the danger in spinning wildly and widely away from a life perfectly planned and most kindly given. We were created to be God's children, but we've sold away so much that we've become His enemies. We were prepared as if a bride to be presented, but instead we've wrapped ourselves in all that shimmers and shines and presented ourselves to the heathen among which we compete.

Indeed, we've traded the image of God, both inside us and in front of us, for a reflection of the revolting revelry of a world gone entirely mad. And having now so long been a clone of this collapsing culture, so too have we now began imploding inward along this endless search for something we've already lost.

We've set out to make ourselves all the world wanted us to be, and we've done as needed and made ourselves as much like the world as possible. And having successfully mangled our minds and hardened our hearts and ruined our reputations, we honestly think ourselves enough. We think of ourselves as having advanced. We see ourselves as perfect through these filters and fakery that allow us to not see who we really are.

We really do seem to believe ourselves something special, but only because we've done as the world has asked us to do and let go of everything that they don't find acceptable.

Friends, have we indeed forgotten the path we've taken that's led us to this pit of insanity which continues diving us toward new depths of depravity and despair? Have we truly allowed ourselves to become diluted enough to not even realize, let alone remember just how deep our despair really is? Do we not remember any of it?

The days we spent drowning in sorrow, so overwhelmed with guilt that we couldn't see beyond the tears streaming endlessly down our faces? The nights lying awake because we knew that our sleep would be tortured by the numerous nightmares we've lived back when we were just dreaming of the next dream to chase? The hopelessness of every hour that refused to tick by fast enough to afford us a feeling of relief from the grief we've had to ignore because we couldn't outrun?

Have we forgotten it all?

The years of our youth spent living as if we were wise enough to know the way toward a place we'd never been? The moments of misery reminded through the recounting of misspent words and misunderstood promises? The horror and shame brought about by our realizing our nakedness and impurity after having had our eyes and ears opened thanks to some fruit we weren't meant to consume?

Friends, the devil's had his hooks in us ever since we sold ourselves upon the idea of selling ourselves to the lowest possible bidder. We just wanted to be seen, to be loved, to be held and heard and helped along toward the hopes we wanted for ourselves. We wanted to feel powerful enough to believe ourselves enough. We just wanted a soothing of our impatient souls. And wouldn't you know it, the many sins we've been taught to seek have given us all we wanted, leaving us only nothing we needed.

And yet, again, we still somehow see ourselves as if royalty walking a burdensome line through a place entirely beneath us among a horde undeserving of our perfect beauty. How is that possible, this mixing of who we've been and who we see ourselves to be?

Is it not possible only because we're loved as who we've become by a world to whom we've sold our souls in order to become more of what's sadly deemed acceptable down here? Yes, all this time, we've only managed to think ourselves enough because we've just enough of this world inside that we can manage to feel at home among those who've benefitted from our selling away ourselves and our God in whose image we were made.

The past couple of days have found me talking about things not really covered across the 8+ years of doing this daily, at least not in the words that have been used. But I reckon there's just something about the King James that inspires a sort of unleashing of the honesty in ways that our modern world, and more modern translations tend to steer away from.

But the point of it all is that it's time for us to stop the show. Turn off the lights. Drop the curtain. Send home the crowds that have gathered. Because a day is approaching in which all will scatter away from us anyway. We will, as promised, find ourselves all alone before the Father. But, will He be found by us as the Father, or will we be found by Him as the faithless?

The answer to that question is indeed hard for us to consider, but only because deep down we already know the answer.

You see, all of our lives have found us living as if He weren't there, but only because we could only hope He hadn't seen all we've done to this imagine of His in which He made us. We've been relegated to a fleeting, faltering, falling and ultimately failing attempt to outrun the reality by which we'll be judged. All because we've been selling ourselves to a place that promises there will be no judgement.

But friends, we've gotten so very much wrong that even we ourselves can't unsee every mistake. If we've made but one transgression which we cannot deny, then we are in fact on track for condemnation. Because one sin is evidence of our agreement to deny God that moment of reverence and respect. And honestly, we all know deep down we've not got but just one of those mistakes our arrogance can't erase.

That is why He calls us to humble ourselves. To come down from the pedestals upon which we've performed. To let go the chains we've chosen to hold us in place to this place. To walk away from who we've been before we're ultimately torn apart from where we've gone.

I sit here today a guy just trying. Trying to find a way through, both to you but also to me. I myself find there's not a day goes by that I don't find another book filled with more mistakes I've made. I look back and see naught but a disaster of disappointments caused by my thinking I knew something at the time. That's been my life, but I dare say you've lived your own version of it too.

My point in all this is that we cannot know where we're going until we admit where we've been. But in order to admit where we've been, well, we have to accept the wrong turns that have led us away from where we were supposed to be. All this time we should have been His people, but instead we've sold ourselves to a people not in the least interested in anything He is or has to say.

And so we've lived a lie in this life lived as if we were something. Because we're not. Could have been. Should have been. Can still be, by some extraordinary stroke of mercy. But, that's a gift found only through Christ, and He found only by ears willing to hear the truth and take it to heart. We can be saved from our days of sin, but it can begin only when we admit that we've done too much in order to be saved.

That's the miracle of His mercy: It only works when we realize we shouldn't have it.

And that's my point today. We shouldn't have it. Who we've been and what we've done has all but undone all He's done. And yet, because He's the One who did it, we can't unravel it. No, all we can do is continue to unravel ourselves if we so see fit. But having lived as vermin among a horde of heathens, I do hope we can see the gain in letting go all we've gotten so far.

Because despite what the world tell these ears of ours wishing to hear that we’re so perfect we shouldn’t dare risk change, the fact is that we’ve gotten nowhere but everywhere wrong along this path of following the world toward who they want us to be.

Friends, we've been wretched since our arrival, because since our arrival, we've sought to belong to the wicked world into which we came. And He's seen every step, felt every rejection, watched every choice chosen with no regard to His presence. He's watched His children sacrifice themselves to the sound of applause from a place so far gone that they don't want to be found.

But do we? Do we want to be found? Do we want to be free? Do we want to be loved rather than just objects of lust lusted after by a world that knows not what true love is? If we do, if we want His mercy and the salvation it gives us undeservingly, we have to change. We have to turn. We have to stop selling what little we have left of what He gave us when He made us.

We're more than free to go on pretending we're something we're not. Or we can skip all the foolishness and fakery and jump to the point where we actually are something worth saving. That point is when we agree to hit our knees, not as an action being forced, but as a choice being chosen. We are indeed chosen by Him, that's why He came for us.

But do we have that same courage to choose to love ourselves enough to admit we've not loved ourselves so far?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold