Day 3108 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

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 as well. Problem is that very little is anywhere close to well within or along this line we've long been lied to about.

No, this normalized way of life knows nothing of the way of life. Down here all we know is all that everyone else pretends to know as, again, we grew up looking to the world for our learning how to live. And what we'll all see, all feel, all understand one day is that sending our friends, our neighbors, our children, ourselves to Caesar for education results only in Romans returning.

And that there be the dilemma which has us upon this trajectory with what we've been promised isn't a great destiny. Nothing about damnation sounds lovely let alone pretty enough to prefer, but alas, our hearts and minds as clones of those the world around us have chosen know not to choose anything else but the assumption running around that there is no cost, consequence, condemnation coming.

Instead we still exist in the same world that's missed every kind effort given unto helping us avoid what we're asking for. Prophets, scrolls, tablets, crosses, none of it managed to make much of a dent in our apparently airtight arrogant armor. And then in truth, neither did the more jarring approaches seem to jolt us from our slumbering like those so at ease all around. Floods and famine, plague and promise didn't break through either.

So, as it sits we remain as we've always been because this place is also only what has been before. Lost, broken, yet filled to overflowing with folks convinced they've found everything needed to make life all we know it should be. But, under the superficial by which we navigate toward what's deemed a "best life" there exists a reality running as true as the day He poured it into being.

And that reality is that we've no idea what we're doing, but that Scripture warns that we're not doing it well.

I fear that this ability to sidestep what we don't wish to walk into has spilled over into our understandings and teachings about even this faith we've found only because He came to find us. Yes, I must admit that I don't understand the obvious one-sidedness of many of the messages heard and shared and even sang in song on the radio dial. I don't know how it's become so skewed in a singular direction.

But it has, and the only way that is has is because it's been on us to choose what we focus on, because we’ve been taught by this world that we’ve the right to choose what we like and don’t like, even in regard and response to the truth. And well, wouldn't you know it, but just as we've always done because of how everyone else has always done it, we've gone and chosen only the portion of His promises that seem to benefit us best. We've held tight to those words which warm us as they're the ones which soothe us.

And as for the rest, which honestly happens to be the majority of His Word, well, don't know that disinterest is a deep enough definer for our disagreeable disposition toward that side of our assumptive divide of His disclosure defining mostly His displeasure toward above disposition.

I read the Bible nightly, have for a long time now. Not a Biblical scholar seeking a degree from some university, Though I actually do have a degree from a religious university, which hindsight has shown me among the most worthless choices of my life thus far, but that's neither here nor there.

What is here is my mind filled with this mindset which tells me from all of my reading through Scripture that it seems to be that most of it is pointing out our imperfections. Most of it is presented as to prevent what we've chosen to pursue along our chosen path of petty insufficiency. Most of it speaks against us and this way of life we've know, as we've come to know it as a way only because it is the way of the world in which we live.

Which is still the world which killed Christ. Which is something I think many would love a chance to do all over again. Because, well, this place still doesn’t like much of what He has to say, much of what He tried to teach, most of what He did in fact do, or, and most obviously, any of what He in fact promises unto all who’ve chosen to ignore and rebuke all the above.

Yes, from my understanding of Scripture and the many intertwined intercessions which were breathed out for our investment, seems the foundational undertone is there to help us realize that we're only undermining ourselves if we choose to remain replicas of the world in which we are.

You see, just because we are here doesn't mean that what's here should be in us. In fact, that's largely one of the main points of the entire Bible. We've been in the world, yes, but so too has this world gotten into us. And sadly, it's only been able to do so by convincing us to let go the hands which stretched wide in our place upon our cross. We've had to surrender all we were made to be in order to be made more like what the world says is normal.

No more. May we find the courage to be normal no more.

Why, well, here in the book of Revelation, arguably the most memorable of all 66 books which encompass the Bible as it's the most vivid and visual, we see the clearness of God's purpose. It's not to make us comfortable where we are but to help us understand that where we are is in a place He's not pleased with. He created this world, but this world's gone a created a mess of everything He created for good.

We've made a mockery of everything we've touched, and so one day He's gonna reach out and touch this earth in a way that will entirely shatter all we've set up and sought after. Yes, He's going to set things straight in a way that they'll remain that way forevermore. And that's simply a massive problem for everything set on edge, our lost and now loony souls included.

And yet, He doesn't want what's coming for any of us, hence the cross Christ bore. It wasn't done merely to clean our plate but to shatter it so we'd not be able to belly up to the buffet of billowing madness anymore. He came to bring a sword, a lesson straight from His lips that has mostly been heard by a people who just can't seem to understand plain language anymore.

No, among all the messes we've made, our rampant ability to ironically misunderstand anything that doesn't match what we want to hear, have, hold or hope in is easily the most raunchy. Why? Because He's just trying to help us stop working against ourselves. And yet, that just so happens to be the only way we know, and well, we ain't too keen on learning new things either.

So, most for the most part will go on ignoring or debating or denying the severity of the fullness of Scripture. Most will manage to miss or mishandle the parts and passages that point out our problems. Most will indeed miss the path that leads to life as it's so narrow that only single set of footprints can be found upon it.

And they'll miss it because those footprints ain't ours. They're His, and until we are too, lost is all we can be.

I've spent two days discussing whoredom, pollution, prostitution, and the entirely undeserved opportunity at absolution. And while it's been kind of fun to dabble in the "more than fine to offend" King James translation, I fear that my daily breaking it down and keeping it real still won't make much of a difference.

That's something I've thought about a lot in this daily drive through Scripture. Few care. Few will. Most won't. If I were to gauge my outreach and impact by likes and followers, as we've been taught, well then I'm just wasting my time with every word I try to think of that's worth typing. But, thankfully, I'm learning to not live according to what we've been taught by a world that knows naught.

And that’s my point for today. Actually, that's one of my prayers and hopes and purposes in continuing to do this: That whomever does read and find something of worth in these words finds them a bit of encouragement to break away from what we've become. To leave behind what we're leaving behind. To finally find freedom in forgiving ourselves for letting ourselves find the foolishness that we've allowed to be found inside us.

I pray that, as we see here, we come out of the world in every possible meaning of the idea. That we purge the world out of our eyes, our ears, our minds, our hearts, our hopes, our plans, our passions, our purposes. That we seek out every bit of this ticking time bomb that lurks in any nook or cranny in which we've not yet looked, so that we look less and less like the mess we're walking in.

Because as I've grown in knowledge of His Word, I can now see the world made me grow wrong as I grew up. I became a warped reed, a bent tree, a worthless vine producing only pollution. And though some of the blame can be shared with the world which helped make me who I've been, no, most of that blame falls on me for agreeing to go along.

And strangely, that's right where I want it.

I want to feel the sting of the stains I've allowed to set into my soul. I want the realization that I'm to blame so that I hopefully learn the responsibility to not live with my guard down so low any longer. I want the crosshairs of His wrath on my heart so that I find the courage to take my heart back from the heathen that's set me among His enemies.

Yes, I want to be proven wrong so that I can seek His help in setting me right. Because I know I can never do it alone. I know I can't figure it out, tried. I know that, if left to my strength and ability, all I'll ever resort to is all that I've seen to having learned how to see and be from this place I don't want to be anymore.

No, don't want to be normal anymore.

Don't want to be like anyone else anymore. Don't want to be somebody anymore. Don't want to be seen or heard, loved or followed, not anymore. I don't want to be here anymore, and so I don't want here to be in me anymore. No, like Paul says in what's become arguably my favorite verse, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

Galatians 6:14 for any and all who find that thought as beautiful as I have.

Yes, to share in His suffering offers us a chance to die to this world and have this world die to us. Which is a great opportunity, because friends, this world is dying. That's not a threat but an assurance. I didn't dream it, God ordained it. And as much as we've learned to hate it because this seems our home and nobody wants to lose their home, this home will be lost.

But will we be lost with it because it's still at home in us? Or will we do as asked and "Come out of her" so that she can come out of us?

Our existence up to now has been marked by the sins in which we've learned to partake. We've been and done all the world is and does. But that's what has to change if we something different than what's been promised for the way of life this world won't let go. In truth, it's come out or find out because God just makes it as simple as He can so we have no reason to not understand what's at hand.

Again, this world is dying and so too its way of life that it just loves so dearly. Knowing this place is hastening toward death just makes turning around and coming away from it a no-brainer. But that for many it isn't just goes to show the danger in letting this world do our thinking and living and breathing and being and believing on our behalf.

Time for that to change. Otherwise, well, we'll stay the same. And that's not an option in light of the cross.

It wasn’t even an option before He took our place. He only did so to help us see that our place isn’t here but with Him. Thus we have to come out of this world and fight to get this world out of us. Because otherwise, we know and He knows that we’ll stay because staying is always easier. And there’s not much easy about what’s being asked of us.

And that’s why He offers us eternal salvation in return for the courage to let go everything we’ve always been, including the place that played part in our becoming unbecoming who He created us to be.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold