Day 3132 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 3:12 NIV

What if life isn't a story for us to write but instead a journey we're to take along which we find inside what He's always known was there?

Just the idea that Christ came looking for me is about as overwhelming and confusing a thought as I've ever considered. Doesn't make any sense to me. Because I know me. I know where I am, where I've been and what wrong turns I’ve taken which have combined the two into the heartbreaking downfall of this fallen man. I know the story I've lived as I've been the one trying in vain to write it just right.

And I know just how wrong it's turned out.

So why me? Why you? Why go through what He went through for people who'd proven all but impossible to get through to? Why step out of Heaven's peace into a place of punishment designed by those who'd long denied any power or authority outside themselves? Why would the spotless Lamb of God take hold a horde of dirty sinners who had only ever lived their lives in a filth that would make a swine smile?

That's just it, we don't know yet. That's the journey this faith sets us upon. It's the complete unraveling of all we've sought to stitch together into this tattered tapestry of temptation and turmoil. It's the great undoing of all we've done and tried to do only to fail to find what we thought was there. It's His proving Himself faithful to the faithless so that those without hope can find it in Him, alongside the freedom which can't be found outside of faith.

So much of life is caught up in this approach that has us feeling like we're the ones who pick the prizes. We're supposed to have the power to choose for ourselves what we want for ourselves. And all of humanity all throughout time has followed that idea for varying lengths of time with varying degrees of impassioned interest. Some in fact have followed it all the way out of here, never once finding life while they had the chance to live it.

Which kind of circles back to the conundrum in which we find ourselves whenever reality is welcomed back into our lives. Why do we have the chance to step into such radical change that it's even been known to change people's names? A fisherman named Simon became Peter and proved the power of Christ in ways even the other disciples didn't as, other than Christ, he's the only other person known to have walked on water.

A fierce persecutor of early converts to Christianity by the name of Saul lost his sight along his way to persecute a few more followers of this Jesus, and upon receiving both his vision and his new purpose was transformed into Paul and ended up being the one who wrote the majority of the New Testament.

To say that we're given a new life in Christ is a common concept shared around the religious circles of society. But I dare say it's far deeper than a new life. It's a new identity. It's a new way of seeing, hearing, speaking, working, being. It's an entire reset into a way of living and breathing that was always His plan for us before we insisted upon our own getting in the way.

That's what He's had on my heart for quite some time. I've been living in my own way. I've learned only to become my own demolition crew, deconstructing myself through trying to build myself by myself so that I could keep the glory all to myself.

Indeed, I've been the one who picked my passions, chose my paths, aimed to perfect my work done along them so that they'd lead me where I wanted to be to find the prizes I assumed the power and authority to make manifest at the finish line. And I can say that I did it. I'm here. I've arrived. I found it. I found it all. I found everything I've wanted to have and hold and see and be in this place where the sky's the limit and we don't even stop there anymore.

Yes, I've reached every goal that I've set out to achieve and accomplish according to the standard expectations of the world that's proven to have provided more than a little suggestion along the way. Money, attention, success, degrees, followers, comfort, freedom to do as I please. Found it all.

But now that I'm here, turns out all I found was that it's not enough. Because I still feel this longing to keep looking. Still feel this emptiness inside that looks back me many days in most mirrors. Still have this aching reverberating telling me that if this is truly all there is to life then it's all just been a big lie all along.

Because when you find yourself having achieved every goal you remember really wanting to accomplish and still feel as if you've done nothing as you look around and don't see anything worth all the time and trouble given to get it, well that's a kind of rock bottom that we do everything we can to pretend isn't possible.

We even go so far as to question God about why He'd allow us to do all these things that were never able to give our lives meaning.

Why did God let Paul live as Saul persecuting His children? Why did He let Simon sink into the waves when he'd already proven his faith in that first step or two outside the safety of the boat? Why did He let me go after all the things that weren't worth going after? Why did He allow you to spend so much time doing everything you wanted to do only to be left feeling completely crushed and wholly worthless as a result?

No friends, why did we? Why did I make all those choices to follow all those paths toward all those goals? Why did I never once try to read the Bible when I was younger? Why did I always find church about as exciting as a graveyard? Why did you choose the life you've chosen with the dreams you've adored and the paths you've taken to reach them?

This is on us. And that's the horrid truth of it all. And I think that's why we still settle so often for such shallow goals as those we still make which still fit inside this world.

Because we're ashamed to admit that we've gotten nowhere. We're ashamed to admit that we've actually wasted a tragically large portion of our lives doing all the wrong things for what have turned out to be only the wrong reasons. Which is rather strange when you think about it.

Yesterday we talked about being steadfast, persistent, perseverant in our choices. We've done just that. I can literally think of a couple things off the top of my head that I've done incessantly across the span of decades. We have no problem with being steadfast and resolved. So why do we struggle with faith? Is it not just another choice? Having called ourselves friends of the world for so long is it really any different than now choosing to go by 'Christian'?

I think we know it's different. I think we know the severity of this kind of change. I think we're well aware of the gravity and the depth and the divide this choice causes between who we've been and where we're going. I think we know that this kind of change, like seen in the shifts of Simon to Peter and Saul to Paul, I think we know that this transformation isn't merely a transition.

I think we know that it demands the death of everything we've lived for, and that's why we struggle. It's not because we have a hard time making choices. Not because we aren't that good at sticking to our plans and following our paths. Not even because we've never made big changes before.

Just that of all the changes we have made, none of them required surrender. Of all the paths we have followed, none of them led into the tomb. Of all the choices we've made, none have thus far cost us everything that came before. Of all that we've found, nothing has proven worth finding, because it was easy to find.

And I think the issue is that what we've discovered is that if it's easy, well then odds are it has no point. Because if it did, if everything we've wanted, if every goal we've achieved, if our lives lived our way had been lived right, well then we'd not still be looking now would we?

No, we'd just still be lost. We'd be waking up every day with our eyes on one more prize we could actually see. We'd have no more excitement other than building up some worldly accomplishment into the next promising venture that couldn't possibly fail to fulfill like all the others have so far. But that they have so far carries this verdict that keeps reminding us that we've not yet found what we've always known we needed.

That's the catalyst for every goal we've had, every dream we've dreamed, every idol we've chased and every race we've entered. We know that there's something missing inside of us, inside of our lives. We know that there's more to be had than what we have. We know without question that there's a fullness of life that we've not yet found, proven because we keep searching for things with which to fill it.

And God lets us so that we become the ones who learn that filling our lives with empty promises and hollow hopes and worldly ideals is nothing but a fool's errand. Because He's knows we won't be taught. So He allows us to learn without the burden of humbling ourselves to a teacher. And ironically, this proves Him the best Teacher of them all. He instructs us in the way we should go without interfering in the choices we make that determine where we go.

He just quietly watches us run to the edge of the cliff knowing that rock bottom is the place we'll finally have no more reasons to ignore Him nor distractions to use in order to do so. He allows us to make our own goals so that once we've achieved them we can finally see for ourselves that they were never worth what we chose to give them. And He made for that kind of self-deflation so that we could learn to see that life isn't ours to create for ourselves.

No, life is just our chance to find out for ourselves what He's known all along.

That's why He came for us. That's why He went through what He chose to go through to get through to a people so stubborn that they gotta do it all the hard just to prove that it can be done.

He lets us achieve everything we refuse to let go of so that we finally realize that what makes life living isn't what we finally hold but that He's always held onto us just enough to keep that whisper alive that's been trying to tell us that it doesn't have to be this hard.

We don't have to make a life out of the dreams we dream. We don't have to figure out a way or a path to take that leads us to everything we need. We don't even have to make our own goals. He's already given us the only goal we need. To know Him. To follow Him. To serve Him. To make Him known. To lay down our lives at the foot of His throne and step beyond the cross into our chance to share in His resurrection from the death He died to help us see the death we've been living.

And the beauty of the simplicity of His one calling for our lives is that it's so deep, so meaningful, so personal, so perfect that we can spend the rest of our lives finding it in deeper measure every single day and still not fully achieve it. In fact, we have the promise that we can spend forever in His presence never running out of reasons to rejoice and never finding ourselves without peace or purpose.

All we need is found in the fact that He chose to take hold of us. We just need to stop trying to hold onto everything else that only keeps us from realizing how simple and beautiful life can be when we're not the ones trying to write the story.

I know we've become a people who are so attached to the sense of success and satisfaction we find in all these measly little goals we achieve. And so the idea of trading all that away for a path we can't perfect toward a home we can't see following a Savior we can't repay all the while living the rest of our lives knowing we'll never arrive at the finish line on this side of the grave sounds like an impossible task, so unattainable that it's only able to make us feel like failures.

Personally, I'd rather spend the rest of my life chasing after one goal that I can't reach than to waste the rest of my life reaching every goal I can that doesn't mean anything. Because the goal of knowing Christ, albeit impossible in certain respects, is enough to bring me purpose every single day along with the certainty that in following that one direction I will hopefully be useful for something far bigger than myself.

But should I resort to spending the rest of my days going after only the goals I've set for myself, even should I achieve every single one that I can ever possibly come up with, I know I'll be the only one who benefits. And considering the emptiness I've found in achieving all the selfish goals I've accomplished already, I can't think of a more wasted life than one lived for myself.

Because again, I know myself. There's nothing new to learn. But in living to know Christ, I'll find something new every single day. And thus meaning and purpose and excitement will never fade or fail.

I'll take the impossible goal of knowing Christ and making Him known throughout all the world over the entirely possible ones that only prove I don’t know myself as well as I often assume. Because honestly, if we really did know ourselves and our needs as well as we pretend to, well then we’d have found something worth finding by now. So no, I’ll take the impossible task of a path so narrow not even I can fit on it.

Not because I can actually find a way to squeeze myself and my agenda into His will for my life, but simply because it'll instead keep me going in a direction undeniably better than the ones I've chosen for myself. And it’ll help me learn to lose myself along the way.

And that’s a promise that sounds better and better with each passing day because I’m tired of trying to find my own meaning in life. I just want to trust that He already knows why I’m here and that He’s more than willing to show me just how meaningful it is if I’ll just stop looking to everything else that isn’t Him.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold