Day 3133 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 4:13 NIV

Must be more than me.

Because if it’s not where I am nor where I've been, not what I've done nor what I'll do, if it’s not something I can see or feel, know or define then I reckon this prize exists outside of me and these limitations of mine.

Ever since God harkened me back to a place and time in which hope was easier and life was sweeter and time was for once seen as the gift it's always been, I've been waking up every morning with a deeper appreciation for the lowliness in which I kneel. I find myself contemplating considerations that have no consideration for my vain glory anymore. Losing a little more of my selfishness by the day.

And I legitimately could not be more thankful for the opportunity to do so as it's offering this burgeoning hope that perhaps someday up ahead of me I'll find that place where all I've been has been laid down and all I've left is all that's still to come within the priceless promise of a prize I could never have earned under my own power.

Much of adult life is quite contrary to the excitement-fueled anticipation we assume as children. Sure, there's a few more freedoms and opportunities. Children still aren't allowed to drive or earn a paycheck that they can use to keep their rooms stocked with junk food and enough candy to keep a dentist happy. You don't have to go to school or do your homework or get nervous about tests that just aren't exciting enough to actually study for.

But as it turns out, at least for me, those few rewards we find as we finally find ourselves among the big people around us pale in comparison to the heavier weight we find when life's no longer quite so safe or simple.

Those cars we can't wait to drive run on gasoline that grows more expensive all the time. The junk food we love now has health risks that we didn't know to worry about when we could eat anything we want and never know the difference. Jobs might give us a bit of money but so too do they offer an even greater measure of stress to counteract that sense of success.

No, life ain't quite so simple up here down here, but this newfound hope I'm finding every morning has been teaching me, which I hope to share with you, to take heart because maybe not all that's been lost is really gone and that what we can't seem to shake isn't meant to stay.

Because there exists a purpose for each of our lives along with a pathway promising the possibilities which allow us to both find it and find the One who wrote us for it. See, that's one of the overworked complexities that we've misunderstood and mismanaged as we've raced into a false maturity: We think that our story has been written for us to live. But no, He made us to fulfill a purpose within the story He's already finished.

And it's to that misplaced and forgotten simplicity that God's calling us back so that we can finally move forward toward what's always been the lone goal worth having.

It's not wealth. Not success in our various and varied ventures spent trying to find meaning and reason for our being alive. It's not health. Not this hope of a year or two finally free of the ailments that have plagued us long enough in our opinion. It's not pleasure. Not the ability to decide for ourselves what we chase after based on what makes us feel best at the moment in which we make those misinformed misinterpretations.

It's not worldly acclaim or acceptance. Not about having a million subscribers or screaming fans hanging on our every word spoken only to keep them coming back. It's not material or social or political comforts. Not slipping into this assumption that playing into the games being played makes for us being a productive member of some society in which we actually aren't even known no matter what we have or who we can tell about it.

No, there's but one goal in life that makes life worth living. Reckon the hard part is that we seem to insist on trying all the temporary goals first so that we can learn for ourselves that there's truly no fulfillment in a life given unto an empty world.

I believe that there comes a day in each of our lives where we look up and realize that we don't see anything. Both because we've grown blinded by the allure of lies that always fell short and fell through on their promises and because we finally find that all we've found fell short too. No matter what's been piled up around us, well, that's the problem: It's around us.

And because it won't fit inside we stay empty in there.

We look around to find that the life we made meant nothing because it led to nothing and so we have nothing to show for the efforts and energy we gave. We have no value as our value was all along being placed into what we had or tried to have to show to the world as proof that we were alive. No, we look around and see nothing despite all the prizes we've won and the people we defeated in order to win them.

All because life isn't this competition we’ve been told it is. It's not a race to see who gets to the end first. It's a journey filled with so many distractions and so much time to look at them that we never know just how lost we've always been thinking that we could find our way to where everyone else wanted to go without knowing anything about anyone, least of all ourselves.

That's the great tragedy unfolding in life. Nobody knows who they are anymore. Maybe we never did. We've tried so many different things seeking a prize that proved the one that finally helped us understand what we were meant to be that we only lost all we could have been. All we could have been. That's something sadly saved for lonely folks on barstools and late night drives down a memory lane we thought we fought our way away from having to remember.

But what if the prize is back at the beginning?

What if our purpose has been held in trust in days now left in the dust of our great hurry toward a million hollow hopes? What if the only way to win the only prize which can provide true hope, lasting peace, endless excitement is found when the first slip into last and let the world run on without them?

Yes, what if the only home we've ever had is a place we've never been before? What if the only name we have that's worth calling ourselves by isn't our name at all? What if the entirety of our identity was never ours to define nor figure out? What if where we're supposed to go follows a path we know we can't follow?

What if in all actuality we can follow that path, but that we have to take the first few steps alone so that we can for once see that we've never had to do anything alone, let alone find our way to who we are and what we're here to do in light of where we're going back to toward He from whom we came?

We've been following the wrong trail of breadcrumbs my friends. We look for the bits and pieces left for us by the world around us made of momentary wins and fleeting enjoyments. We've learned to live off of external input and social intervention as we've tried inventing an identity which corresponds to our surroundings. We've set our eyes on every prize we could see or seek not knowing that the only real prize already came for us so we’d not need waste any more time trying to find it.

It's not our name nor what we make of it that matters. It's His Name that will forever be above all other names, enthroned as the only Name by which we must be saved. It's not our lives nor how successful we make them look to a people who assume success can be measured in digits. It's laying down our lives as we grow tired of feeling empty regardless of how full our houses or bank accounts may seem.

No, the only prize worth playing for is the one that demands we approach life as if it's not the game everyone around us is playing. It's a path paved by the humility humanity forfeited in order to compete against one another. It's a peace found in accepting the defeat of the selfishness keeping most souls alive but lost in the middle. It's a purpose discovered in admitting we have none other than knowing another and breathing to make sure all others know of Him too.

It's a home so filled with hope that we can't hope to fully imagine it. It's a love so deep we have to enter the grave in order to find in fullness. It's a kind of freedom that begs we admit our prior enslavement to finally feel. It's a joy that words can't describe as it's spoken closest in the seemingly tongue-tied attempts of a two-year old trying to talk. It's a promise that we can't break because we didn't have a part in it being made.

That we can't define it, describe it, contain it or at times even entertain it only proves that that's never been the point. It's not on us to understand it nor to find our way to it. It's always been about getting ourselves out of the way so that who we are as a result of who we've been because of what we've done where we've gone as it's all gone wrong no longer holds us back from moving on following the Shepherd who knows where the rest of the flock has been waiting while we wandered.

Friends, pressing on toward a prize we can't see seems to ensure that we'll forever walk around lost. Because for all we know, if you can't see it then it's impossible to find. But no, that's not at all the case. That's just a lie we've accepted as it allows our human limitations to seem acceptable reasons to not try for more than we know we can do or be or find or feel.

And I think that’s one of the biggest points we’ve missed in trying to find a prize worth winning: We have to move on from letting ourselves be the determiners of what's possible.

Because with man, yeah, all this is impossible. We can't find Heaven as it's not on a map. We can't be righteous as our pasts have already undermined any future attempt to come close. We can't pay the debt we owe with enough life left to still be alive. But with God all things are possible, even the cross that cancels our debt, sets us free and finally helps us find that our identity is not inside of us until He's all that's inside of us.

The goal, like Paul says in this passage in Philippians, is to know Christ in the fullest measure possible. Yes, even knowing "the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death." Life isn't something we can live by holding on it in this arrogant effort to make it what we want it to be and to mean so that it means something that means something to the limitations we've settled for assuming are limitless.

We have to let it go so that it doesn't hold us back anymore. Our dreams, our goals, our wants and wishes, our successes and failures, they're all chains keeping us locked inside a life we're lost trying to live alone. We're not meant to do this alone because we can't. But despite the cries of a communal culture, we need but One more beside us in order for us to find us in that place we know we can't find.

Press on toward the hope of Heaven via the only way to get there: Through Christ. Put Him first, so far in first that nothing else even registers anymore. Study His Word as if it's the lifeblood we need to find life outside of the ones we've lost to our writing them in the wrong direction. Surrender whatever needs to go so that you can go ahead and get on with a life spent living rather than resting on what's already been.

God sent Christ to call us to more than just some selfish attempt at what we consider a perfect life spent in this imperfect world. He came to prove that the only life worth living is the one worth laying down. He died for us that we might share the opportunity because the end of us is where life truly begins: Back at the beginning we’d been given before we gave it away in search for every goal that’s proved pointless.

This verse here reminds us that we've been called heavenward. We’ve been extended an invitation to stop seeking to extend our stay in a place where the expectations are ever-changing and the outcomes just the opposite. Why stay here on this hollow ground searching for fulfillment in what can sadly be found? I find no excitement anymore in what's possible. If it can be done, why do it? What's the gain? What's the point? To prove we can accomplish what everyone can too?

No. I want to go out as the weirdo racing toward uncertainty fully confident of what I'll find when I get there knowing that I have no idea what's waiting for me. To give the rest of my life to the very best hope I’ve managed to find so far. To lay down all I am in exchange for what He clearly believes I can be while I’m here. To walk away from everything everyone is running toward as I’ve been there and found reason to go back.

Yes, I want this last little bit of my time to be spent looking into the impossible afforded by this heavenward call out of a place that we just can’t make feel like home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold