Day 3151 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 4:14 NIV

Amongst these millions of minions living within such immoral and mongrel mundanity, all who wish not to be found among that growing delegation of darkness should be reaching with all we have for the only anchor we've got.

And yet, it seems anymore that even the simplicity of who our Anchor is and where He's found is no longer all that simple. No, today we exist within a place where even the very foundational basics of responsible living such as truth and decency are now considered subjective and therefore confusion has grown in ubiquity leaving consistency within godly contentment an afterthought not really ever thought about anymore by much of anyone.

Guess it’s easy to see why so many have such little interest in finding Christ and therefore themselves saved with treasures awaiting them in Heaven. Takes too much effort to break that far away from the warm embrace of this crowd now lying cold and dying inside hearts so stone like they simply don’t want to beat anymore. It invites the risk of retribution, rejection, personal exhaustion from social exclusion and other similar persecution.

No, how can a people who have devolved into debating gender ever be a people who can find their Savior? Safe to say the world’s heading the wrong direction. Sadly it’s even safer to say that they just don’t really seem to care.

No, the darkness grows and the light dwindles as even those few who claim to serve the Light of Life are in many ways divided in terms of who they're serving and how best to strain in said servitude.

Yes, from religious denominations to international divides, we seem none too content to simply settle for the path of ease allowing us a mere modicum of the mission unto which we were called when our good confession was made. Do people even do that anymore? I know the catholics are big into confession, even have little booths set up where they unload the weight they incur across the time between meeting up and gathering together.

But do folks even understand the power of rebuking our rather revolting revelry within the irresponsibility bred by sin's incessant invitation further into selfishness?

I don't know how many things have been lost nor how many more are hanging on by a thread that's all but ready to break as the strains of life grow ever more cumbersome in this land of such intense confusion. The worry I have is that that proverbial thread isn’t that hanging from the robe that was once seen with such intrigue that a woman broken and beaten and well-known for bleeding did all she could to simply graze it as the One she believed could save her walked by.

That social reject, that filthy outcast, that scrap of unwelcome scum had more faith than I believe many of us have today. And yet we carry ourselves in a fashion more akin to those who'd have mocked and turned away that woman so desperate for healing that she didn't care what anyone else thought. Because when’s the last time we found ourselves able to say the same?

No, anymore what others think is entirely too high upon the list of all these worldly worries soon turning eternal woes. That our worries do indeed form a list is really all that needs to be said as Christ Himself pointed out the radical simplicity needed by our faith as He talked with Mary’s sister in Matthew 10:41.

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Or indeed only one. That’s something we mentioned a few days back. One priority. One chance. One choice. One shot. One life. One hope. One home. One Healer. One Helper. One Teacher. One Savior. One Father. One Friend. One forever and one road to get there which deserved to be our one focus until He finishes what He started.

But it’s not even a matter of anything being taken from us anymore. No, we readily give it all away freely to whomever pretends to have something we’ve been told to want and grown convinced we need.

Yes, sadly we’ve entirely lost sight of the simplicity of our One Savior being our one focus. He’s been replaced upon the throne of our hearts by that list which has a great many other considerations, many societal, which we’ve given entirely too much consideration. Indeed, there’s likely now too much wrongly invited noise inside the minds of any who truly claim to be even passively interested in the Way which leads up and out of down here where we've been buried beneath all the nonsense we've agreed to allow our attention.

What people think, what people say, what people do, what they want us to do, what they'll give us if we do what they want us to do, what we might lose should we refuse to do as we're expected to do. It's all this incredibly incredulous confusion all too willing to entertain anything everyone else says is worth inviting in. And that's just the social expectations made manifest across the landfill that is social media.

We could discuss other concerns shared by many such as money, possessions, time ticking away and the wish for more of it to waste in a similar manner to the many days already lost to worrying about everything not worth that priceless cost.

My point though is that we're in every way the infants cast adrift atop this sea of unspecialized indoctrinations inspired by a nation with no notion of anything beyond this ocean folks are pouring out for the world to drink up. We're selling ourselves to satiate those never satisfied with anything other than a deeper measure of themselves. And yet we wonder why a concept so simple as believing has become too confusing for us to investigate.

That's something that's bothered me greatly for a really long time now. We're sold this message telling us that we can't do this. The world tells us that we can’t be different, nor that we should ever dare try to be anything alone. That’s to be expected as it’s one of the pressure placed upon our shoulders by this place that wants us forever lost looking for a place where we fit.

But even within the realm of religion we’re made to believe that we're not strong enough to walk a narrow road alone away from a world more than willing to offer us an image of inclusion. We're told that we've not the intellect nor the ability to study Scripture as we'll just get it wrong and manage to mangle into a roadmap taken the wrong way. We have to have another teach us what we need to know. No need to go looking for ourselves as who knows what we’ll find, right?

And these little concessions we're asked to consider are making many doubt in the beauty of faith as it seems to have almost no personal point anymore. It's all corporate. It's a community you must fit within or you're not able to be a part of if not. It's this religious rite confiscating the light leaving so many left out in the dark wanting some hope but so convinced they can't make it that they never even try.

Can't we see what we're doing? We're closing the door to those asking for help. We're setting up stumbling blocks for others that we ourselves know we didn't have to deal with. We're preaching human traditions as opposed to simply passing down what He came down to bring to us. Indeed, we've become a people getting in the way of people, even ourselves.

All because our ears still listen to too much of the noise. We may not be clanging symbols ourselves, but we don't seem to mind the tune they carry. But the sad state of it all is that we don't seem to even care to notice what we're doing, let alone actively consider why we're doing it and what it's costing to be done.

No, it's just a facebook account. It's a subscription to your favorite news organization. It's a list of influencers influencing the way you live your life down to the things you say and the things you're afraid to eat because they say they'll make you look bad in skinny jeans. Yes, we're outsourcing the living of our lives to those not living their own.

Infants blown back and forth by whatever wind happens to be blowing wherever the masses agree to aim it.

Kind of what we went over yesterday. It's this strange penchant of ours to be perpetually ill-prepared. We've a great appreciation for any manner of distraction. Be it a show on TV, a movie making headlines, a song everyone else is singing or just the latest misstep in the singing of a national anthem, it seems as if life is nothing but an annoyance to anyone at any given time. It's all about who is angry and why we should be too.

Distractions are defining this downfall as they keep lost those who have the Word which tells us all of the One who came to find us. Left the 99 and Heaven behind to come and find our behinds after we wandered off and got ourselves all sorts of lost. And what have we done in return after His return up there awaiting His return down here? Got lost again. Wandered off. Let our sights sway back to the beckoning of the beguiling.

Did we not get the message? Was the most important part lost among the many different translations? I mean, how did we go back to getting it wrong? Is it not simply because we live in a world that doesn't know right and so we don't really mind not striving after it either?

Seems as if we've just confused a childlike faith with a childish life. Living like kids, just lured away by whatever glitters of glistens or pretends to listen to whatever we have to say, which is just a regurgitation of what someone else expects us to say. Yes, we're not much more than infantile reproductions of a place only putting on a production pretending they've the power to actually deny the Almighty.

Shame what we learn to do when we keep letting the world be our teacher. Guess it's the cunning of their craftiness that's got the better of us. If only we'd have had warning as to what to watch out for.

You know, I'm not sure if the devil designed this darkness to get us this lost or if we've taken his idea and ran with it well beyond what even he had in mind. Because we're so turned around and lost within one another that I can't help but imagine that he's sometimes impressed with the nonsense we fall for. Because all this chaos sure doesn't lend itself to the pure devotion we talked about yesterday.

No, humanity is all but devoid of devotion to anything other than the ocean of human input and expectation. It's all we care about, making ourselves look good to those that ain't even looking at us.

How much longer will we let the world lead and live our lives for us? How much longer are we willing to be blown around all over a place that is passing away? How many more days, hours, seconds are we willing to waste giving them away to a world that cannot give us anything lasting in return?

How much further can we afford to go down the wrong road blinded by whatever everyone else wants us to worry about rather than homing in on the only One who came to lead us home?

Friends, deception only works if we agree to be deceived. Get that? We have to go along with the wrongs going on for we ourselves to get it so wrong. We have to accept the invite to stay up too late at night waiting to be among the first to find out about the update that'll be out of date by tomorrow night. We have to agree to let our hearts stay here for here to keep seeming like home.

It's our choice, but alas, as infants convinced they can't do anything as everyone tells them so, many are accepting defeat simply because they've been deceived into thinking it's inevitable.

This world and the father of falsity and fabrication wants us to assume ourselves victims rather than victors. The devil wants us to lose before we even knew there was a fight to fight. But Christ, on the other hand, gave Himself for us while we were still sinners.

Do we stay?

Do we remain who and what we've been in this place that's been allowed to become the spot we think we belong? Do we continue to spend our days giving way to the wants and weirdness of a wicked world peddling lies like candy to those with bellies so in love with gluttony? Do we fall victim to the devil's bidding as we've always done before and continue to watch many more still doing today?

Or do we look to the cross as if an anchor calling us to the high ground He conquered on our behalf, a Rock upon which we stand that shall not be moved though the rain of the insane never stop falling?

Because, and make no mistake, that rain downpour will not cease drowning the down-trodden doused in this darkness down here. No, humanity will remain what humanity has been, slaves to sin and children of the lord of lies. What has been will be again, in this case, it never stopped being what it will always be.

All that's left for you and me is to decide if we stand and where we stand should we decide to stand for something different, something outside the deception designed to lead us astray from the only Way home.

Whatever your choice, understand that you'll have to make it every single morning. Either we set our hearts to refusing and rebuking the nonsense coming at us nonstop or we set them to giving in and just going along to get along. But we make that choice every day, and one day, we'll pay for what we picked.

I pray we find the courage to rage past infancy and pay now. Pay through letting the world hate you and learning to love it. Pay with the loss of worldly gain and the pleasure of worldly pain knowing that in that misery you share a moment with the Savior who overcame it. Because the only other choice is to play now and pay later.

But I promise the interest accrued in a soul sold to a world that underpays anyway is more than anyone will want to face.

It’s just not worth living as distracted as we’ve been by all these deceptions we live within. We should want more than the measly hope of living life without point or purpose, direction or design. Christ paid for so much more than the chaos that defines us down here.

But we have to be the ones who agree that our worth is what He proved it to be. And we do that by giving back to God what is God’s. We are His children are we not? If so, let us prove it by declining the world’s deceptions aimed at distracting us from revering Him alone. Even if it means we go it alone.

Whatever the cost, it’ll always be better than being lost in a world that refuses to be found.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold