Day 3162 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 6:27 NIV

Pain is a promise meant to inspire us to avoid the promise of pain.

But we live in a place that believes pain only a problem meant to ruin their carefree outlook on life. Millions running headlong into as many walls of self and insanity as they can find, all while pretending they’re not hurting from all the crashes and calamities they’ve felt so far. But I guess the question is just how long we can pretend we’ve felt no pain despite pasts that bring regrets into the present.

Because that’s the promise we’ve been presented: That one day it won’t be pretend anymore. No, the pain will become permanent no matter how good we thought we became at pretending we could play with all that’s dangerous without ever facing a consequence. That’s what has the world running a million different directions believing a billion different lies. They don’t want to care about where they’re going, because if they did, they’d have to admit sin has them going the wrong direction.

And unlike the old me who lived like that, I do know where I want to end up once all this dust has settled and I've gone from where I've been. But I also know that only the narrowest of road can get me there.

Alas, narrow isn’t the normal consideration we consider anymore, is it? No, apparently all we know of life is nothing but friends and followers and fortunes and fame. And wouldn’t you know it but this world offers all of the above, for a certain cost of course. But we don’t care count that cost as we’re taught to focus on only the gain that drowns away the chance for pain. Don’t worry about the outcome only the reward. Why admit the danger when offered so much pleasure? That’s not the life we know.

No, we’ve become blinded by the immediate and uninterested in the aftermath.

We've grown to embrace these worldly eyes so filled with so many lusts that we entertain these endless invitations to sample as much of as many of the world's delicacies as we think might actually bring delight. Always looking, lurking, seeking, searching for the next selfish victory in which we can boast before those we've confused for the voices we'll hear in the end.

Don’t want to think about that fact that says we'll hear but one voice saying only one of two diverging verdicts defining two opposing eternities.

Guess that’s because there's just something about the communal sound of inclusion that impels us to continue accepting those varied invitations to partake and participate. We don't want to be the ones who get left out, who go without and thus live in doubt as to what we might have had, seen, felt or known had we had the willingness to let the world lead us toward wherever they claim life's meaning to be found and fulfilled.

Yes, this world has all the answers to any question we may allow them to inspire us to ask. But if we can't see the danger in that improper proposition then we're in as much danger as we deserve. Because the old adage that teaches that to play with fire invites the outcome of being burned holds true well beyond fire and flame. It's not about cooking a meal or forging a piece of metal into a tool for work or a weapon for war.

No, to play with fire is to play with anything, everything that we know holds danger as if it doesn't.

And when we resort to convincing ourselves of the lack of danger within what's so clearly dangerous, well then the outcome is our own painful reward coming from the most unnecessary of directions. Because it doesn’t have to be that way as you won't be burned if you don't treat fire as a harmless element. Yet through a lack of humility which defines a corresponding lack of intelligence, some just need to feel the pain in order to learn what that lack of humility won't let them simply understand any other way.

Because many can’t bear to consider another way that as if there’s one we don’t already know. It goes against our assumption that we know everything. It’s like this coming promise of this lake of fire. As with many ideas and images found within this faith, this one seems yet another that's rather hard for us to consider or contemplate. We know lakes to be filled with water which tends to drown out the flames. It's what firefighters use to fight fires, water. So how can a lake be made of fire if any water exists, as well, water overpowers the flame?

See the scary part yet? Parched. Unquenchable. Consuming. Unending. Forever.

Indeed, a lake is simply an image of a vast expanse of something which seems bottomless, unending, consuming even ships that sink below the surface. But that’s just the lakes we know of, an expanse filled with water as those we see on this earth. But is that all we see down here that could be considered a wide-spread expanse of something deep and violent and often tumultuous? Does not that too sound as if to define sin? It's everywhere, spread across the entire surface of this society, drowning each of us in differing depths of darkness and deceit as we sink below the surface.

It's a flood which only rises as days flow by into the past opening tomorrow unto yet another influx of filth further deepening the despair we see physically upon the faces of almost everyone who drifts on by along their way going wherever the flow of friendship and fame may lead.

That's what we talked about yesterday, this lack of personal responsibility seen in this society anymore. Everyone is following everyone else but nobody seems to know where they're going, what they're wanting, to whom they're aiming or from what they're running. No, we exist as sheep among sheep without shepherd or pasture, all pointing the same direction following some leader without realizing there is no one leading.

It's all just a homogenous glob going somewhere, hoping for something, entirely sure of everything except for what they're really doing or what it'll all amount to when these lives are through.

Humanity lives lost inside this intense inhumanity that's inspiring everyone to accept these invitations to just stop caring about anyone, everyone, everything, self so clearly included. Just give up. Stop trying. Stop thinking. Stop learning, listening, looking around. Why? Because someone somewhere might accidentally see the signs. And well, a world run by the devil's deceptions running folks over the edge into untold disaster doesn't need anyone to find out about what's really going on.

See, that's the danger that’s no longer even hiding within these lusts we've been taught to crave. From people to possessions, all of life is all but what we have, what we want, what others have that reminds us of the more we need. It's all boiled down into this existence of consumption. We just want more. More than those around us. More than we had yesterday. More than we have any idea what to do with.

More of what? Who cares! Just more.

Because godliness with contentment is seen as a foolish loss to most anymore. Only a loser lives life with restraint allowing for an appreciation of the simplicities. If you walk alone or have little or want less or know you need nothing more than a bit of breath and a little more time to do something of meaning with it, well, you're just seen as a worthless wretch with nothing to offer the world.

All because you won't compete. You won't follow. Won't fall in line and do as your told and want what they all want you to want which is what everyone else wants but needs external validation to not feel bad for wanting more than life itself.

Yes, this world wants more of everything except life, a truth effortlessly evidenced in this ongoing rejection of Christ’s redemption from a life spent living as if life doesn’t matter. People don't mind if they die so long as they can leave saying they leave behind their best life. And they live rejecting the opportunity to live forever in exchange for the chance to live for a few years in futility. Having all the things, doing all the stuff, going all the places, being known by all the faces.

It's all lust, an insatiable need for pleasure and treasure as told and sold by a world that again knows everything except where they’re going once they’ve gotten to where they want to be.

Because what then? What comes next? Should a person indulge so very much that they truly find fulfillment in this life through the filling of their bellies and the soothing of their cravings and the listening to only the many messages making that seem the only right way to live this life, okay, what is there after then?

Most don't know, or at least they claim they don't. But I doubt that. I think we all know what happens, at least as much as we've been allowed to know. And while we don't have any roadmaps for Heaven to help us plan our paths around the place to see all the sights, something inside tells us there's more than what we can see right now. Though we've not felt the heat of hell, the burning sting of regret seems a strange thing for a person to feel having been taught to feel only pleasure.

Yes, if hell doesn’t exist then why would anyone ever agree that they’ve felt shame, guilt, a remembering of mistakes everyone else is happy to tell us we haven't made? And if Heaven isn’t there, well then what is hope for, where does it come from, to what is it trying to lead us?

I fear we've invited so many dangers into our laps that we've singed our senses and mangled our minds and misunderstood simple understandings leading us to the promised potential of potentially losing our lives. We've scooped unto ourselves so much of everything this world offers that we've entirely lost sight of what God promises. We've let our eyes and our hearts want for only more of what this world offers that we can't see or feel anything anymore. No, it's a sad life to reach the point where you crave the pain of flame and shame just so you can feel alive a little longer.

Can't we see that living in the death and darkness of sin isn't living life at all? Can't we understand that without any stern direction in life that we're going to wander forever looking for something that just happens to show up and be enough? Can't we realize that until our eyes are fixed on forever, nothing along the way can ever matter?

Because it'll all just be a series of satisfactions so entirely unsatisfying that we have to keep looking onward to the next hoping it will be the one that ends the hunt.

It won't.

That's the tragedy untold about lust: It has us craving feelings over forever. We can always want more as we can always find something else we've not touched or tasted yet. Somewhere in this world someone is doing or seeing or finding or feeling something that we know we've not known. And thus the wide reaching road busy with billions all looking to find for themselves all that everyone else already has. Sheep led to the slaughter looking for a little more laughter.

All living without a leader outside of themselves.

No, all this world seemingly wants to know about the concept of a god is that constant craving coming from inside their stomachs asking only to be filled with more and more and more and more and then just a little bit more. No end in sight and no sight of the end.

I can't live that way anymore. Always looking around but never looking ahead. Ignoring that forever exists by denying my exit from a life I thought was mine to perfect. Assuming life could be perfected all because imperfect people in this imperfect world told me so. Invitations to be included, to fit in, to find everything everyone assumes they can find in a life lived without direction nor care to find one.

Can we allow this world into our hearts in an increasing toward untold measure and somehow still manage to escape the promise waiting for what this world has become?

No.

God's Word is set, and yes, so too is the date of the day of judgement. We just happen to live in a world that denies both. There's no fun found in following Christ among these many minds that think freedom can be found inside living according to what a world tells us we should want. How's that freedom? Always looking to someone else to point us somewhere else along a path everyone else is already taking?

But they just keep scooping. Begging for the invitations to try the next great idea that everyone knows won't be as great as one that comes after.

My point is that we're all heading to the same place right after this life is over, but what happens just after that is entirely different. All of us will kneel before God. All of us will confess Christ as Lord and King. All of us will account for every action, every choice, every word. All of us will die and upon that exit find ourselves receiving the decision as to whether that death remains or if life begins.

I know where I want to end up when all this dust settles. And I know that only narrowest of road will get me there.

Because He came down here to tell us of the two outcomes and how to find them.

And since this world doesn’t care to find the best of the two, let them go ahead looking all over this place for something that isn't here. We cannot ever find fulfillment inside a life spent in a world we're leaving behind. And it just doesn't matter how pretty or popular that way of life may be sold to us nor how many times we're lovingly invited in to be included among the masses reaching far and wide for something to hold onto that helps them feel like they can hold onto these lives forever.

We can't. That's just another lie of lust. Tells us that we can keep the feelings we find, that our enjoyment is treasure that won’t tarnish or fade or bring pain. But they're always only fleeting, followed by the flame which burns scars into our hearts that should help us learn to stop making such poor decisions as to entrust our hope to all that's only hollow. All of us bear those scars, but if we still keep doing what causes them after we know that our scars scarred Him too, well then again, we fully deserve what He said is coming.

And not the life we should want, but the death we shouldn't.

If we truly knew the worth of ourselves along with even the slightest idea as to the two eternities in which our souls will one day spend forever, we’d stop filling ourselves with a world that’s headed for a truly dreadful outcome while adamant otherwise. Because He doesn’t want that for us, hence the death He died undeservingly for all of us who still don’t deserve it.

But the problem is that we can only see a world that doesn’t care if that outcome comes. And while it may offend those who keep offering us the invitations to let them lead us where they don’t care to end up, only fools follow those who admit they don’t care what happens or where they go. Because unless we actually don’t care either, we should probably stop allowing in a mindset that has no purpose other than pleasure.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold