Day 3173 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Deuteronomy 12:8 NIV

Assuming safety or necessity in the status quo will only keep us from making the changes He deserves in light of what He’s done to open that door for us to be more than we’ve been.

Because it's hard if not altogether impossible to hold this line we’ve been called to hold when everyone around us is living a life spent trying to blur it so badly that nobody knows for what they stand anymore, as that outlook may eventually become our own. That’s the danger in going through life looking for input from those clearly not trying all that hard themselves. Indeed, we live in this place where everything goes, where everyone’s free to go and do whatever they want wherever they wish.

No limits, no concerns, no considerations, no consequences. Just this great big free-for-all that’s all anyone could ever ask for in life.

And so we look around at the world and all the things people are doing or saying and we find ourselves slowly becoming desensitized to it. Overtime things become these normalized expectations that we just assume to be harmless. And I’m afraid we’re seeing this unfold in rapidly increasing measure anymore. It’s all just normal. It’s acceptable. It’s encouraged even, which then has us falling into a corresponding assumption in that if it’s normal and acceptable then it must be safe for us to rehearse or repeat or reenact inside our own lives.

But that’s how the world ends up living our lives for us.

By breaking down our better intentions to where we expect nothing more of ourselves than the little care or effort we see made normal in the hollow lives everyone else is living. What a sad outlook? To just do as everyone else does, agreeing to not consider the outcome toward which a careless life will eventually lead. I can’t help but know without question that God made us for far more than this disorder we’ve made normal. But I guess that since we’re in a world of chaos we may as well live chaotic lives too?

Yet can’t we see the disaster that invites into what should deserve an urgent devotion devoid of compromise? How can we stand in the gap when this wall into which we're called is so broken and beaten that it seems it can't remain standing much longer? It's all just disheveled and discombobulated and disregarded beyond repair it would seem. And yet, we've still a job to do, a mission to manage, a purpose for which we should have a singular passion.

But do we even know what that's like? And how can we possibly do this when faced with the fact that we probably don't?

I sit here utterly terrified, literally shaken to the marrow at this fear of my inability to find the words to say today. I reckon that this kind of struggle is bound to happen across years spent trying to say something that means something to someone somewhere every single day. And I've long prayed that He wouldn't leave me because this right here feels one of the few things I'm striving for that's worth striving for.

And that's the problem I think. We've all too many concerns, too many considerations, too many passions pursuing our interest to pursue them. We're so chaotic in nature that we're by nature deserving of wrath. That's what we talked about yesterday, that humanity has long been our own source of wisdom and ridicule in those moments in which we've dared to think outside their box. And so we spend our days worrying about what everyone else is doing and expecting us to do, and we lose ourselves in that race.

But what's truly tragic is that it seems we've become so desensitized to all that's normalized that we don't fight it anymore. No, we've lost our fight because the world we've looked to for help as to how we ought to live our lives has only helped us to this assumption that we should only fight to do as we see fit. And as that arrogance fits so well within our selfishness, we just take it. We go along to get along.

We embrace this mindset that has a million minds running a million places looking for a million different things that all mean nothing.

And so no, I doubt very much that any of us could say with absolute certainty that we know what it's like to have a singular passion aimed at a single purpose for which we strive with an intensity that we're truly willing to die for it. No, sadly it seems as though we've become incredibly zealous for everything but zeal. Because zeal wears us out, and well, we don't want to risk being worn so thin that we've left nothing in the way of energy or intensity with which to strive after living a life doing as we see fit.

No matter what, we always find a way to revert back to making this all about us.

And that's what has to die if we're change in the manner demanded for our destination to change.

But as I sit here today sinking inside a struggle I didn't see coming, I think that's why. I've accepted this outlook of life filled with varied interests alongside a failing effort to make any one my lone pursuit. And despite all the times I've cried out to Jesus asking Him to help me make that kind of radical change, I can look honestly at my choices recently and admit that I've not helped Him help me.

And I say this with utter shame because I do know in my heart that there is something that matters exponentially more than all the rest combined. I do know that it is easy to narrow down life's options. I think we all know that it's not hard to boil all this down to what truly matters most when weighed across our limited understanding of eternity. But the question is, what are we doing about it?

Well, it would seem we're mostly doing what everyone else always has: Hitting blend and smashing it all together into this homogenous glob of a life lived without meaning.

Because that's the life that we've been taught to know.

Everyone doing as they see fit. We look around at the world around us and we see just sheer insanity. It's like a kindergarten class tossed inside an insane asylum built on top of an old prison surrounded by wars and rage endlessly raining on everyone's parade. It's a stupefied experiment running high on a sugar crash waiting to fall apart while we act like we're holding it altogether whilst holding onto nothing at all.

How did we get here? Well, easy. It's because when everything goes, we can't get anywhere else.

We can't move without a direction. We can't improve without an understanding. We can't understand anything when we don't care to know anything but more of this mindset that makes us think we know it all already. And as I try to find words to explain the overcomplicating of such a simple set of requests, I can't help but feel God's tears as He watches us tear this world apart.

Because that's exactly what we're doing! We're all looking for something hidden inside this world that's always been hidden in Him who has always been standing in plain sight.

Why do we keep missing Him? How do we keep missing Him?

I ask myself these kinds of questions all the time because the life I've lived has led me to this place where I can only keep track of the losses as I know that I've done nothing but fail so far. I've made this mockery of a mismanaged map aimed at everything I wanted that followed any path that let me do as I saw fit. And now I see that everything I wanted could never fit inside everything I needed, because the little that we need is so often left outside, hidden behind what we want.

And maybe I'm just having a rough day. Maybe all this holiday of wickedness nonsense has just worn down my better intentions. Maybe I'm just stuck inside one more of humanity's inhumanities. Or maybe I've stumbled out of bed into one more day stumbling through the stupidity of a life focused on focusing on choices that aren't worth the time I waste thinking I must make them.

It's not supposed to be like this. All this anger and arrogance. All this misunderstanding and refusing to understand. We're not meant to wake up to waste a day worrying about everything that doesn't matter so that we don't have to worry about our thus far failing to worry about what really does matter. Life isn't an assumption given us for us to just give away.

But that's all we can do when all we want to do is done as we see fit. Because again, we can't get anywhere better when everything goes.

Friends, I think it's time we stop looking at where we are and what's going on around us and instead look ahead to where we want to be and what's expected once we get there. Because honestly, staying where we already are should be something unanimously denied. We are a people who pride ourselves on advancement and growth and improvement, are we not? And pride aside, we are called to grow and improve and change and move.

Because where we are is still inside a world that isn't interested in God. We can't stay there, lost in that mindset that thinks so little of forever that we're even okay wasting today. Don't we understand that enough wasted days will add up to a wasted life? And while many are clearly more than okay with that, that kind of failure is unwarranted and wholly unwelcome before our Father.

He sent His Son to give His life that we might take hold the courage to take back our voices and use them to shout out a singular cry aimed finally confessing the He is God. But that's not something that tends to fit inside a world that does as everyone sees fit. No, He's too much expectation, too much responsibility, too many requirements in the apparent agreement that one single demand is a bit too much for us to embrace.

We shall have no other gods. And therein lies the problem, because all we know is to see ourselves as gods who deserve to do only as we see fit.

Sick of it. I'm entirely, physically, emotionally, purely done with living a life so open to input and suggestion and advice coming from a world that clearly doesn't care to care about what I know I care about. What do you care about? And if you're bold enough to answer that honestly, then what are you doing about it? How hard are you fighting for it? How much does it mean to you? What will we risk for what matters most?

This is something that just proves we cannot look any longer to the world around us to tell us who to be, how to live, what to do, where to go. No, that ends. Because this world will never have a direction in life. Too many people lost doing too many things for too many reasons, most of which are entirely centered upon self. And that's simply the contrary to who we've been called to be.

What we want, what pleases us, what brings us satisfaction, what we do in which we can glory or gloat should not matter anymore. That nonsense matters to the world but it has no room in the hearts or minds of those who truly want to serve Christ. Because that's not how He lived. He didn't waste His time worrying about doing only as He saw fit. No, as seen in His moments in Gethsemane before Calvary, He was here to fulfill God's will, not the preferences of the flesh.

That's the mindset we're called to have, and until we have that mindset, we're simply not where we need to be to do what we're here to do before He comes back to take us where’s He given us the chance to be. Because we cannot hold this line if we won't figure out what we stand for. And if we keep looking to a world that stands for nothing to help us figure out what matters, we'll end up just like them. And that's simply unacceptable in light of where we're called to come.

He's invited us to share eternity with Him in Heaven's perfection. Perfection is therefore the only pursuit that's worthy of our undertaking. And simply put, we cannot perfect this path spent following Christ if we can't bring ourselves to give Him everything we have with absolutely no thought given to what we'd rather do instead.

He is all or nothing, and in light of His selfless sacrifice, when did we arrive at this bogus conclusion that He's okay with us holding onto a bit of the selfishness that we've always seen all around us? No my friends, He deserves better even if we're aware that we'll never be perfect. What matters is the effort, not the outcome. The outcome is His to handle. All we can account for is the effort we put in to making sure we can honestly say we did all we could to give Him all we had.

Can we say that? Or are we maybe still living a little often much for a little too much of ourselves?

The status quo around us may not change as this world doesn’t find reason to alter their misunderstandings. But considering the priceless gift He’s given and the promise of the eternal peace toward which it leads, we’re fools to assume that it’s okay to keep living according to ways in which this wicked world works.

He gave His life to make all things new. So are we doing anything new on this side of the cross? Or are we still lost looking to a lost world to help us find the same nothing they’ll forever find?

Friends, the promise of His Promised Land deserves a passion that proves itself through not insisting upon carrying the old outlook through those gates into the new life He’s given. We should not only be willing to change, we should be desperate to die just so that none of the old us dares to try and come with us. Because that’s not who we should want to be anymore, not know what it took to wash it away.

So leave it behind, everything you’ve learned from the world and all that we’ll see the world do going forward. None of it is welcome where we’re going, and so none of it should be welcome to come along for the ride. Not worth the risk!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold