Day 3194 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 11:32 NIV

I fear that all of humanity has collectively fallen for a deception bred by a brand of disobedience that only a fallen arrogance could inspire.

Many of us, all in fact at one point or another as proven through pasts spent living as if we'll answer to no one, live or have lived as if God is a reactionary God. That He's of a similar weakness when it comes to foresight as we know ourselves to be. We assume that since we were made in His image, well then He must be like us, but no. While that was the initial intention, our inventions inspired since have rendered that reality forfeit.

To our failure.

Because we're the ones who changed as He does not. That fact is laid out in the proverbial black and white of Scripture's truth. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. He does not change like shifting shadows. Humanity on the other hand, well, that makes a far more ironic reality, and one altogether heartbreaking in that we live as if we loathe the very concept of change and yet change is pretty much all we've been doing since the first of us began our undoing.

Yes, when Eve plucked that fruit and Adam agreed to go along, thus was set in motion a tragic chain of events that will carry onward in perpetuity until the beginning of rest of eternity as found only upon our end here. Indeed, sin has been a friend of all mankind for literally our entire existence. And it will be in existence long after we're gone as more are coming after us who will sadly follow after us in the patterning in which we've played.

They say that to instruct a child in the way in which they should go will afford them a firm foundation from which they'll not turn as they grow. And by 'they' I mean God, the Godhead, three in one. The deity in whose image we were created before we set our souls afire through eyes entirely too interested in what we were solemnly told we could create on our own should we refuse God the reverence He alone deserves.

And well, this warped wheel keeps on rolling because the devil hasn't stopped his lies from flowing. And being the easily led gullible goons we've agreed to remain, we just fall in line and flow on behind.

Without any semblance of any concern as to where we're going. Just happy to not be the ones driving, as if that actually frees us from responsibility somehow. It doesn't, but that's another post.

For today, back to trying to understand a little better the God we've all collectively all but forgotten.

He isn't surprised. Not in the least. And yet we act like, live like we can catch Him off guard. I reckon it's a symptom of our having long taken Him entirely for granted to the point wherein He's now just an idea to many, a figment to most, the misplaced conceptualization of a corrupted generation not at all unaware that they're not at all any better than those who've gone down hard before them.

Before us. Ain't none of us off the hook here.

No, again, we all deserve our fair share of credit in this matter, and that's by no means anything to brag about. Because what we've managed to do in all our managing to make ourselves believe that sin is acceptable is that we've shoved God so far away that He's now flanking our six waiting to arrive once more as if a thief in the night. Guess we're supposed to somehow be more comfortable living inside the assumption that He's not coming rather than merely not knowing when He is coming.

Alas, humanity continues to embody the definition of asinine most of the time.

And this fact is proven rather effortlessly in that we still take His kindness for granted, as if we're owed that generosity. As if He will happily do again what's already been, benefiting us the opportunity to live like lunatics a little longer, a mistake only possible should we discount so deeply the design of Christ's death.

That's my point for today: God planned that day. He planned for Christ to come. He planned for the cross to be made. He planned for that chance at redemption to come for all who might dare have the courage to make a change for the better for once in their lives. He planned all of this knowing full-well who we'd be, who we'd become as a result of what we've done.

Yes, He knew what we'd do before we were ever even here to do it.

And thus again, as I said up top, God is not a reactionary God. We never catch Him by surprise. The Bible says that He knew us before He knit us together in our mother's wombs. And if that's the case, as it is the truth, then so too does He know our choices before we make them, our mistakes before they’re amassed into guilt, our growing guilt as the damnation it demands.

And while this seems to be sort of counter-productive for a God who is supposedly nothing but good, that it seems strange is only evidence of our once again failing to find Him. Because when you actually stop to think about it, it makes far more sense than our reactions to His actions. That humanity still lives in denial of Christ's sacrifice is where the stupidity lies.

It's not in a God who granted us freewill, but in that we’re the ones who used that freewill as an excuse to sin at will. We're the ones who messed this up, He just knew that we would.

Just a few chapters prior to this verse in Romans 11, Paul points this out as well. "The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase." Romans 5:20. God ordained the law so that those living in sin might know they were sinful. Get that? Before the law, all we were doing was letting Him down. But after the law was given, we were given eyes opened to seeing just how egregiously our faithlessness really was.

He breathed the law that we might realize the places in which we were failing so as to inspire us to stop being so foolish. But that it all seems to have backfired is where we get this all backwards. He didn’t create chaos by giving us the law, no, seems as if we just found new ways in which to rebel once we had a more firm understanding as to what He commands. Kind of one of those ‘don’t look down’ situations. He gave us Ten Commandments, and well, inspired by sinful advancements, we just set out to find new ways to break more rules.

Yes, His law was meant to remind us who He is and who we’ve been. But alas, pride is one powerful drug, a fact shown in that we still live like He should bend to our ideas as opposed to the other way around, which just so happens to be the only way this works. And that fact will be sealed upon Judgement Day.

Thankfully He’s patience with us, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance so that Judgement Day goes far better on our behalf than our buffoonery deserves.

And that’s the part that we can’t ever understand when we keep getting tripped up by the first half. We are law breakers, a masters of it. But beyond that cold hard reality lies the point of the Gospel: That we can take heart as our defined downfall into deepened disobedience isn’t all we learn in Romans 5:20. "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more."

Ever since Adam and Eve ate that fruit and thereby learned the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, humanity has known better than to have done all we've done against God. And the law was given so that we would know that He knew that we were doing wrong.

The law is a testimony against our foolishness, defining the ways in which we were failing to uphold God with the reverence He is due.

And yet, being the graceful and merciful and loving God He is, He planned for a way to bring us back from all these places we'd go that would inspire us to keep failing Him. He’s given us over to corruption that we might experience the redemption of rebirth through resurrection. All because He knew we’d live on the wrong side of right.

So He made a way before we went our way that we might know His grace personally personified through a changed life that we’ve shown we could never choose nor see to completion, as evidenced inside each of our pasts that prove the only change we care to make is that that makes us ignore Him more. And so that any can now admit Him at all, confess Him completely is a miracle of His own design.

A miracle that we ourselves can experience should we have the courage to change.

You see my friends, His plans are complete, and in Christ, He has proven that He will not let us unravel them. And in that there is both sovereignty and salvation for whomever may humble themselves to accepting in this life the death we need in order to live forever anew in Christ. That was His plan, His design, His creation.

It was not to keep us from sin as He knows we are all both stubborn as well as living in a sinful world that would only further inspire our fallen fervor, causing us to ignore Him with stiff-necked abandon. A fact shown in sin's growth even today into depths so depraved that we oughtn't dare even call upon His Name, as doing so demands fire raining down from Heaven upon us heathen.

But He chose instead to prove His mercy, His grace, His compassion unending through a salvation hinged entirely upon undue forgiveness given to everyone, even those who will never accept it.

See, that's the danger we're in. It's not that He's this vengeful God who's out to destroy us. The cross shows He could, but that He chose another path. No, the danger that we're in is that He's proven that He doesn't change His mind, and that our choices, our actions will never inspire otherwise.

All of this comes down to either acceptance or rejection.

So the only proper course of action given as the only correct reaction to a God who is not reacting our acting like fools is that we always keep in mind that He chose the Gospel. Chose to give it as a gift. Chose to offer us from His grace that one image, that one offering, that one opportunity. His choice to offer us salvation. And so should any refuse, that is their choice and He will not send another Savior.

It is Christ or nothing. Just that simple.

But that it is simple, as straightforward as a single choice, we had all better learn to choose far more wisely than our past decisions have defined, because God has already made His decision and therefore our reaction to it will define our eternity. Again, it's all either accept or reject. But do understand that that door swings both ways, and that when He has either accepted or rejected us, that is forever. It is final. It will not change.

And so, in light of His mercy, I can't fathom why any would reject that opportunity. Just because the world is doing that very thing doesn't mean we should remain so insane. No, as an underlying point strewn throughout many of these posts, we have to learn to stop letting this broken world make our choices for us. Because this place continues to prove that it can only make the worst possible picks.

And we should want better than that path, because the Bible tells us where it ends.

Friends, don't live like God will be surprised to find out who you are. He knows. But that's the problem. He knows. Every mistake, every failure, every foolish choice, every filthy word. He knows it all. And yet the Christ came. This world may have convinced you that you don't need forgiveness, but why risk it? If He is there, living like this world does is a big problem. And therein arrives our choice:

Stay the course or head for shore just in case the waters of wrath start rising.

And no, I'm not saying we've another flood to worry about as that's the one and only true meaning of the rainbow. I'm saying that His wrath hasn't changed since Noah's day, and sadly, neither has our tendency to test it. And while water may not be the worry, that doesn't mean we shouldn't fear. We most definitely should, again, He doesn’t change. And so lessons learned the hard by the likes of Sodom and Gomorrah, they still stand.

He’s still that God too, not just the half that the world likes to focus on, this God of nothing but love and tenderness. He is love, but so too is He vengeance. “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. Thus we should probably stop writing checks our souls can’t satisfy should they remain stained by those poor choices He’s offered to make clean.

Because, and do think this over, the kind of God who loves so deeply as to send His Son as a sacrifice to achieve salvation displays a perfect kind of love that is undeniable. But seeing as He is both love and vengeance, what do we think He can do to those who deny said Son and live as if He isn't needed?

Take that chance if you want to, but as for me, I'll take the change before the change isn't possible anymore. Because I know that day is coming, and that once those gates are closed, it’s going to be horrific for any and all found outside, separated forever from the One who died to give them a chance.

A chance that they never found the courage to take.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold