Day 3203 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 7:7 NIV

Action, initiative, investment, movement, a faith so alive and breathing that we'd just as soon not breathe another breath without it as it’s become the very breath we breathe.

But is that in any way what our understanding of faith remotely resembles or rather are we still allowing our understanding as marked and mangled by misunderstandings to prevent or postpone or otherwise hinder our growth inside this impossible opportunity instead exchanged for a life merely entangled still in this place among a humanity settled outside of God's amazing grace and content on staying torn apart?

Indeed I fear that far too much is still made of our understandings. In fact, we seem to have this insatiable need to understand before we dare undertake. It's like we live life wrapped within this fear of falling short as we know so well the many times we've done just that thus far. And so instead of faith we solemnly accept only what we can prove or have proven without any requirement on our part as that without requirement seems also to have little if any risk.

But why so hesitant toward risk? What is it that we've left to lose? What did we ever really have to lose that wasn't either given to us or simply never truly ours to begin with?

See, that's part of the message of the cross. What we've done, and horrid it is, still wasn't enough to cancel or void or invalidate God's design for mankind. No, while we have indeed made a right mockery of life itself right down to this foolish failing to understand the foundation of our existence, God's existence overcomes our underwhelming mishandling of our many undeserved opportunities.

All of our life up to this point has sadly been seen as just that, our life. It's sadly seen as our time, our hopes, our plans, our dreams, our failures, our successes, our story, our glory, our gain, our loss. And when all is seen through vain eyes insisting that they know enough to somehow measure up and be enough, then sure, to do anything beyond the ordinary is to invite a great risk to our current if albeit self-assumed sufficiency.

In fact, anymore it seems that to do anything at all is considered arguably too much of an instability as believed only because of our complacency so far within the well-known.

That's why I've felt this need to say something about this needless discrepancy dividing works for salvation and works from salvation. I entirely understand and fully agree that for us to assume we need to do something in order to earn our salvation is an assumption bred within arrogance, almost an entitlement to absolve ourselves so as to avoid the humiliation of our needing another. And so no, we're not to pay Him back nor earn His love.

Wouldn't be a gift and thus He'd not be due the glory.

But as I've hopefully been getting across of late, our not having to do anything stops once we've truly accepted what He's already done. Up to the cross, we've nothing to offer of any worth that could ever come close to equivalent to His accomplishment. But beyond the cross, we've at the very least a cross to take up. Not because He asks us to make ourselves right in His eyes, but simply because to do any less wouldn't be right at all.

And yet our always hearing that less is more has left us seeing less as so vastly and widely considered so much that we instinctively seek to do as little as humanly, or rather inhumanly as possible. Yes, to accept or assume sufficient a lazy faith free from any effort which may dare be considered work is entirely subhuman. It's not even animal as at least animals scour and scavenge in search for food for themselves or their pack.

But sadly there seems anymore just as many along the lines of Proverbs 26:15 than there are those who would agree to 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Proverbs 26:15 tells us that, "A sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth." But to the contrary, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 finds that those early emissaries embodied a willingness to never be more of a burden than needed.

"For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.'"

"While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, 'Take and eat; this is my body.'” Matthew 26:26

If we are to partake of Him as we are so clearly called, work must be done. Not to earn our share but to show we appreciate His sharing. Because in truth, none deserve what He's done for all, and it's only by living, asking, seeking, knocking, serving, washing, speaking, teaching, just simply trying that we can ever show Him that what He's done is worth our doing whatever we can to show the world that it has been done for them too.

And yet still remains small the gate and narrow the road, and sparsely filled it carries onward.

Why so few? Why so lonely? Why is His path so widely avoided that it's become so narrow if not for misunderstanding what's truly required to walk thereon? This world has gotten so many things so backwards and blasphemed that it's amazing any can find any reason to adhere to His simplicity. Because it does make no sense to us down here. But is that not only because we're used to how things work down here?

He is not limited to our ways, His are higher. His plans better. His promises a kind of fullness that forever is needed for us to even come close to experiencing them all. But here we sit, souls stained by a sullen and shady society that's sought only to show us all all the ways by which we can get by on the bare minimum. Friends, there ought to be no consideration of bare minimum when it comes to our faith.

We can't pray enough. We can't read His Word enough. We can't speak enough or share enough of all we learn and find inside those pages. We can't worship Him loud enough, long enough. We can't keep church locked inside 9:30-10:45 on Sunday mornings. We don't plan fellowship. We can't orchestrate observance or remembrance. It's bigger than holidays as the celebration shouldn't cease!

But has it even begun?

Do our lives evidence any awareness of what He's truly accomplished for us? Our joy should invoke a rejoicing so noticeable that the world hates us for the light we shine so glaringly into their shadows of insufficiency. We should be waging war against our own shortcomings as they shouldn't retain any regard in our sight. We should be washing feet and feeding the hungry and helping the poor and protecting the innocent from a world that despises their liberty from lasciviousness only because they all lost that long ago.

And yet here we sit debating the necessity of works despite verses such as this here in Matthew pointing to actions demanded as displays of faith.

We're told over in Hebrews 11:6 that, "without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." He doesn't ask for retribution for the cost He paid for our redemption. But He does ask that we walk by faith. Walk. Come to Him believing in Him, knowing that He will reward such audacious action done alongside a people who don't in a place that won't.

Why does He ask from us this faith shown in such movement?

Because for us to ask is to agree to the humility that reminds us that He knows all we don’t. To seek Him shows Him that we’re not willing to settle again as we’ve done in the past as we know now that there’s always more of Him to find as only the infinity of forever is worthy of Him. And to knock testifies that we’re not afraid of life’s challenges nor the many barricades built to belittle or betray, but instead that we trust Him so deeply that we’ll follow Him completely knowing that only His will can lead us where we’re meant to be and help us avoid everywhere we shouldn’t go.

Friends, faith is something that found us but it’s also something we should crave more of. We should ask for more of Him and the humility only His Spirit can instill. We should seek a deeper knowledge of His Word, of His will, of His way. We should knock on every door He puts in our way, not asking that it be moved so the road is easier and therefore demanding of less work on our part but asking Him to help us see what purpose that barricade offers to the building and strengthening of our faith.

But do we even care about building or strengthening our faith? Do we see the challenges in life as doors we're called to faithfully knock upon or merely as conclusions we're not meant to trust beyond? Are the things we do ask Him for asked for in hopes that He gives us something to do so that we've a purpose to undertake for Him or are they merely requests for things we don't want to have to do, to have to go through?

The fact of the matter is that faith isn't a gift but a duty. Salvation is the gift. Redemption is the gift. Mercy that manifest among us for no reason whatsoever having anything to do with us, that is the gift. Our faith though, it's our chance to show Him that we've agreed to be changed, to be healed, to be free from the foolishness we've always known and to now seek to learn all we've never cared to know before.

This road we're called to walk upon ends in Heaven, but if we don't walk it, how dare we assume our wanderings will just happen upon it? He leads the way, that's why He came. But He will not pick up our feet in order to move them for us in order to have our faith for us. He paved the path, but we've got to be the ones who turn onto it and follow it and share it and seek it and strive for it with everything we have. Because He deserves nothing less as He paid for exactly that:

Everything we have left.

So much of Scripture is written in words of action. There's movement showing trust shown in those many moments wherein the faithful couldn't see what was up ahead but didn't let that stop them from moving toward it anyway. There's hope held so tightly that it kept alive a fire that stepped to the edge of a sea certain that it's going to split apart. There are so many impossible stories that required so much impossible action that I just think it's safe to say that we're still called to do the same.

Maybe not fight giants or part seas or free peoples from lands in which they're suffering in slavery. Perhaps we'll never be asked to offer our children as sacrifices like Abraham was. And I don't know of any cities that it would make much sense for us to march around seven times waiting for walls to fall.

But that doesn't mean that He doesn't have something for us to do.

"Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation." Mark 16:15

"I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." John 13:15

"The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’" Mark 25:40

And that’s just it, it all leads back to Him, but here's the thing, it all follows a path we have to be the ones walking. And walking is movement, and movement is work, and work is okay because we're not working for our salvation as our salvation has been given. No, we're working from our salvation to show the world the work He did to achieve for us this new hope that has inspired this new life that we're living as if we're living for Him rather than ourselves.

Ask, seek, knock. Faith needs to be sought, desired, demanded. And we should demand of ourselves the fullest measure of faith we can fathom and find because this narrow road must be found as it is not a given in this place trying to take away our faith by making it seem foolish and futile. And we can only find it by asking for it, by seeking for it, by knocking on every door He places in our way to test our faith or knocking down every door the world places in our way to try and keep us from Him.

Never settle, never stop looking, never stop evaluating your spiritual health and intensity. Because in full honesty, if we're not entirely zealous for Christ then we mustn't know anything of who He is nor have any idea as to what He's done. Because if we did, if we do, we'd never stop asking for more and refusing to accept less.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold