Day 3230 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 5:20 NIV

We have to first find the true bottom of our fall if we're to ever know the full measure of God's grace that awaits us there.

Because the humiliating fact is found in that we've found only reason to get this wrong. We've found only endless excuse to excuse bad behaviors so blasphemous that they've become a brokenness in which we've come to see beauty. Yes, we've lived so wrong for so long that it's right that now seems so strange that to even consider it is considered foolish. Indeed, we're so bent toward wrong that our understanding of the necessity of right is altogether fractured.

And in order for a people who've broken themselves into agreeing that the darkness of depravity is to be preferred to the freedom found in His light to agree to the humility needed for them to admit that they can't too be the same who heal themselves, that healing needed so desperately can only begin when our preference for all that breaks is broken.

The most terrifying part is that God knows, because that He knows means He will do whatever needed to lead us toward that healing that we'd otherwise deny if such should mean our end. He knows how to get us back to where we belong, but the shattering of sanctification comes in His convincing us that where we are now is not at all where we could be, should be, will be if we simply agree to let go of all we hold so dear.

Yes, sin is dear to us, in many ways the longest running and most trustworthy companion any of us have ever known. Sin has been catering to each of us and our unique idiocies for as long as we don't want to remember. Wickedness and the transgression it inspires to transpire has taught in us a gross lack of consideration of any and all external interest.

It's all about us, and being the selfish fools we've all sought if not fought to become, that sin pleases us most perfectly is every reason our wayward hearts need to allow it to remain forever.

And again, God knows that too. He knows we'll stay lost thinking ourselves found simply because we've found all we've wanted to find. He understands the grip of sin's gravity and the pull it's placed upon our hands and feet, eyes and minds, ears and the hearts that have learned to listen to them. Yes, God knows better than all just how far in the wrong direction we've fallen as He alone drew the line that is the map that divides darkness from light and thus us from Him.

Thankfully, He's not really a settler. He's not one to slip into bashfully agreeing to sufficient. Good enough to Him isn't at all good enough. There is either best or death. And as much as this world and the warped societies within have convinced us that this is evidence of either God's nonexistence or the unjustness of His existence, these lies are and have always been so easy to see for what they are and why they are.

We don't want God to be who He is. If we could figure a way, we'd be more than entirely pleased to deny Him altogether. Because His existence and the objective truth upon which He stands stands against the subjective stupidities to which we’ve settled to serve. That His Word confronts our opinions means that our opinions are instantly and eternally moot, but rather then then giving them the boot, no, we ask Him out of the way of our getting ours because ours to us means more, we assume, than His does to Him.

Except that whole cross part pretty much proves just how much His will and His way means to Him, and well, to say we’d do the same to ensure our way won is about as laughable as anything I can think of at the moment.

We wouldn’t do what He did to ensure that our way won, but since He would do what He did do to ensure His will did win, well then the problem is that He's made Himself known in far too many ways, the one being entirely sufficient. And so we've now not at all the possibility of plausible deniability. Can't deny Him, because we can’t quite seem to erase the cross, though many try, and try hard. But the fact of the matter is that matter is, and simply put, to believe all we see came from nothing exploding into everything requires a kind of faith that I don't think any of us can truly have.

Thus we set out to try and de-justify His existence and the stances upon which He's made clear He stands. We argue amongst ourselves, showing only a disappointed displeasure in His being the lone divine who was able to design all we've destroyed. We come up with all these positive affirmations that seem to affirm, confirm for us this preference of our self-perceived innocence.

And well, when we see ourselves as angels, how dare He threaten us with the company of the devil, right?

Indeed, this here is the outlook of most, defining the wide and its vast separation from the sparseness of the narrow unto which we're called but upon which few will tread. It's a line drawn in humility, which is entirely a gift given from our Father as, looking around, it's clear to see that such debasement is not something we know to, care to ever seek for ourselves.

It's from God, just as we're from God, but our belief that we're entitled to peace as the saints we assume ourselves to be has left us without either. Neither God nor the humility which must precede the healing that our flaws and falls so fully need.

So we stay broken, bent in such a way that we're adamant to do this our way, denying His any and all authority, despite His being the only authority by which we will be weighed. Judged. Sentenced should we stay outside salvation as so many assume a smart decision. It isn't but rather among the worst we could ever make, made so vastly, so widely, so boldly only because of this belief that God's truth isn't just simply because it challenges us and the lies we’ve written to keep ourselves seemingly saints.

It's amazing the realities from which we've run and the frivolities we've found in return. We've lost our minds, but yet we still somehow see ourselves as so flawless that if anything we're entitled to this goodness He claims to be but that we've convinced ourselves we've yet to see. No, we tell ourselves, and often whomever else might listen, that God is either not there or not good, simply because He says the things we like to do are bad.

There's arrogance and then there's what we're doing, and while the two are much the same, our version runs so deep that things such as intelligence, reason, gratitude and even understanding cannot exist. No, we're so entirely lost inside of ourselves seeking more the sins we adore that we can look at the cross, think of Christ and stay convinced that we had no part in any of it, to the very point that we paint it all as an illusion rather than the gift meant to shatter our selfish confusion.

See, that's the whole point of this truth we see here in Romans. God knows we’re stiff necked and stubborn. We’re a people prone to proof, need evidence, an undeniable realization that even our overwhelming irrationalities can’t undermine. Because we’re so self-absorbed that we literally live as if we know all there is to know, knowing therefore that all we like is enjoyed so justifiably that guilt is for us impossible.

And having thus devolved into seeing ourselves as the only divine, He knew we’d need help with realizing that we’re not these gods we've made ourselves out to be. And well, what better way to break through a barrier of boastfulness than by offering us something we don’t deserve? And what better do we not deserve than absolution? There is no gift greater than forgiveness because it is entirely, eternally, undeniably undeserved no matter the circumstance nor situation.

So you see, He made sin a category of choice, knowing it would become our drug of choice, so that guilt may rise in our hearts, leaving our hearts unable to claim themselves unaware of where all we’ve walked that we shouldn’t have, that He might then walk us lovingly back to where we wish we could be but know we could never find again. Yes, He gave us over to our way, our ideas, our demands to be left alone to do as pleases us.

But it wasn’t to lose us but that we might lose it all, all His hope, all His peace, all appreciation of His endless provision, all so that we could realize the losses we’ve found in all we’ve gained within glorifying ourselves that we might one day come full circle back to a humility that revived in us a humanity that appreciates once more all He did to first make us and now save us from the mess we’ve made apart from Him.

So you see, sin exists so salvation might, because He is a good Father who wants us to see that for ourselves, knowing how strictly we demand the evidence that affords us an assurance that we'll not lose more than we're willing to. And well, what better way to convince us to let go of what will eventually kill us than redeeming us back from the brink of the decimation we’ve designed in paving paths filled without His favor?

Yes, what better way to inspire in us that rare humility we cannot possibly give ourselves, choose ourselves, be ourselves that we ourselves need to save us from ourselves than pointing out that all we've done of ourselves, to ourselves, by ourselves has left us all alone, lost within ourselves?

Because deep down we know, whether or not we'll openly agree, that we cannot save ourselves. Even those many who claim themselves atheists or agnostics cannot deny that death is feared above all other outcomes, and that such is the outcome of every life lived here. And no matter anyone's faith or proclaimed lack thereof, that there might exist a slight chance that something waits after these lives have ended is, or should be, more than enough reason to at least consider God and the goodness He is.

Should be. But sadly, again, having resolved to unravel in such irrationality, even the chance at salvation and forgiveness and mercy and grace isn't evidence enough for many to appreciate all He's done to leave us nothing to do but live a life spent now in gratitude for His having done all we never could to pay the debt for all we did.

So many will continue to say and assume that God calling something we love sinful is unjust to the point of a sort of rudeness so unnecessary that we're justified in denying His existence. That God promises eternal death is considered evidence to some that He isn't good. But no friends, it's just proof that we're not. You want proof, hell is all we need. Hell is all the evidence we need that He is good, because it proves that we are not.

Because we're so not good that we don't deserve an outcome that finds us forever in His presence and all that His presence presents. We don't deserve the hope, the healing, the happiness. Shouldn't expect the love or the mercy or the two combining into a choice He chose that saves us from ourselves. No, we should never know peace because we've lived chasing it away.

And so hell is all we need to know for us to know that He is good, because if His presence isn't there, then neither are any of the good things in which we can hope. Because that we can hope in a place such as Heaven where there is no more weeping nor crying nor mourning nor pain, that's just a kindness extended unto a fallen people to give them something to reach for, fight for.

All we need is hell, but He offers Heaven. Because He is good, and our sins and His allowance of them proves that, because, as we see here, where our sins have increased, His grace has grown to meet their cost so fully that our salvation cannot be lost once we're found in Christ. But that’s just the dilemma, we just have to be those bold enough to find reason to find Him while He can be.

Because God's goodness will one day end, at least down here. Please don't be found among the many who mistake His patience for weakness or nonexistence. He will prove Himself again, but if we wait for that day, while we will have the evidence upon which our arrogance insists, it will have been found too late as we'll be found outside the only One who can and did save us.

The only difference between that can and did is whether or not we allow Him to. Because for many He could have, but for only a few will He have. Be in the few who believe Him good, even if it means agreeing that you aren't. Because yeah, it might suck to humble ourselves to seeing what we've made of ourselves, but it will be far worse a feeling to see what He could have made of us had we stopped tearing ourselves apart trying to find more sin in which to satisfy.

The true beauty of His benevolence is found only when we realize that His kindness continued to grow even as our hearts continued to die in the sins we continued to choose rather than choosing to return back to living in reverence of Him rather than the irrationalities that made such stupidity seem reasonable.

He is good my friends, more than we'll ever know. Just please don't wait to embrace that. Because so very many will only find out how good He is when His goodness has done as they requested and left them alone.

See, He is so supremely just and obliging that even beyond this freewill we've found as reason to do as we please without care as to what might please or displease Him, He will go so far as to give each of us exactly what our way of life asks for. May we no longer remain so diluted as to wait for the storm before we appreciate the shelter.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold