Day 3233 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:17 NIV

This otherwise impossible shift from slaves to sons deserves a devotion devoid of any other direction other than that distinctly aimed at wanting more of He who made it promised.

Because we shouldn't have this chance. This hope shouldn't be alive as we ourselves, our souls should still be lost, twisted and entwined within all to which we've lived thus far chained. And yet, this faith that's now breathing with every breath we take has fastened our pursuits to a steadfastness impossibly found inside hearts that were somehow freed from the many misspent pasts we've mistakenly taken far too lightly.

But we have this chance, this choice, this change to choose that can and will help us lose all that's already lost so that we might now finally find ourselves found inside the Son who came to ensure that such freedom is final for all who dare leave behind the enslavements they've known.

The enslavements we've known. Attached to every hollow and heartbreaking service surrendered unto sacrificing ourselves, our souls, our hopes and healings in exchange for a most harmful habituation spent habitually hastening into a habitation of hatred and hardship. Yes, our lives have been thus far given over to so many things that have all collectively given us nothing in return.

But we've not cared about the return as the reward was assumed always up front. Payment in full from the first moment, an initial step taken in satisfaction sufficed to show that we've successfully stumbled upon something worth having. Always living as if the moment at that moment mattered more than the many which hadn't yet come. Yes, a way of wandering that wanted always something instant, as if a life could be fulfilled in such.

It can't, never could, just that we could never understand that wrapped inside these misunderstandings that had us straining for such selfish successes as pleasure and power. Again, as if that's all that life ought to mean, all that life might actually hold, all that's somehow meant to hold all that life so fully means! How dare we assume such a shallow and simple view of something that God began inside His own image?

Do we truly believe, as our past have shown, that God took all His time and effort given unto a love so perfect as to create we who've become but creatures of chaos all for us to accept said outcome? Did He honestly expect such limited appreciation as for us to assume that our time here is best spent on building a life that saves no room for reverence of Him, thus needing salvation from a manner of sinful outlook that has long held us outside His presence?

Do we honestly want to continue living this lie of a line lost outside of God's grace when without said grace all we've gained is a losing battle with the grave?

See, turns out that sin does some incredible things to our minds and the many priorities which they make. It teaches us to discount everything to the point of even selling our souls as if they've no worth. Can you imagine that? Trading away a gift we know we can't buy back in exchange for a bunch of junk that's bought and sold by the day? Time traded for trinkets and toys, assuming always joy found to the full within the fun they follow?

Energy and effort expended upon enjoyments expendable, leaving us nothing by which to strive for something of actual value that extends beyond the barricades of this side of the horizon upon which we've built our homes? Yes, castles carved from shifting sands, always needing something new to patch the holes left by the fallacy of the old treasures we saved that could never save us?

How wrong we've gotten this all! Living as if life's not worth living for anything more than lifeless passions that pass like ships in the night, off to the next sorry soul unwilling to wage war against all that's been allowed to win our attention for far too long.

And so yes, thanks be to God! A gratitude displayed within an attitude shifted to actually caring about what we do knowing now that He's always cared so much that He didn't even stop at the underserved guidance of prophets but sent Himself to walk among us so that we might have eyes to see and ears that hear something other than the commercials aimed at achieving our alliance with all that's still trying to buy us.

But are we still for sale? That's the question we each ought to ask ourselves each morning when we're undeservingly awakened to a new day that we've yet to make a mockery. It's something we should honestly spend some time studying and searching and seeking a stern resolve within. Because again, this world still wants all we've yet to lose. The devil wants every bit of us that he can get.

Will we give away what Christ died to regain?

Life! He died that we might live again, once more for more than the death we've known within the sins called friends so long that we failed fellowship with the most faithful Father one could ever hope for. Gave it all away, as I said yesterday, bankrupted Himself that we might become rich in a humility that is literally all that can afford the kind of faith that ain't none of us can ever live without.

Oh sure, we might feel as if we're living now, having lived this way for long enough that we've indeed made a life out of such senseless nonexistence. But is there sustenance within this search for which our selfishness seeks? Is this sustainable? Can this sin we love so much sustain us past the moment beyond which the pleasure fades? Or is it fatal, a fact faithfully shown in every failure for any pleasure to last long enough the misery of shame doesn't follow?

See, this life we've known is not a life at all. It's an existence spent expectant of entertainment. Enjoyment is all we're here for, or so it would seem, as it so clearly has been. But is what has been worth being again, or having come to know what He had to do to achieve something new, can we now see the beauty in letting go?

That's what He did it all for. It wasn't to give us the freedom to sin without shame as if our cost of such miscalculated choices were perpetually paid in full. It wasn't to absolve whatever debts we might still incur for continuing within this idea that has us so inconsiderate of God's mercy that we live as if it's assumed. No, He died that we might share!

Because there's been alive in us a death that needs to die if we're to ever hope of living again.

But shame be to us, we still find ways to wonder. Is it worth it? Will this distant promise pay in deeper reward than the pleasures we'll have to abstain from along the long way there? Can His promise truly pay us in a peace that's worth wading through war between here and home? Will we arrive at those gates to find something that makes us forget all the funs we never knew in the life we left behind?

Or might we arrive on that day to be disappointed that we didn't live our lives to the fullness of the folly found by so many others?

If such a worry is still in our minds, then our hearts are still apart from the One who came to stitch them back together so that they might beat to the tune of life once more. Because if there's alive in us any doubt that He died for something that might not be worth living for, then we don't at all deserve His gift of grace because it should be worth racing into the grave in order to share the chance to lose everything we've known of a misspent life.

Because that He so willingly, so expediently, so mercifully wanted, not chose, not considered, not was talked into nor convinced of the intrigue of such an idea, He wanted to give His life. Why? For what did He aim to accomplish in such a stern surrender? Of what payment, what proof what He's hoping to see in return for that kind of gesture?

Allegiance. Loyalty. A kind of staunch obedience that finds Him so trustworthy and true that it leaves our hearts unwilling to consider anything but more of Him the only reward wanted out of whatever remains of this life as we know now that this life is but the beginning of what's still to come. That's what He promised, a place prepared and a path that wouldn't dare disappoint as it couldn't possibly miss the mark He made on a map only He knows.

Yes, only He knows the way to life as He alone is THE LIFE. This isn't it. What we've known so far isn't life. It's death, as such is the wages of sin and sin is all we've known as having been slaves to such limited hope as selfishness and all that satisfies it. But again, is that all we still want knowing now that He so obviously died for something more than our staying the same.

None would ever give their life for something so stagnant as the same. Just makes no sense. But that He did die, gave His life, laid down His body and poured out His blood proves beyond any doubt that He did it for a reason. And being the eternal God without beginning or end, Alpha and Omega, that he embraced our human limitations and came to experience our inevitability proves that He's opened unto us a way into eternity.

And that simply deserves our fealty. Our faithfulness. Our fidelity to following forever the Father who came as the Son to offer us the change from slaves to sons ourselves. Because that chance at a change in identity should be shown a change in priority as well. But that's for each to decide as such is the seriousness of salvation. He did what He could, all He could. Now it's on us to do as we choose in response to this message He left.

Taste and see. Take a step down a new path and try something we've not known yet, at least somewhat expectant that we should see something thus far unknown, perhaps an unknown found even within as an obvious result of a change we’d not have ever dared to make of our own. A different kind of freedom, not one of thought alone but of action and movement. Chains left shattered on the ground that we might move from where we've always been, who we've always been.

Freedom to find faith in something other than hoping for more than just another failure of fulfillment such as that always found in sin’s fleeting amusement!

Such freedom leans so heavily on this assurance that He will not fail as such is about all that's impossible with Him. He will not fail. Will we? We have, but now we have the chance to choose to do something new. Follow. And why shouldn't we? I mean, if He loves us so much that He came to find us while we were still His enemies, died for us while we were in enmity, just imagine what He will do for those who seek fellowship with Him!

I want to know. I insist upon knowing what else He can do, will do in me, for me, with me if I don't restrain any of me from Him and His will. But I know there's only one way to find out, and it's a narrow gate indeed. So narrow in fact that not one memory of the past can fit, just a focus. A faithfulness. A dependency upon His provision is all that's allowed past the point where our pasts can be left behind.

We have that opportunity today, right now in fact. To leave the past behind and loose all the chains that have defined it. That's what He offers, and what He will accomplish should we dare to accept is a transformation so radical that all we've known of life so far is counted as loss that we might gain the new understanding of our existence that He died to give us. All it takes is a humble courage that's beyond willing to try.

It takes a humble courage insistent upon dying to everything behind that we might not miss whatever He might have in store. And that can only come from hearts regenerate, which just so happens to be one of the impossible outcomes of which He alone is known to be capable. He's the best at bringing dead things to life.

We just have to admit we've known only death so far in order for Him to show us what He can do to revive in us a hope that died long ago.

And again, that He died to give us the chance to see what else He can do should ignite in us this undivided devotion that refuses to not find out, whatever the cost of admission. Because by His blood we can now pay through faith as such is the only offering we can offer that’s able to be exchanged for the righteousness that’s demanded to make this trip we shouldn’t have the chance to understand toward a place that our pasts didn’t appreciate.

No, our pasts and our understandings then grew to enjoy enslavement as those chains we’ve known become part of our identity. But thanks be to God that He can take chains and turn them into chances that inspire changes that find us finally freed, using now our freedom to serve the One who came to serve with a sacrifice of which we’ve now the opportunity to share, and the excitement to endure.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold