Day 3236 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV

I fear the simplicity of this faith is lost behind the fullness of the surrender.

Because in truth, where this faith leads we don't want to go. Not talking about Heaven as that reward is one for which we can all easily aim as the hope held therein is entirely too incredible for words which we know are just wasted trying to imagine it. No, I'm talking about the path that faith follows through a world fallen, because the toil of the times will only continue to boil until our time is done.

And simply put, this fact presents far too much pressure in our present, and we're just a people who go out of our way to stay within the comfort of the way we already know.

Yet that sort of complacency always spent contending for our comfort is the exact counter to this cost we're asked here to pay for our admission unto this mission to make known the Messiah before we inevitably say sayonara. We're asked quite blatantly to indeed betray our very selves inside the sharing of crosses taken up and preferences sacrificed upon them. We're asked this of Christ Himself, and yet we seek an answer that affords us only a front of faith without the fortitude to follow through.

And that is why and where we will always fail to find the fullness of our Father, because He is hidden in places we can't see beyond challenges we won't like found in directions we wouldn't choose to go as they require a courage we know we don't have. So then comes the inevitable breaking point wherein we either break away from the life we've lived and how we long sought to live it or we break off chasing Christ and forfeit the faith that was needed to be where He's gone.

This is also where we can now see that all of this effort we’ve given has gone wasted as we see now we’ve only been working on finding all these other ways to get somewhere easy, roads that only go in circles leading right back to who we’ve settled to remain.

Because, despite our years of effort and assumption, we can't find His promise any other way. It's not in any other place along any other path demanding any other price. This faith is truly an altogether life or death investment. Invest our lives and embrace that death is due or invest in avoiding said death and assume we know life as nothing more than what we've already lived of it. But that we dare assume that we owe nothing in response to His redemption is a gross lack of understanding, which leads then to the point for this second day of this unfolding new.

Has that new worn off yet? Now that the parties are over and the cleaning up of confetti and chaos has gotten underway, are we ready to do so as well? Are we ready to get back underway? Are we really willing to undertake what's demanded of this narrow going forward? And how dare we attempt to answer that question if there remains any of our old still within our view looking hopefully into this new?

No, this faith deserves a devotion entirely void of all commotion as commenced within the old concessions for which we've contended as in such we've come to find contentment. And simply put, if it leaves us comfortable, it cannot possibly change us, and that which doesn't change us clearly lacks the severity to really matter all that much.

Because if this faith and the promise toward which He points is of the worth it deserves then we'd be ecstatic to lose whatever loss we've already gained so that we might have a bit more room for a little bit less of all we've been. Which is exactly what He calls us now to be should we honestly ever hope to be where He's gone, a home that awaits only when we're gone from here.

But that's where it all gets weird in light of our wayward way of working to avoid the weight of where we are and what's still along the way before the Way gets us where we're hoping to be going.

The fact of the matter is that nothing has changed of late that should suffice as evidence of an easier road home. Nothing. Holidays and celebrations and this exchanging of gifts and making of memories has begun to wind down and once more be replaced with the realization that we're still in very much the same place as we found ourselves fighting in the days before the end of year ceasefire.

The peace and quiet that I hope we've all enjoyed have been just that, very much enjoyable. It's wonderful to break away from the ruts and routines through which we trudge the majority of the time. It's nice to reset inside a refreshing season of silent nights and calmer days. But to assume that such could ever become the status quo is an outlook only possible when reality isn't welcome to chime in. Because simply put, we should know better.

Life here hasn't been easy, and as such, to assume if not insist upon easy going forward is merely to do the contrary to what we're called.

See, we’re here told that God will make our paths straight. Sounds easy, this much is true. But here comes the misunderstandings of which we've come to all but embody. Straight paths, sure, but He didn't say anything about simple paths. Didn't mention safe paths. Didn't promise tranquil passage through a season of intense satisfaction as seen within our sense of being entitled unto such merely because we claim a Name that our thoughts don't always follow.

Yep, another one of those. It is what it is...

The fact of this faith is that it should, He should consume all of us. Not collectively as in as a society, that ship has sailed, struck reality and started sinking into insanity. He should consume all of an individual. Heart, soul, mind, strength. Body, beliefs, better judgements, best intentions. Preferences, opinions, priorities and present insecurities. Time, space, attention, entitlement.

He should either replace or remove all that we've been so that we now can be what we've just not been able to be before.

Such as faithful. Resilient. Resolved. Certain. Courageous. Invested. Surrendered. Selfless. Everything we see in Him should, at some point, start to be seen in some measure inside of us. But there exist barricades meant to betray such benefit as our old way of thinking thought all of the above as at least potentially problematic if not entirely unbecoming of who we'd become.

Take faithful for example. Life here has taught us, the hard way, that to be too faithful unto anything or anyone only opens us up for the potential of disappointment should said faith be taken for granted as say something like a friendship eventually fractures and paths diverge. We've all been faithful to many things, and most if not all of them have let us down and made us question just how much hope we should place in the next opportunity.

Or how about courage. We might like to think of ourselves as courageous, but to what extent? Do we truly embody this ability to smile in the face of danger? Or do we rather do our best to avoid it knowing well that we'd probably run or hide instead? Indeed, do we not hide from things daily that we otherwise don't want to do? Do we not leave the Bible dusty because the truths inside might offend?

Can we even admit that? And if we can't admit that we're not doing our best to learn the most that we possibly can about this way of life now opened unto us thanks only to His death, well then it would seem that we can't even offer honesty. And honestly, if we can't even be honest with ourselves, what makes us so certain that we've confessed all the wrongs we've done against the One who won victory over them?

See, we're so accustomed to convincing ourselves that we're all sorts of things that we're not that it's pretty clear why God here calls us to stop looking to ourselves to be the fountains of wisdom we've come to see ourselves being.

There's smart and there's wise, and no, the two are not the same. Not even close. Because most of us are indeed smart in regard to a wide variety of things. But few of us have happened upon wisdom because in truth, wisdom doesn't exist inside of us naturally. Well, it did once but then we were born into this insanity we continue to spread. And well, suffice to say we can't then be the ones to find our way back.

Thankfully, He doesn't ask us to find our way back to the beginning. He just agrees to disagree and invites us all to simply start over. Just with us not all that much involved in the decision making anymore. Because our tries have just gone bad. Like really, really bad. And that's both where and how He can and will make our paths straight. Because simply put, any direction straight away from the insanity we've designed is bound to be a vast improvement!

Which is precisely why we're called to lean not upon our own understanding. Because our own understanding assumes life is supposedly best lived only when it’s safe and easy and comfortable and personally prosperous. Our understanding believes that we might actually have something to lose that we can't afford to even try to live without. Our understanding sees the cross as a cost we can't pay, because we understand death as simply the end.

But these wayward assumptions aren’t seen in the path paved out before us. We see not safety nor assurance of ease even in He who is our Savior. We don't see in His story that death is defined by a coffin closed buried beneath six feet of dirt through which we can't crawl even if the lid weren't nailed down. We don't see in the Gospel that we've found things in this life, of this life that we need to hold onto.

Just that we need to let go of everything that's kept us enslaved to a place that wasn't, isn't and shouldn't be allowed to be seen as our home.

Because if we insist upon the sort of safety and tranquility that we've sought to enjoy here, then we’ll never come to see that Christ is in the fire, before the giant, staring down starving lions nor truly even hanging upon the cross. This is why the prosperity gospel and every other false progressive like it is so dangerous and detrimental to the fullness of this faith unto which we’re called.

He never promised safety nor ease nor prosperity. He merely promises security, meaning and purpose.

That our peace is held securely in Heaven, that our meaning is meant to follow the misery He mapped out leading onto the cross where our preferences die then into the tomb where we leave them forever to stay, and that our only true prosperity is only found in losing every worldly vice that has taught us to assume that faith is supposed to make all this easy.

It isn’t. Makes it simple, makes it straightforward, but never makes it easy.

Thus we mustn’t lean upon our own understanding, as if we do, we’ll only seek to avoid, as we have, the misery that makes His promise so worth the war both within and along the way. Because until we come completely to terms with all of who He really is as well as all of what He really did, then there is no possible way for us to fully understand that this life we're living is one meant for us to lose.

And this is truth because if we don't lose the death of sin that we've come to enjoy, we'll never understand the worth of the freedom found in His forgiveness that makes now possible a new life lived without the enslavements to self that we’ve failed to see.

But our understanding doesn't like loss. We don't like humiliation. We despise confrontation. Each of us do all we can to avoid being offensive or offended. Every single life seeks satisfaction as defined by selfish desires. We all know well the way which is called 'ours'. And thus we all know nothing of the way that is His.

Hence the need to lean not on ourselves anymore, because who we are is nothing but who He had to die to save from the chains we think priceless simply because they're made with worldly gold.

Friends, this road leads only into the unknown. We can't know what lies ahead, and as such, we can't possibly assume that we can handle it alone. We can't. But the good news is that we're not meant to. That's why Christ came. It's why He left the Holy Spirit as a down-payment upon the peace that He's promised is waiting just beyond the horizon. It’s why He breathed out His Word for our benefit, not our comfort, but our benefit.

It's because this life is our time to learn how to let God lead. But we can only do that when we don't try to anymore. And while that is hard, it's actually accomplished rather easily within the death we've come to assume we need to avoid. Because that's not what He did, and so it's no longer what we should hope to do either. No, we should share in His suffering, eagerly, excitedly, completely if need be.

Because it's only when we share in Him that we can actually find Him. And though He be found in the death of our old lives, it just means that our death isn't the end our understanding assumes it to be.

So friends, as we fumble feebly into this faith afforded by each remaining day we've left, let us stop running around in circles trying in vain to find ease or comfort. Let us instead submit to God in every way we possibly can and watch Him then do what He does best:

Make the path we're to follow as straight as possible. Because in light of the hope His promise holds, who cares if it leads into the battle, into the fire, into the storm, into the grave?

No, because of the cross we can now see clearly that it's not where His path leads that defines this opportunity but rather where it ends. Because His way will lead into our end, but then it carries onward and eventually ends in Heaven.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold