Day 3238 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 3:3 NIV

Perhaps every complication in life and all complexity of faith is found only within our insistence upon our help being needed.

As if God's ordination and organization aren't enough to ensure the success of this good work He's begun inside of us. It's as if we do unto faith as we've come to do all through life and allow the new and novel to weaken and wane into this wondering that leaves us wandering toward weariness which eventually gives way to weakness both of faith and our resolve to remain resilient in the pursuit thereof.

Yes, when those first steps are taken beyond the known safety of the boat, it's incredible. Everything feels impossible, a sort of excitement entwined with elation that is in every way unlike anything we've ever felt before. It's truly as if everything we see and do and say is there for the very first time. This shifting started by the Son wins for us a victory over a mundanity that we'd never realized had stained our eyes so dim.

But alas, the colors of life fade once more as we drift deeper from shore into the expansive uncertainties that define this path blazed by the divine. Because our humanity just refuses to become anything but the relentless pestilence it's always been. It won't let us break freely for freedom, insisting instead upon our finding a way to work off some of our salvation as if He's actually waiting for us to pay Him back before faith is found in full.

A mindscape only seemingly inescapable because of manmade barricades like prison bars just without the need of a key as we keep ourselves and our faith in check most of the time.

Yeah, we always find a way to muddy the simplicity of salvation and the Savior who saved it for us, saved us for it, saved everything for everyone and opened unto everyone everything we'd never possibly have the hope of any other way. A bright new day dawning on each of us in increasing measure, but only able to increase as we ourselves decrease. We see this verbatim within the words of one who was here to do what we're now able to.

"He must become greater; I must become less.” John 3:30 finds the Baptist shining forth the simple humility which ought to be among our greatest goals within this new life spent in a direction we've not gone before. You see, John had been preaching the nearing of the Messiah, and well, He showed up! And as Christ began the greater work He came to do, John's heralding of His arrival was now a message that didn't make much sense to keep sharing much longer.

You don't keep telling people that someone who has already shown up is going to be showing up soon. Seems sort of redundant, doesn't it?

So no, John knew that the bulk of his purpose was accomplished. Not that he stopped proclaiming the Christ he'd been serving, just the urgency of the anticipation was nearing its end and Jesus was getting underway in paving the way toward which John had been working. And so yes, He should then become greater while the messenger likewise faded into the list of those who'd done what they were called to do before He came to finish it all.

See, Christ is the culmination, even still for us today, of all we're here to do. And in that fact we find that anything we do manage to do was always meant to pale in comparison to what He already did. And in that we see that each of us have an end to our effort as there simply comes a time when His is the only light that should shine as He is in fact still the narrow gate through whom all must pass if we hope to be welcomed through those of pearl.

And yet that's not sometimes how we see it. We're all still radically accustomed to this break-neck way of life that keeps coming at us insisting we keep going for it in return. Indeed, much of if not all of life as we've mishandled it is a matter of our efforts given unto the assurance of our successes within whatever endeavor we may be prioritizing at the time.

But so too, since we do know that we've a limited amount of that finite resource in reserve, we feel this constant need to see constant progress. And well, should anything ever stymie or stagnate, then we're none too quick to veer off into the next venture that's been waiting in the wind for our finally turning to chase it for a season or two.

Problem is that none of this really works all that well in a faith that works not like anything we've wrecked thus far. No, along this novel way aimed into a different hope, God just does things quite differently. He comes along and leads us little by little, easing gently into the process of sanctification from the very start so as to help us acclimatize to the undertaking of this radical new life that we're now to live following the Christ instead of continuing on behind our prior desires racing the other way.

And again, as we begin to catch the flow of how He goes, our faith increases because we learn to see things differently which in many ways leaves us seeing for the first time through opened eyes not blinded by a lost life's allure. Indeed, at the start we begin witnessing the little miracles He works daily in our lives that have absolutely nothing to do with who we are nor what we're capable of on our own.

Yet the tragedy is in that still the world screams alongside us beckoning us, begging us to come back to the bar and drink our fill of the foolishness of self-dilution. And as such, there approaches these little windows in which we wonder, and if peered through long enough, so too may we soon wander. And if we agree to that old way once more, the faith we had experienced and the hope that had begun to grow begins to fade.

Because faith is always either growing or dying as there is no life-support in this journey!

So if or when we let our ears retune to the world, the lies we knew contend again with the truth we're learning, and thus they reconvene into our consideration all the concessions upon which we once compromised. And through it all, the deeper we go into the lane of Christ spent fleeing and fighting the wanton ways of this wearied land, we will see the floor of normal begin to fall from under us.

But when that bridge to hope begins to skew as the uncertainty continues to come each day anew, if our minds are intrigued by the lies of worldly comfort, we'll entertain turning back and walking away. Or at the same time, as faith calls us deeper into walking by faith as the ground falls out, so too might we begin to assume that we're to take over building something to keep the going easy.

A bridge toward better built by human blaspheme if you will.

But here's the thing, as none of this was on us to find, nor is this faith on us to further! This is God's doing, and He does it for His glory. And thus many of the complications and complexities come because one of the hardest things for our ego to learn is that we needn't seek our own anymore. In fact, behind Him we can’t seek our own glory any longer because the simple fact is that if we try, we're only both stealing His honor and allowing faith to flounder.

Both of which are entirely unacceptable if we're to be found where we've no business being welcome!

And so as this road goes on growing ever narrower, so too becomes broader the portion of our preferences and opinions and prized possessions that much be surrendered. Not something we do easily as we still know well how hard fought each worldly gain has been to win. So to lose any of this time we've lost would be for us to agree that we have indeed done all of this only wrong all along, and pride hates hearing that.

But as monsters somewhat akin to Jekyll and his counterpart, our lives often settle into half-faith, sort of a half-life that leaves us only half-alive assuming that such is simply the inevitability of our letting go of so much control that we eventually can't even bring ourselves to care about the outcome anymore. Because hey, if we can't build it then we can't boast in it, so what's the point in these lives spent in a world where you're not living if you're not winning attention?

See how confusing it all gets when we just refuse to let go of all we've been and been known to enjoy? It's like the ebb and flow of a rising tide. Faith has every chance to grow in measures we can't possibly imagine. But at the same time our pride hates to die and so fights back fervently against the fullness of this faith by arguing with the fullness of what's demanded for us to actually find out what all He's planned for us.

Because by all accounts, as seen in His choosing to die for us to find the new life He wants for all, it's perfectly evident that He's more than capable of covering whatever need or worry we may stumble upon as the path grows more difficult. But it's equally obvious that we're more than capable of always finding a way to blow things a little out of proportion, a symptom of pride seeking an excuse to seek again the ease we've come to enjoy.

Thus we find ourselves quickly fading away from faith, likely turning to again trying to work out something more of our own doing as then we can be the ones doing it, and well, we already know what we're capable of and therefore have no reason to worry or weary.

But the thing is that the more we try to do to either earn or alter our faith, the less of its simplicity that we'll ever be able to find. No, it'll just get once more lost behind our ideas, our understandings, our preferences and the plans which pursue them. And once more we'll find ourselves teetering upon the edge of insanity simply because we refuse to lose the arrogance that keeps us from agreeing with what John said up above.

"He must become greater; I must become less."

Not sure if I’ve talked about this in a prior post or not, because well, after 3,237 of them, they all kind of start to run together. But there’s this simpler way of life that I know to exist, a simpler kind of faith that I firmly believe He meant for us to find. It's one not spent worrying so much about our outcome or the efforts we might be able to give unto ensuring it one way or another. It isn't a matter of breaking ourselves apart trying to find all the pieces we think we need to be proven enough to be worthy of such love.

No, it's just a simplicity as a relationship is supposed to be.

I've tasted these little samples of His peace, but seems there's always a new consideration right there keeping me from going deeper into the direction I know Him to be found. That's life as we live it sadly. But watching the hastening of the world's unraveling, I’m finding myself in an increasing urgency to find more of it, more of Him.

And likewise, I just feel sorry for all those who neither know that life can be simpler nor have any intention of the narrowing down needed to find it. Because I know that this world won't do it for us nor will the ways in which the wicked work allow for Him to be found easy. But this is one case in which easy isn't necessary as the outcome is worth the fight.

But it's a different kind of fight. That's my point for today. It's a working to wane in regard to our understanding of our importance. It's a newfound insistence upon our fading into the edges of this world. It's a walking away, a letting go, a seeking no longer anything that is or of the down here, an attention replaced instead by focusing on things above.

Indeed, I believe there's a simple hope that brings a lasting joy that exists somewhere beyond the point where we finally agree that He begins where we end.

Because it's not our hands that began this good work. It wasn't our idea to embrace something like repentance. We're not the ones who came up with the plan to save ourselves as we're the ones who still go through days here and there doing things from which we don't even realize we need to be saved. And yet, we're still the ones who live as if it's up to us to build a bridge that finishes the way home.

Friends, He is the Way. The only in fact, no other Name sort of thing. Which means my name doesn't matter. My plans for my life don't matter. My goals and dreams and desires are all, or should all be welcome to become fires fading into the past, lost forever inside a way of life I don't care to live anymore. Because I'm tired of the complication. Tired of the confusion.

Just tired mostly.

And I can't help but realize that the only reason our faith wears us out is because we still get stuck trying to work for it. And yet, it's not building mega churches that God's called us to. It isn't dragging everyone to service on Sunday. We're not here to accept every invitation to every religious argument into which we're so frequently invited.

It's not even our work to evaluate everyone else's faith so as to make sure everyone we know is saved as that's above our paygrade. No, "Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'" John 6:29

To believe, something so simple that children seem to do it best. To hope. To trust. To follow, literally not even having to know the way nor where we're going nor even what's to be asked of us as we move along ahead. Nope, just believe. Love God and love our neighbor, which can we not do either only if God is having His way, because that's not the way we've learned in this world.

No, this world has taught us all how to walk and talk and breathe and be all that we're expected to be. And that's left us working ourselves and our faith to death. But He came that we might have life, and have it to the full. A life of peace, courage, assurance, a resilient insistence upon where we're going and that He already made the way and saved our place.

For what else are we then wearing ourselves so thin if not to either impress someone or not lose something?

Friends, how long we miss the simplicity of faith is up to us and determined by just how long we refuse to admit there's nothing we can do to make His work any more complete than it was when He said, "It is finished." Maybe that's our work, to let folks know that it's finished. That sin has lost. That though we were lost, now we are found. And that having been found, we now find no reason to lose the childlike joy and peace and hope and trust that this relationship demands.

Because what began by the Spirit can only be finished by the Spirit. And so let us not quench that gift with our trying to make it home in any fashion other than warriors ready to enter the rest from a life of war spent raging against the world that wanted us to stay lost, a world in which we worked to make it known that Christ overcome that heartbreaking outcome.

Not of our hands but of those which carried the cross and bear the scars that achieved for us this chance to live never again for ourselves but for He who did what we never could without asking us to give Him a reason He didn't already have.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold