Day 3261 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 12:46 NIV

So that none should stay.

For none shall stay. Not in this day. Not in this time. Not in this life. Not in this world. Not in this way. No, the sheerest gravity of this life is that it will end, does end. And yet the pure grace of the Way is that when it does, only then might life begin. Because that is defined in Scripture as the reason for which the Christ came. To bring life to our death by ending the death that is our sinful way.

A cross carried to a grave emptied, leaving now for all an invitation to come and taste, taste then share, seek a measure of His surrender seen in our lives so that our lives might then be hidden in His victory over our defeat.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23

Eternal life, the gift of God.

It seems then that the confusion is not to be found upon the part of God as He's done more than He should have to break through these blasphemes we've become. He stopped not at prophets or promises. He didn't leave mercy to chance hidden inside the complexity of riddled parables seeming to us a confusion impossible to work through. He allowed yes for His Word to be breathed for the benefit of all who might dare opened ears to hear. He performed sights and sounds showing societies His strength and sovereignty.

Parted seas leading to and leaving then lives changed forever. But still He went further so that further too might we now come, away from that here toward that home that our heresies haven't seen, haven't sought reason to see as we know that to see such a hope as His Heaven demands we agree that we've thus far lived bent for hell. No, He came into our fall for to lift us up from down here at our love for rock bottom back upon feet fighting for something we know we shouldn't find.

He came in Christ, a Son of God, Son of man, Savior of all from this fall we've both created and still continue.

What do we do here in this time of response to all He's done to clear the way for us to be where we honestly don't belong?

The difficulty of it all, this thing we call faith, is that we live in a world that's lost us in its way. We are the replicas of the regretful, the hateful, the hardened and heartless. Robots racing to revel in all that He's defined as utterly revolting. We are this world and this world's become us. His Word breathed in John 3:19 says as much.

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil."

Because our deeds are evil. Our ways are wicked. Our wants are even worse at times. Sinful to a fault, and yet that fault never seems our own as we'll own nothing that we've done but only what we want. Our lives lived as if our lives are our own, only thus to be lived doing as we see fit through eyes so blind to hope that we scorn the chance at healing and stay here hating the Healer that came only to be the Way home.

And because we're so warped and wicked, wasted in wanting, we wait. We wonder. We ponder other paths, partake in other priorities, agree to an arrogance that stands only in agreement with everything our ego has to say. And so we hear nothing not wanting to know that unhearing ears only inspire unseeing eyes unwilling to see the gravity of these lives and the end that draws so near we can and should fear the outcome for which we're running.

But when you look around, you don't see the fear of God. This world isn't worried about His wrath, lives as if He's not even there to dole it out. And as a people who've learned so much from such a wicked way, we remain at risk of learning this mistake again too. To deny God, design again a doubt so deep that we see reason in the wait, seated souls barely surviving but content to continue half alive for nothing other than this sick satisfaction we've stumbled upon here in this middle ground.

A middle ground of our making, a deception we ourselves have set to design.

How is this possible? To debate this gift He's given? To see the love of His light and wonder if it's worth missing the more He has in store? To gaze upon the cross and still see the loss that such would ask should we go where He's gone? For us to consider staying upon this side of an opened tomb is a stupidity which simply shouldn't be allowed.

And to it we agree.

We wait. Our fall has failed us, forced us to forget the chance we shouldn't have, this chance we've been given anyway. And yet we wait. Hesitate toward Heaven as if such a hope isn't worth the personal hell we assume it would be to leave behind all these losses of life we've learned to love. Is such not only possible inside a people still consumed with either doubt or denial, a life designed down here inside a darkness so deep we don't want to know the light, the love, the loss of a life already lost?

We are leaving! And yet we wait. We live waiting like we have all the time in the world to make our choices, to make our changes. But that's just the problem, we've only all the time in the world, and once our time in this world is done, we have no chances let. We will have no other name, no other way, no other outcome but the two we've been so clearly promised. For His Word is unchanging, and so we either do or we don't.

And that decision will indeed decide where we go from here.

So where do we go from here?

Do we stay? Wait on these sidelines of a fight we can't admit is so truly good that it is fully worth losing everything we have, everything we want, everything we are? Do we avoid the surrender, surrendering instead and still all over again this very day to the way in which we've always lived? Shall we continue on ahead still lost as behind, always thus behind in this game of life that isn't at all the game we've been convinced it to be?

Do we move? Leave things behind? Walk away from a world that's led us to live wrong and fight every step home to not invite the past to catch up and trip up once more? Step into the light leaning for the love that leads us somewhere other than everything we've been? Can we even see that there is something better than what we've become?

That's why He came.

To shine a light which illuminates our lunacy. To bring us back to an attention again well aware of where we are and how wrong it is. To invite us to life, putting to death this death we've lived so that we might see with our own eyes what our choices have cost and then not charge against these souls anymore of what we know now we cannot pay. We can't do what He did, not the dying part but the reviving part. When we die here we are just dead.

Except should we be in Christ having already shared in His death to here, leaving us going out in His light, racing for His love, walking in His way having left the here behind so that at our end our lives then begin.

The simplicity of this decision is something again that we shouldn't have. Jesus himself narrows down this opportunity into the severity of a single direction chosen daily by us alone. It's one of those verses that is so often quoted we've likely, sadly, missed the meaning behind the mainstream. "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

No one comes to Father except through Christ. Simple? Undoubtedly! Easy? No, not for us who find a way to complicate everything we don't want to do, don't wish to lose. So it is hard as it weighs the cost of this lost life that we've to lose, let go, leave behind before perhaps we're ready. But that's just it, we'll never be ready. Nobody is ever aching to die as there exists in us an understanding that in fact this life may be it. This might be all there is.

And still He calls us to lose it. Matthew 16:25. "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." It's upside down. So confusing that to many it can only inspire confusion so confusing that it confines them to choosing still between an obvious mercy or an eternal misery. Such a chance at such a change shouldn't take any thought whatsoever. And yet we wait.

Because here in this life we've found our version of good enough. Pleasure and treasures, troves of triumphs found in our finding all we've so far wanted so much that we still can't see that we still need more than everything we have. Because we know that everything we have is everything that can't come when the gravity of this life turns out the inevitability it's always been. A death demanded of every breath.

When will ours come?

I've asked that same question in many posts past. But it's such an opportunity that it's worth revisiting every single day. Because inside every single day is something still of this world to which we're called to die. It's a daily choice, this faith or the far more popular and thus far more common failing to find reason to find it as found among a many who can't bring themselves to leave the warmth of this world's width.

Indeed, this world has found a way so wide and welcoming that only seldom few find reason to walk away as it does truly seem to offer everything a person could want. The question we will be asked and so the question we should ask ourselves is whether or not the wide way of this world has anything we need. Does this world have anything we need? Or is it solely concerned about meeting our wants?

And if it is indeed, as He contends, only working for our wants, which do in fact change so often that even we ourselves can't keep up enough to remain content in this way of life we've wasted on wanting always more, can't we then see the reality of that which we're reminded in James 1:17? "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

The light that came is the love that doesn’t change. He doesn't change. And so His hope doesn't change. His gift doesn't change. His mercy doesn't change. He grace doesn't fail, a grave proving as much with a stone shoved out of the way of His will being done. His love doesn't change, the cross still calling the lost to lose what they've failed to find so far, a life worth living. His promise will not change, but friends, Scripture says that we must if we're to ever be found where that promise begins.

We're told this in verses and ways such as that of 1 John 2:15. "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them." Can our blindness not see or notice the obvious? That if we love this world which hates our God, that we can't then love our God enough to ever think we should or could be found forever in His most perfectly peaceful presence?

Again my friends, it's simple. "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Matthew 12:30

So then shall we gather or remain scattered? We've lived against Him, so says the cross, do we stay the course and hope it's all just a story? Do we risk eternity for another day of delighting in our dark homes down here? Shall we truly surrender our chance at peace forever for another whatever we've found here in this life we're leaving?

Yes, that is indeed the question our daily decisions do truly answer for us. Will we truly settle for living a life we're leaving or will we dare to be found among the few leaving their lost lives behind and straining for that day when He comes to finish this impossibly good work that we know well only He could have begun as we know too that our lazy complacency never would have tried?

Or do we do as most will try and assume we can wait to make this decision as if that decision isn't making it anyway?

Friends, what if what we've learned of life hasn't anything at all to do with life in the end? What if this fear of change that inspires our waiting to try is nothing but a failure to a faith that found us and left us nothing but to follow the road already mapped out for us to simply follow? What if we're only wasting away here in this way of waiting that has us thinking that we've still some time to have some fun before agreeing to step into a light where our foolish filth isn't fun anymore?

What if we're only missing out on living life as we try to stay in this way of life we've already lost to the entirely wrong idea of love?

I'm tired of not knowing more of who He is and what He's done. I'm over wondering what I'm missing and what I might miss should I continue to wait or wander away from the Way that brought the Truth that is the Life that leads the way to the home I know I shouldn't even know the hope of having ahead. None of us should have that hope, but that we do should inspire us to try.

To move. To change. To pray. To lose. To "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you." Isaiah 60:1

Because in the end, He's done all He could, more than He should, to shine His love into our world so lost. And so then it all comes down to us. Wait and consider whether or not His way is worth the loss? Get up and go knowing we've nothing to lose that wouldn't be lost anyway, that isn't really lost already?

The simple truth is that He came so that none who truly believe in Him should stay as He found us. And so if when He returns, He again finds us right where He first found us, inside a life not at all changed nor in any way interested in such opportunity, then He will know that we didn't care about all He did. Because if we do, we will move.

For in truth, none can stay here where we are. But in Him, none should want to as we've now every reason not to inside of this light of a love that came just to tell us that we’re worth well more than what we want in this world that knows only to want all that isn’t life.

Let this world wait to wonder whether or not God is worth the giving away what we can’t keep anyway. If we truly know better, then we should indeed do better. That is indeed why He came, to lead to better.

Do we get it yet?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold