Day 3269 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

Here in this world of ego and excitement it takes a strange courage to see our insufficiencies as the blessings they've always been.

Because we've come to see and assume blessings are to be found in the form of betterment. To bless is believed to be a gift sent and meant to help improve someone in some way. It's, to us, an idea of entitlement, an expected assistance sent to lift our load or at least lighten it in some way. Be it physical or financial, we think blessings are best sent inside moments that leave us safe and secure and sufficient within our insistence upon self-sufficiency.

But as we talked about yesterday, every heart will eventually find itself at this moment wherein our very best, our sufficient will not suffice.

Yet because of our being these braggadocios buffoons we've become, we don't necessarily have what it takes to meet that inevitability as the blessing it has always been. No, we've in fact always run from it every single time that it's dared show its head. Any moment in which it seemed like our best might not measure up, we gave up and turned quick upon another path that was easier so that our efforts would be enough.

It's really nothing more than our pride taking us for a ride every time that life gets real and we realize that our eyes can't see far enough, our feet can't walk long enough, our hearts can't beat fast enough to supply blood enough to release adrenaline enough to be enough to do enough to leave us feeling enough to measure up and make enough of ourselves to be truly sufficient enough by ourselves.

You see, no matter what we do, where we go, who we talk to or even what they may say, all of life always seems to spin right around to always being again about us alone.

We want nothing more than to be our own blessings so that we might have strengths and abilities and opportunities to show forth for all the world to see just how amazing we are so that they might finally agree to applaud our courage to walk this line we've chosen to a life lived as we've chosen filled with all the glory and stories we've chosen that always, ironically, paint us the powerful.

As I said yesterday, if ego were currency, we could each afford our own planets.

But as enthused and enthralled as we've become in these mundane lives serving mammon and self and all these other idols we've created in or around ourselves, the fact is that nothing we make or make ourselves believe will ever be able to bring us the strength, the courage, the persistence, the humble perseverance that we literally cannot live without.

I mean, it's obvious that we can live without them here on this earth, but by now I should hope you'd know I'm not usually talking about life as we know it. No, I'm talking about life as it's coming. Because the fact is that there is a life coming that isn't at all as weak and worthless and wearied as we've for some reason come to insist this one become. There's a horizon we're all headed toward that breaks only two ways.

Problem is we're perfectly content letting our pride lead the way not worrying about the outcome so long as we have something to brag about along the way.

But what we boast about in this life testifies to what we believe of the next. The things in which we glory tell the story of where our hearts wish to be. And despite what anyone may say, think, do or believe, I'm immovably convinced that none of our opinions will sway the immovable God. He's kind of already set His truth in stone, and so we either fall on it and appreciate the breaking or it falls on us without that attitude of gratitude.

Either way, God will be the only one glorified in all this. It's just up to us as to if and when we start.

Unfortunately, we're still living inside this way of life locked inside this wayward world walking always away from the Father. Surrounded by such superiority and stories of self-sufficiency that we're constantly at risk of falling back into the assumption that such is what we should be reaching for as well. Because the truth is that that's what the god of this age wants, just a people so broken into conformity that we unanimously forget who we are.

Because it's always easiest to beat someone when they're hurting, lost, confused, afraid they have something to lose while still somehow holding onto just enough of their pride that they think they’re winning at life.

And that's precisely why God grants us weakness. It's why He leads us to hardship. That is entirely the reason for every struggling season through which we've fully failed to be anything remotely close to faithful. It's because God alone knows what we need to get where He calls us to be. He knows the cost of this journey, and that as see on Calvary, we can't none of us afford it.

This ticket home costs a life in exchange for every moment in which we sought to glorify ourselves rather than honoring God.

But since we've already seen those moments far outweigh those in which we for once reached for righteousness, truth is that we're each here without a prayer of being enough to measure up to the standards of moral righteousness that God has clearly said are demanded for any to be found in His presence. And since Heaven is His presence, and we've all lived through plenty of days not caring, we've failed those requirements.

Thus here we are in desperate need of shedding these strengths and stories we've long sought to write so as to please those around us eager to see us fall in line and do as everyone else does in this life in love with self and success.

Probably never hear it put that way as it's usually our weaknesses which we want to wring. It's the seasons of struggle we pray to pass. Yes, we've sadly come to assume that this life down here is best lived in whatever way that affords us ease and comfort and therefore the ability to be the enough we've always wanted to be.

But what our pride doesn't tell us is that in every moment in which we're able, we're only unable to seek Christ.

Every time that we can figure it out, faith remains an afterthought. Every day in which our way is good enough to get us through, we go through alone not praying for help. Whenever our abilities are able to get us where we're trying to go, we'll reach it by ourselves and then add such accomplishment to our list of things we feel obliged if not obligated to brag about.

But that isn't life nor in any way anything remotely close to a useful way in which to live it.

For who else can benefit if all we tell them about is what we were able to do on our own? They're not us, don't have our same skill set, belief system, willingness to lose as much as we have to get what isn't worth the cost. So how can anyone else benefit from our accomplishments if they can't or won't do the same themselves? Pointless. Without merit. An entirely wasted way of living this one life, wasted fully on a self-centered outcome that helps nobody.

Because the truth is that such an approach can't even help us. Seems to. Feels like it does. Sure makes for some sweet stories that bring some awe and applause from the crowds we're living to please. But everything we do by ourselves, for ourselves keeps us leaning on ourselves so that we can be ourselves and stay ourselves and love ourselves and praise ourselves and pay ourselves in this stupid currency of vain glory that assumes we can then be the ones perhaps even able to save ourselves.

And there's the break.

It's found in this moment in which we become so certain that we can do whatever is needed that we stop looking outside our abilities. It's like we each carry this bag along this ride filled with whatever we've come to believe in life. For most, well, for all of us in fact, that bag is overflowing with assumptions. It's packed to the brim with memories of moments in which we did it on our own, times we achieved a goal we'd set, days we did something so amazing that we're still amazed ourselves that it happened.

And being the quantity conscious we've become, that's sufficient. We're content carrying a heart whose contents are the considerations of our accomplishments. We love the opportunity to continue thinking we're enough, so much so that we've actually devolved into truly believing that anything of all we've done was actually done by us. An opportunity of our own making, a string of them so long in fact that life to many has become a means of our own making.

Making for each a coming fall from which our pride will not walk away. Won't be able to. Guess then the only question is whether or not we will.

We can, just not alone. Not by ourselves. It's not to be an ability to be found in that bag of beliefs that this world has taught us to always keep as full as we can. No, for us to survive the crash back to reality and reason and responsibility and the thus realization of our irreverency as shown in our irresponsibility of assuming all God's talk about righteous accountability was just imaginary, we need to empty that bag of blaspheme.

Truth be told we need but one thing our bag of beliefs upon which we beg for help, for healing, for hope. We need the Name that is above all names. We need the hands that hold the scars that tell us we don't have to measure up. We need the feet marked by nails that paved the trail through whatever trial we may meet in life. We need the humility shown inside the Son coming to make sure it was done.

It is finished.

But just what all did He wrap up as He was wrapped up and placed inside our tomb? Was it all just for the sins we know about, the mistakes we can allow ourselves to agree to? Did He die just to provide what we assume a best life as lived according to what this world has convinced us is best? Was His death merely a means to some mammon and material possession? Did He lay down His life that we might keep the little bit of ours that we don't feel bad about?

If so then we really are "of all people most to be pitied."

Because He died that we might share. To inspire us to stop stopping at where our weaknesses begin. To show us that weakness isn't this worthless experience to which we've so sadly come to see it. To teach us that what frees us is letting go of this fear of not being enough, doing enough, having enough to pay Him back or impress Him or anyone else for that matter.

And yet that's all we've known of life. To show the world how strong we are. To refuse our eyes the tears that might have helped the pain subside, simply because we couldn't let them see our hurt. We can't agree to go without as to do as such is a show of failure in this world. No, life as we've so mistakenly lived it cannot agree to suffering as to suffer is to accept what everyone else denies.

But friends, a life lived following pride only denies a person the beauty of faith's fullness. It endlessly prevents us from seeking our sufficiency somewhere other than inside ourselves. And if we never allow ourselves to look or live or be or believe beyond ourselves, then we will never find Christ simply because we'll never feel the need to look.

If all we are is all we feel the need to be to meet our needs along this life, then all we are is all we'll ever be.

But what is all we are? In honesty? In truth? Should we for a second step into reality, what are we really? Personally, I'm usually confused. I look around at what people do and I just don't understand it. I look at what I do and it makes even less sense. I'm often afraid of failing or letting someone down because of my unstoppable inability to know what to do to help them.

Most days I'm selfish to a fault, finding fault in whatever keeps me from doing only whatever I want to do that day. A lot of the time you'd find me overly angry over the mistakes I've made mixed with the misery I know is coming inside the mistakes I think others are making. I fight all the time against my undeniable weaknesses not allowing me to deny them so that I might feel better about myself and what I've been, become.

Yes, I'm weak and I'm weary and I'm always wondering, like most, through the why's and what for's and how come’s of life. I'm tired of trying and failing but at the same time afraid to stop trying even though I know the odds of disappointment seem consistent. Indeed, my life has left me broken and battered and beaten of believing that I was supposed to be the one who made it, who did it, who found it and figured it.

Because I've failed. I've fallen. I've let others down even if they kindly agree to deny it. I've found every possibly way to disappoint the God who has always only asked that I focus on Him, following then His path rather than this one my pride has left me stranded along.

And that's what I can't take anymore.

It's this feeling of being alone in this fight against these weaknesses I can’t seem to shake. This assumption that it's on me to make it home to a place I've never been in a direction I've clearly never gone inside a life gone off the rails on all these trails spent trying to shirk or shrink the trials and fires that just keep burning up my best intentions and inventions.

No, I can't seem to agree anymore that what I know is not enough is somehow all I have to ensure that I'm enough of whatever God is looking for to be welcomed into the peace that my past has proven I've not lived to find.

And so I sit here every day clacking away on this keyboard searching for a hope that this effort to find Him and help others do the same means something, that it does something that can show Him something that He's not seen much of in me: Surrender. Dependency. The audacity to agree that I'm the epitome of insufficiency. That somehow these words manage to ring louder than the denials of my past all chosen only to deny my fallen reality in that moment.

Friends, though we are, He isn't afraid of our failures. He isn't ashamed of our weaknesses. Never once has He asked us to make up for what we've already proven ourselves unable to understand. Not once. He does ask us however to honor Him. To live inside an attitude of gratitude as such can only come from a soul finally aware that we've been given what we need despite Him having no reason to be so kind.

He, upon that cross, offered us enough. He showed us that He is sufficient, that He is able, that He is the atonement that we know our weaknesses and the mistakes we've made within them are in need of. He is enough, but whether or not He's enough to us is up to us. And simply put, He just can't be if we still assume we are.

I've done a lot of things that I've bragged about. So many days in which I found that just right measure of pride that made me feel so good that I didn't want anyone else to come along as ask for a share of my satisfaction. But looking back, all I see now are the moments in which I was running away from the weaknesses, the worries, the wars in which I could have, should have found Christ far sooner than I am.

Because the truth is that we need every second of this life for us to find Him as He is found best in those moments we don't want to come. He exists most clearly when we're clearly not enough to make it through. He is in the desert, in the fire, in the lion's den. But in every single one of those places, we die.

But when you finally come to terms with the fact that we all will anyway, you finally realize that you don't really have anything to lose in living alongside the weaknesses that this world says make us worthless. Because if He can truly shine forth inside our fears and failures, then who am I to say no? Who am I am to deny Him the stage? Who am I to ask Him to not do what He knows I need?

Who are we to refuse the way that He calls us to walk should that truly be the only way home?

No, maybe we can't make it. Maybe we will fall short. Maybe this world will laugh at us every time we stumble or do something they think silly. But hey, seeing as how this world thinks faith in Christ is a foolish way to live, who am I to care what they think or to stay so enslaved to their ideas that such idiocy stays inside me?

Maybe I'm broken to the point that I just don't care anymore. But for some reason I think that instead I'm just finally so broken that I finally do. Just about the right things for once. I finally care about honoring God rather than myself. I finally care more about His will being done than my way being won. I finally understand that it's in my weaknesses that His strength shows clearest.

And so if it's my weakness which offers Him the biggest chance to show Himself to the world through my inability and insufficiency, so be it. Because I don't care what this world thinks of me, and I'm even working to stop caring about what I've often thought of myself. Because both I and this world still assume weakness equates worthless.

The cross shows otherwise.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold