Day 3308 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 4:4 NIV

How far must we have fallen into the darkness to now see so many who disbelieve?

For to believe is child’s play, something done best among the most immature, immaterial, unreasonable and illogical. It seems as though our vast fascination with such growths as demanded by a world that simply refuses to grow beyond spiritual stagnancy has become for you and me a life lived far too fast in only the wrong direction. And yet still we sit here inside these eyes so blinded by a world’s directing us toward who they say we’re supposed to be as evidenced by all that they demand we do, say, don’t do, never say.

And so we see only the ongoing decay of a world already entirely too dark, a collective descent away from anything anywhere near decent.

All simply because to believe is anymore considered foolish, a failure in the making as it’s making those who try to trust sit and waste in rust as the world races on toward what will remain long after we’re gone. That’s something that’s been on my mind for a while now, all that I’ve had that I’ll leave. Because such is the assumption of life that’s all but considered inconsiderable anymore. That we’re not staying here, stuck inside life as we can only assume we know it.

And I say only assume because honestly none of us have lived this far quite yet. I turned 36 back in January, and so I’ve absolutely no idea as to what 37 looks like. I’ve never been to 50, can’t quite imagine 60, 70 seems a lifetime away from this halfway point and as to the best of my knowledge 80-90 is about all we’ve got in the end. And so what seems strange to me in light of this life still to be lived up ahead is that we’re racing toward the finish line as if there isn’t a finish line.

Because the enemy doesn’t want us to believe in such inevitability. For the devil loses a bit of his allure whenever a souls finally agrees that this soil won’t be under our feet forever. Our adversary experiences a portion of loss of his control over us when blinded eyes are opened to see that there is indeed an end of us. Yes, perhaps even our friend sin begins to struggle to win the reliance we’ve long had and held within our relationship to all that’s wrong.

But only when blinded eyes find the audacious courage to believe in the impossibility of the blind seeing not only something, but blind eyes seeing something beyond themselves.

That’s what this world considers inconsiderable, intolerable even. That truth that speaks of all we’ve not known, not seen, never imagined, always been instead. Sadly so long ago we agreed to give ear to what the world wanted us to hear, to hurry up and undertake the hastening of life as lived by most chasing after what none of us need. That we need to grow up, leaving childish ways behind, belief chief among those now forlorn forgotten figments of a life filled with far more meaning than this monstrosity we’re making.

No, up here inside Adultland we’ve forgotten far more than we know, chosen the rebuttal of belief, a sort of discourage if you will. Indeed, we paint this image of our being perfect individuals well capable of standing all on our own, proven via the trophies and triumphs we pretend we’ve won in all the races to the last places any of us should have wanted to reach.

Why have we become so willing to reach that place where belief is seen as foolish, faith a failure of logic, humility honestly a weakness not at all welcome amongst us? Why did we ever, how did we ever expect such a rapid unraveling of all He created us to be to ever go well? Why does this world still so obviously assume that denying Him is indeed the best course of action simply for the comfort of inaction it allows?

I think that’s exactly what the devil wanted for us, of us, in us, from us. Inaction. A sort of inept laziness unwilling to even begin to be anything other than what we’ve all collectively agreed to remain. We’re supposed to understand that life is built to become this homogenous glob of gluttony and greed as splayed across screens showing scenes of the sick lacking sense enough to realize the only part we’re playing is that of the grease speeding the wheel that’s rolling over us.

Simply because we’ve become blinded by the god of this age and his offering us revelry as a legitimate replacement for responsibility.

Yes, we loathe responsibility, modesty, honesty, morality and even reality. These days we’ve literally descended into artificializing everything from relationships to intelligence. As if there’s not a single danger in our designing our own ideals based upon only our own ideas as fed to us from those who likewise have none of their own as we’ve all been bought by the one who came and comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

Life, love, hope, happiness, opportunity, reason, reality. All are either gone or hanging on the brink of vanishing in the blink of an eye already blind to caring if they go. No, we seem entirely unbothered by what all we’ve lost, what all we’re losing. Just entirely enthralled by what all the enemy says we’re gaining within this waiting always impatiently for the world to arrive at our feet and serve us the endless course of selfish indulge upon which every lost soul seeks to divulge.

Indeed, it seems anymore than all that any care about is making their selfishness evident. As if such things as social media and the power of political publicity are truly a worthy replacement for things such as hope and belief.

We can’t honestly believe that!

And such seems quite the case. In fact the fact is that we’ve by and large become a people so entirely lost within ourselves, as that’s right where the devil wants us, that we’ve turned enemies of everything. Anything that dares speak to the heartbreaking reality of our dishevelment is met with denial and/or disagreement. That’s all we know anymore, despite our attempts to tell everyone all about everything we know. No, we know only to live in denial, contempt, a contemplation of consternation shared amongst this nation and generation of disintegration.

Yes, we’ve truly accepted a unanimous animosity spread across an anonymous society synonymous with dishonesty, immodesty, immorality, a lack of humility and far too much hostility.

All signs of the devil himself as he still exists as the lord of lies destroying lives in open rebellion to God’s invitation to leave His presence as “he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.” No, the devil is waging war against God and the godly, any and all who were made in the image of the One who removed his wicked self from Heaven’s hope. And so, here we are inside a war being waged for these souls built within as they’re the target of Christ’s achievement upon our place upon that cross.

But the devil doesn’t want us to understand that cost that the Christ paid upon that cross as such would open the door to our seeing what the devil will never see again. Yes, Christ has come to save sinners so that such might be welcomed into Heaven’s peace. But as the devil is banned from such a promise as this hope we’ve been shown in the Gospel of Jesus, he wants nothing that dares free us from the enslavement to everything he himself was enslaved by.

Selfishness, vanity, greed, gluttony, becoming himself a great blaspheme. No, as such the devil now wants only the same for us, to lose the hope of our being more than we’ve become so far. To stay stuck inside this spiritual blindness that become for us a lack of courage, a misplaced devotion, a sort of continuous commotion creating so much noise inside our minds that we can’t seem to wrap our hope around the home He said held a place for a people such as us who so clearly do not belong.

And no, we don’t. We’ve done so many things that have gone so vastly against God that we’ve no business believing. We have no right to imagining His light, no reason to reach for repentance. And because the enemy seeks to keep us broken and breaking, he works incessantly to make sure we see all we need to assume we know to keep us from trying, from striving, from dying to this death we’ve become and begun to further settle for among this stagnant society.

For indeed the god of this age has truly blinded the minds of unbelievers. Made belief a target of hatred and rejection among “those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Yes, the devil has made so incredibly bitter so very many who now agree to not try for better that the best they can hope for is convincing us to give up hope as well.

That’s what we see all around us anymore.

It’s this constant pressure to pass away, to give up hope, to let go of this whisper that says we can in fact do better. We see a world that wants nothing to do with anything good, more than content with staying stuck in the darkness of depravity instead. Yes, this place is so deranged as to doubt, debate, deny, all but dissolve inside a disbelief designed inside such an obvious and entirely rampant selfish enslavement which has rendered us, rented us as we are here today, a people without remorse, without regret, with instead this honest belief in a life lived without responsibility or reason.

But friends, such is not how God ordained this to go, our each going our own direction with no delight in His design. He didn’t create us to so quickly cave at the slightest hint of pressure or persecution. He did not design us to dissolve in the face of the danger the devil promises to those who refuse to give up. And yet such is why we’re in such a sad state these days. Everyone does as they see fit from inside their selfishness as shown forth in so many sin-filled lives. It’s exactly as He said we’d see as the end drew near.

Judges 21:25. 2 Timothy 3:1-9.

It’s a strange thing to witness His Word prove itself living and active! But even scarier is to see it only growing worse as folks grow deeper into disbelief and depravity. Because human immorality has no basement. Our debasement has no basement! We’ve proven countless times throughout our times that we can imagine some truly horrid undertakings. And still today we’re doing things that even the worst of the worst through history never would have tried.

We are a people of truly debased mind!

And because of that my friends, we’re disintegrating. And He’s still only whispering! What will come when His patience runs thin? What will we do when He raises His voice? What can we do when He announces His sovereignty in a way that does not accomplish salvation but rather completes His judgement? That day is coming, a promise proven only in part within what we saw on Calvary.

And since this world so clearly didn’t get the message but chose and chooses still to doubt and deny the mercy shown upon that cross as He bled and died to cover the cost we owe for lives lived blind to belief, what comes next is too tragic to understand. See, there are even those who say that hell is only evidence of God’s lack of goodness. How could a good God allow people to suffer inside the torment foretold of hell?

No my friends, the real question is why would any choose the torment of hell when we’ve been told of the promise of Heaven?

See, it’s yet another evidence of this world’s being so lost and blind that many cannot believe anymore. Because God made clear our choice through that cross. Christ came that we might have opened eyes to finally see what two outcomes await. Heaven or hell. He made clear the difference between the two, and even went so far as to tell us what to do to avoid the end we deserve in exchange the peace we don’t. He made it clear when He did himself as we’re now called to share.

To die.

And thus we find the reason so many still choose to deny. Because we don’t want to die. Such is the standard outlook shared amongst all of us. None of us want to lose these lives we’ve come to love. Nobody wishes to end the fun they’ve found in this way we think is actually ours. No, it’s madness, foolishness, a failure to let imaginations run wild enough to leave us wild enough to actually believe that we can somehow get out of this life alive.

We can’t.

No, every life owes a death, it’s just that thanks to Christ we’ve the chance to choose how, where, and when. Sadly most are choosing later, never if at all possible. To live like they’ll never die is the hope of millions. But it’s such an illogical hope that the only way they can seem to escape the fragility of such foolishness is to try and make us look the fools for believing in something we know is worth dying for.

Yes faith is indeed foolish to those who are perishing. But to those who have perished from this life and live now only looking forward to the hope of the home found in the next, well, it’s not even belief anymore. It’s proven. It’s promised. It’s evident and evidenced inside our daily insistence upon dying to this world and speaking the truth that might inspire the same inside those still waiting to see.

So what are we waiting to see, we who’ve long been blind and are now only either trying to look beyond ourselves or the many more who look only to themselves? It’s something each much decide alone. But it’s a decision we definitely shouldn’t wait for this world to help us make as I think this place has already made it clear as to which side of this eternal divide upon which they’ll stay.

Either way, friends, His promise coming. Today? Tomorrow? 2025? 2179? Who knows? But it is coming as He is not a God who changes His mind. And so may we not be among the many who refuse to see it coming, who refuse to admit it’s already happening. No, perhaps we can find the childish courage to once again believe before the end closes in. Because again, that end will only go one of two very different directions.

The Gospel of Christ is His gift meant to open our eyes to seeing the great opportunity of dying to this world so that we might live untethered to the unbelief which defines this place. And while the light of His love wounds at first, the hope which explodes just past the healing He brings is undeniable. May we be so bold as to believe in that hope while in this world that won’t.

Not only for us, but too for whomever may be looking to see a reason to embrace the truth from within the sea of lies this world is drowning in. For that is why Christ came, is it not? To bring those blinded by sin back to life again?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold