Forged By Faith

Hebrews 12:3 NIV Of all the persecution to be proven along this path, perhaps the most problematic is the opposition from the sinner within. Because the truth is that we’re not at all ready for what’s to be asked of us, no way we could be. For this narrowing road which lay ahead is both unseen at times and uncertain every step. It asks of us a sort of selflessness we’ve never seen nor felt nor wanted to see or feel before. In fact this chance deserves from us such a devotion that we should in all honesty want to blast past the greatest of expectations which may be lain upon our shoulders, carved within these new hearts we’ve been given. But honestly, no, seems anymore that when the going gets tough, well, the tough are oftentimes nowhere to be found. What we do find instead of such things as courage and the curiosity which considers no other outcome than that which is afforded only by the most brutal willingness to wring out of this world every ounce of His will for our lives as we can...

Revelation 3:2 NIV The clarity of this call has, though unique among individuals, always been of the same collective substance for all those called. To move. To act. To awake, arise, strive, suffer, surrender, sacrifice, justify if such is in any way anywhere within our ability or His expectation of said effort. Because, again, this faith is something which does indeed demand a sort of devotion devoid of disinterest, but in fact such dire dedication should simply be offered without the expectation. God shouldn’t have to ask us to move, to try, to care. He shouldn’t have to remind us constantly of our lukewarm tendency. He came in the flesh to die for us and did just that in the most agonizing and utterly miserable way possible! How is it then that can we possibly look upon His suffering and not see a sense of urgency to now find the greatest measure of that most faithful intensity to seek ourselves the fullest amount of faith we can possibly fathom? How can we consider the cross and st...

Philippians 2:12 NIV With fear and trembling. For as defined by our never possibly knowing just when our clock may imminently run out of time, there ought to be an urgency to our faith that wouldn’t dare imagine seeing it as something so easily capable of becoming almost a matter of indifference in us. It should something of such substance that the entirety of a lifetime’s other worries are left faded and forgotten as our minds tell our hearts that we better get to getting right before that light of this life runs out. Indeed, faith should at some point become all that matters. Because without it we’ve not even the ability to pretend to begin to understand what hope really is nor where to possibly look for it. And yet such ideals have become almost ideologies so cliché and subjective that they’re anymore allowed to mean something different to everyone. Hope, love, peace, purpose, profit, poverty, the preference of personal presumptions presuming our path is supposed to be paved with po...

James 1:22 NIV To hear is to begin while to listen is to agree to continue. But to act upon what we listen to is to show that we’re unwilling to walk away unchanged. And thus is the desire of this consuming fire considered throughout God’s Word poured not merely for our benefit but indeed for our betterment. Because from on high He sees the many sins that have so stained every soul in such a way that we’ve been left all uniquely unable to shine forth such willingness to let Him work in us as such an effort done on His part, done on our behalf, does indeed demand a desire to delve deeper into the difference for which His decrees were designed. He breathed out His Word, wrapped in His wisdom, laden with His love, proven by His Son so that we might none of us stay where we are so lost inside ourselves that to move would seem to lose our very lives for the simple fact that our lives have been lived so lost that we believe ourselves both unable to be better but also unwilling to try. And su...

2 Peter 3:9 NIV Perhaps the arduous acclimation we endure along this, at times, endless expanse of this seemingly long and, at times, lengthening road home is merely extended due to the apparent brevity of our belief. For there does seem to exist this otherwise confused consideration which, at times, renders our faith almost inconsiderable. Because the fact is undeniable that our being a people who believe only as far as the boundaries and barricades we ourselves have built to keep us safe from such things as loss or pain or fear or failure, they do such a good job of exactly that that, at times, they all but prevent us from actually walking by faith at the obvious insistence of our sight saying that something ahead seems off. And when we remain the ones who set out to seek and understand every step so as to feel some sense of control inside our agreeing to take that next step, we too remain the ones we decide whether or not we ever do take that step. But that’s a rather massive issue ...

Acts 3:19 NIV From peace to our life’s purpose, what if all we’ve long been searching for has always been as close as turning around? Because surely life wasn’t meant to be as convoluted and confused as we’ve come to consider it. I just can’t seem to wrap it around inside my mind to where such a good and gracious God would design a life meant to be spent always seeking the necessity while surrounded by and engorged with the mundanity of extravagance. How can the One who wrote wisdom into existence be the basis for the almost maniacal miscommunication of mankind’s many misunderstandings as to what life is and thus how we’re best to live it? Or is it that God’s hand has always been clear, seen brightest inside the simplicity of life that we’ve come to miss behind our many misgivings given unto chasing always after more of what we’ve never needed at the expense of our never finding more than what we’ve always wanted? Because it just seems to me that we’ve all found more than our fair shar...