Day 3351 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

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 when it comes to faith. Because faith is matter almost adamant that things such as our sight and our sense of understanding gained largely through these lying eyes we’ve let led us into living a lie become at some point not merely expendable but entirely extinguished. For we cannot truly come to rely upon another should any of our reliance remain upon ourselves. Because if we are stuck inside such selfishness as assuming our assumptions are there to keep us safe, well then we’ll eventually find ourselves in a right confusion whenever His will goes against our way.

Something that is bound to happen more than our belief wants to believe.

Because somewhere along the line we got it in our mind that this road back to things like honesty and modesty and morality is supposed to be easy. We caught wind of this false teaching that’s taught us to expect that since salvation was done for us by another, then perhaps the following sanctification would too require little of us. Almost as if we’re so thankful that Christ did all that He did to bring us back from the dead that we’d rather He do everything else for us too.

Even to the very point of taking more bullets just so we don’t have to look down the barrel of this gun of what we’ve done defining in us an almost indifference when it comes to what this faith deserves from us. See, we don’t hear much about that part because ain’t none of us like to think about that part. We don’t like to consider the concessions we’ve made having become in us complacencies that are altogether too comfortable for us to now consider cancelling. We don’t want to sit with the sins we’ve made friends nor the corresponding understanding that such poor choices have left us a whole lot to learn.

And we just hate learning. Too humiliating, too belittling, too humbling. And our pride just hates being humble.

So we seek ways in which to convince ourselves to maybe consider backing off if not entirely jumping off this train we’ve been gifted a chance to take. We look for anything that we can convince ourselves doesn’t make sense, doesn’t seem right, doesn’t feel right to this heart so wrong that we’ve been so far gone for so very long that we shouldn’t want to hear any more of what our wandering hearts have to say for the sake of the deception they’ve designed for us in the past.

No, we shouldn’t be willing to want any more of whatever we’ve wanted or wondered about in the past, you know, since we claim to believe that pretty much all our past really did was charge up a debt that it took a death to satisfy. And yet therein exists perhaps the most widely confused and happily misunderstood aspects of the Christian faith. We speak this Word that says that He died for us, completely atoning for our sins to the extreme of making us right in God’s eyes who now sees us through His Son’s sacrifice.

And yet with the same hearts we tell these same mouths to speak this idea into existence that says nothing then should be required of us who have agreed to humbly accept such a gift as His mercy erasing our madness. Indeed, it’s almost miraculous that we can proclaim Christ and at the same time do nothing that speaks to any hint of change such a salvation has accomplished in us. And by miraculous, I mean in the most egregious and arrogant and prideful and vengeful way possible.

Because if we truly believed in Christ dying for our sins and raising to life again, we’d have no qualms with our actually, actively seeking to share in as much of Him as we possibly can. Yet the whole death to self part is seemingly that one ask that’s just slightly too big for us to consider. We’re glad He did, thankful that He could, overjoyed that He would, eternally thrilled that He did. But our pride has to always ask why that couldn’t be the end of the story.

Why can’t His death allow us to go back to doing what caused His death, because although there’s not an ounce of fairness or even common decency to be found in that, it’d just be so much easier! I mean so much easier!!

Granted, He would have to hypothetically endure the cross again for every mistake we convince ourselves we need to make to continue enjoying the way of life we’ve enjoyed living all this time. More lashes, more beating, more bleeding. More agony and misery and torment. But He did it once. He came through it already. He’s already felt it before. Surely His goodness seen the first time would be so good as to do endure it all again so that we didn’t actually have to change anything, lose anything, repent from anything.

It matters not that our mouths have never utter such blatant insanity, because the fact is that often times our lives say all that needs to be said. And if we’ve ever run right back to anything wrong or wicked or morally reprehensible after knowing about His redemption, then our mouths don’t need to speak such selfishness for our hearts have inspired us to retake the ways that won His misery endured in our place. And for that we should be most monumentally ashamed for it says only that we missed the meaning simply because of what we know it means.

Because His death means everything changed.

Life in an instant flipped upside down and left us now unable to admit that we didn’t know better than to stop doing what we see He had to die to atone for. But do we truly believe that? Do we honestly hold to the whole message of the Gospel? Not just His death and burial and resurrection, but so too our share therein? Do we agree that we belong with Him so closely that we ache to enter that same tomb and shed these same lives lived in this same world?

Or do we rather agree instead to this brevity of belief that allows us to run away when His way gets really hard?

Because fact is that that’s something we’ve all done in the past. We find ourselves staring face-to-face with a sudden understanding that something we’ve been doing isn’t okay for us to do anymore. Our ears find this audacity to hear us saying something that seems straight from the mouth of sinful stranger. Our hands are seen holding something that’s finally seen as an idol we didn’t know we’d been serving. Our minds return like pigs to filth back to these wicked thoughts that we know now have no place in the mind of someone who’s truly in this for more than just the hope of an easy life.

Yes, such is the severity of His restoring sight to those long blinded by disbelief in anything, everything that asked anything of us.

That’s the difficulty in this path. That it’s not merely possible but entirely promised that we will be asked to change, to lose, to leave behind things that we don’t want to change, to lose, to leave behind. As He continues His work to revive our hearts, we will truly learn to love what He loves and to hate what He hates. And yes my friends, yes I’m afraid that that means we will likely come to hate things we’re doing as we come to learn that they’re the very same things that cost Christ His life.

But what will we do when faced with those realizations?

What will we do when He asks us to change something we never thought needed changing? What will we do when He helps us see that we need to stop doing something we’ve been doing so long that it’s all but a part of our identity anymore? What will we do when He points out that idol in our lives and asks us to throw it into the consuming fire that He is supposed to be in our lives? What will we do?

Well, what have we done? Because the fact of the matter is that this whole idea of repentance is so foundational to our faith that it’s one of the first things we learn to embrace once we come to learn of Christ. His death demands repentance! Because we cannot claim we love Him if we still do what He had to die to save us from. It’s impossible! Can we honestly not see that? I know we loathe the idea of repentance for the humility and agony it’s been equated with. But can we not see the necessity?

Because if we’re not changed by the Gospel then we do not know the Gospel!

Simple as that.

We cannot truly understand salvation if we’re not willing to lose all that we need to be saved from. This should make so much sense that it doesn’t even need to be mentioned. And yet all around we see one another struggling as if this whole idea is so foreign that we’ve never imagined it before. How is that? How is it that there are churches and speakers who refuse to talk about repentance? What are we not understanding here? What are we refusing to understand?

That He legitimately deserves to see clear and obvious change in our lives? That God should witness a new willingness in us to let go of everything that we’ve long held in His place in our hearts? That Christ is owed a sort of reverence that revels in losing this world that still hates Him so much that they’d kill Him all over again simply because of His audacity to ask us to stop being so selfishly sinful? That we ourselves are still at time so selfishly sinful that we too would rather not have to think about all that we’re getting wrong simply so we didn’t have to do anything any differently?

Indeed there seems this sort of breaking point wherein as soon as some sudden demand demands a greater loss that’s seemingly more grueling than the path ahead seems worth, we run right back to looking for excuses to not have to change anything. We allow our desire to doubt to win out as soon as something asks something of us that we’re not otherwise ready to give.

Like salvation deserving repentance.

The simple reality is that Christ’s gift of forgiveness asks merely that we stop doing the things of which we need forgiven. And yet that, although an entirely singular and altogether simple response that should be offered without question or hesitation in light of His offering Himself to take our place and bear our pain, it’s not quite so simple when we still enjoy doing the wrongs that needed His blood to absolve them from our record.

We don’t want to lose our enjoyment of things we’ve come to enjoy, and so when this faith asks us to stop doing something we’ve come to completely enjoy doing, we will begin to doubt as to whether or not His promise is worth this now present predicament proven in our having to repent from something we like and thus lose another enjoyment in life.

Because to us, it shouldn’t be that hard. His death should have not only achieved for us our much needed forgiveness, but too it should have freed us to go on doing whatever we want without now having to worry about whether or not it’s right. We should be able to just shrug off every hint at personal responsibility, because He took our place right?

Yes, He took our place, but on the cross not in this walk.

Friends, that’s my point for today. That there’s still much demanded of us along this road home. Each of us still have things we need to learn, need to change, need to let go, need to stop doing. And the fact that we argue so much trying to find a way to keep from losing what we’ve come to see as gain in life, that’s the reason that all of this seems so hard sometimes. It’s because we seem adamant to keep hold of at least some aspects, a few parts and some of the prettier pieces of these lives we’ve loved living.

Yet that’s exactly why His Word says that whoever loves their life will lose it.

If we don’t let go of this wasted way of life we’ve been living, we will lose this life, in fact, we will lose all life, both here and the hope of the one He promised to those who love Him more than themselves.

Look, I completely understand the heaviness of all this. Believe me! He helps me see something every single day that I shouldn’t be doing or should be doing differently. And it’s so messy and confusing at times that I argue with myself as to whether or not it’s worth it. But the bottom line is that yes it most certainly is! Because the hope of eternal life is worth far more to me than holding onto a life that I can’t keep anyway.

And that’s the challenge of it all.

It’s found in our facing the fact that all of us are going to lose this life no matter how much we love this life. And the question that our faith helps us ask is that if we’re going to lose this all anyway, why not lose it while we’ve still the chance at that hope that says He has something better for us? And if we truly believe that He does indeed have something far better for us, what are we waiting for? What are we afraid to lose? Why are we afraid to change if it means that we’re one step closer to Him?

So often in life we see things so strictly through our perspective that we begin to doubt that God will provide as His path seems often the longest and hardest and heaviest of the options. And it does at times seem like the reward is so far away that holding onto some semblance of happiness or pleasure or profit does indeed seem more reasonable. Why wait for God to get us where we’ll struggle to go? But that’s exactly why this road does seem so long and so hard.

Because we keep resorting back to the same misunderstandings that we’ve always relied upon to relieve us from having to be either reasonable or responsible.

But if we could just embrace the necessity of both then we’d finally be able to see that no, He isn’t slow to prove that the narrow way is the only way that’s worth following. We’re just slow in agreeing that the narrow way is the only way worth trusting. We’re slow in trusting in Christ to know better than we do simply because He sometimes seems to go against what we think is best for us. But friends, would we die to preserve our current way of life?

Because He died to change our current way of life. And so our being changed must be worth it to Him. And if our being changed through turning away from all that caused His torment was truly worth His torment to Him, well then it must be worth a little bit of loss along the way to see what He did it all for.

Please don’t miss out on Heaven just because the road there asks you to repent from things that you’ve come to enjoy. Because while enjoyment is nice, joy for eternity is undeniably better. Even if our pride knows only to disagree just so that we can doubt our way to falling back into what we believe an easier life toward a quicker, and entirely more selfish reward.

No, His joy felt forever is far better than our enjoyment felt only until we die to this earth. Even if takes us our entire lives here to understand that.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold