Day 3352 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

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 such sinful and selfish stagnancy as seen and shown in our souls starving for the hope and peace and purpose we’ve all yet to find within ourselves and these vanities which define us at this point, it’s entirely prevented us from living at all.

For all we know of life is to ignore whatever might insist we’ve yet to live.

Because to us we look back and see so many moments and motives and movements that all seem like a life lived. Each of us a has past now passed behind that for some reason refuses to pass away and let us press on toward something new, something better, something more. No, I contend that we all live mostly in those past ways in which we lived at one time, a time in which we were just certain that we had both life understood and too then the ability to live it well.

But what of eternal worth have we remaining from those days spent standing never hearing, never seeing, never caring to hear nor see anything nor anyone who might dare deny our stance that we’d figured out the very purpose of our place in this place? What are we able to offer in order to prove that we did indeed know well what we were doing? What evidence might we put forth to defend our defiant indifference when upon a day we might truly be asked to explain our lack of existence?

For just because we’re here does not mean that we exist, because to exist demands action, movement, an almost visceral if not entirely insane insistence upon squeezing the most out of this literal once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live a lifetime.

And yet rather than offering such an interest in this gift we’ve been given of a life not our own, we’ve instead set out to assume that it is our own and thus meant to be lived however we may see fit. And whenever a life is lived in accord only with how an individual may insist, that individual becomes their own god, an idol made of oneself relieving oneself from hearing or seeing or caring about anything not perfectly conducive to the preferences of one’s self.

Such is why the Gospel is foolish to those who are perishing inside a selfish insanity so unsanitary that sin seems still to be the most perfectly profitable and publicly powerful way in which to waste this ride.

Indeed, there isn’t a human alive who wishes to hear what the Gospel has to say. For to us we’ve done no wrong. We’ve been justified inside our every choice, our every action, our every inaction just because the world said that we should be ourselves and all we’ve ever known of ourselves is this sin into which we were born, the sin into which we then chose to remain. That is the particularly personal gravity of the Gospel. That we are all sinners who’ve done more wrong than we’ve ever even been able to pretend we got right.

No, truth is that apart from God, as in this life we’ve lived without any hint of reverence or remorse due to clear irreverence, no, apart from Him none can know right from wrong as He alone defines the both just as much as He alone began our lives without our asking to live them.

You see, there’s the oddity which stymies humanity inside this ongoing decision upon indecision. We’re half thankful and yet half regretful. We do appreciate life but so too do we despise that we’ve been given it from another. We love that we are loved but we loathe that such love deserves more than we’ve shown. We are grateful for His grace but still angry that we need admit it needed before it’s able to alter us for the better. Indeed, we are entirely enthralled with the better that we imagine for ourselves, but do we truly hate that His Word defines us as unable to understand something so good as better.

For we would rather have nothing from Him so that we owe nothing to Him as the gravity of what He is due demands we lose all we’ve come to love. And it’s that message we see hammered home upon a cross endured by the One who proclaimed once and for all that “It is finished.” The problem then becoming that we’re not ready to finish with it. No, our enjoyment of all that Christ died to atone for has only just begun, beginning brand new every morning as if sin has no end.

Because it doesn’t, at least not inside this way of life we’ve so willfully wasted upon never hearing anything that says anything against anything we enjoy more than everything.

And yet there’s the gift. It’s not just the sacrifice. It’s not only the blood that was shed. It isn’t merely the mercy poured out through a pain we can’t even begin to imagine. It’s not the agony that intensified as our Savior died so as to save us from ourselves. No, it’s the culmination of them all into the chance now to change everything because such difference must be worth it if He chose to die for us to have it.

That is the message. That while we were, most days still are, living as enemies of God doing all that God simply asked us to never do after having defined it as a work earning the wage of death, He chose that death that our decay demanded for us to have ever again the chance to live once more. For again, He is higher than here and thus He has seen all that we’ve done and destroyed both in this world and in ourselves. And yet He isn’t nearly as quick to quit as we’ve so perfectly proven ourselves to be.

Rather He hoisted our cost upon that cross and gave Himself to help us see that we need not merely to hear but to intensely listen to everything He has to say that we do not dare stay so lost as to be found among those cheering His misery as if He were actually the One losing everything.

No friends, we’re the ones who have lost everything every single time that we’ve fallen back into that tired resolve to insist that life revolve around us alone. We’re the ones who lost.

And yet in His mercy He met our mayhem with a Word that speaks still today everything we need to come away from that wasted way in which we’ve wanted only to wish we could have our way without the clear necessity of His salvation saving us from the wrath our way has won. For that is all that our way and our will and our wants and our wishes and our wickedness has ever achieved. Just us stuck inside ourselves assuming our life’s meaning were waiting somewhere inside something we’d want or enjoy or find pleasure within.

That’s why we need His Word, but even beyond His having given it, we need to want it so desperately that we actually listen to what He has to say, but then refuse even to stop there at the mere understanding that He has said something we might actually need to hear. No, we need now to show Him that we’ve learned enough through listening to Him that we refuse to remain where we’ve been. For His Word says He died so that we might move from this madness.

What then does He see?

Truth is that He should see souls now on fire to hear more, to learn more, to live more for Him than we ever have before. He should see a clear sign of His Son having achieved an intensity to our faith that finds us daily a renewed insistence upon the kind of existence that’s yearning to be worth what it cost Him to redeem it. Yes, God should see a willingness in us to reach for Him, even though to do so demands we die to ourselves, for that is truly all we’ve left to offer the One who did just that for us to have that chance.

Because you see, the willingness to read the Word shows that we appreciate the message. But an urgency to live out what the Word says proves we understand the meaning.

But perhaps that’s yet another problem we’ve created. What does any message mean anymore? We hear every single day so many ideas demanding we do this or try that or say something that someone else says they want to hear. Yes, these days so much of all we hear is this collective guessing as to what gives a life its meaning. We hear everything from messages aimed at consumption to those geared toward comfort and still a great many others built upon our complacency as if staying just as we are is all we’re allowed to be, expected to be.

Yes, this world tells us so many things, and therein lies the beauty of the Gospel for it is entirely unique to the rest. For many of this world’s maniacal messages that seek to give life its meaning are only meaningful as they do as we’ve long preferred, soothe these ears ever itching for a word that wants only for us to remain forever lost inside want and wish, wishing incessantly for wins to want.

And throughout our pasts we’ve well proven ourselves a people particularly piqued by those presumptions posed upon personal profit, promising no personal pain.

Because we’ve always loved those messages for what they so clearly mean. For they all mean only to leave us as we are without any inclination to any alteration in any direction we needn’t desire to go. Yet such is the audacity of the Gospel for it demands all the above from an alteration to our direction to an almost violent inclination to deny the desires we have to never again move beyond what we’ve become.

Such is why we should, and I say should because often times we so definitely and defiantly don’t, but we should appreciate God’s goodness finding reason to breathe for us His Word. Because we need exactly the help that He so kindly offers therein, just so happens that we need first the humility that might allow us to imagine that there could indeed be such hope as His help held within.

And for any who do indeed decide upon such courage as to chase into His choice to breathe such a blessing for our benefit as the Bible, the same are the few who indeed may find not just some strange message that seems to mean something eternally different from the many others we hear on the daily. No, those few are the ones who are willing first to appreciate that His message is different, even if His message seeks to make us different.

And if we become so bold as to allow Him to break us with His Word, well then we may then find ourselves among the few of those few who do not stop at merely reading His Word but do indeed go so very far as to come to insist that He teach us how to live out what it says.

For such is the entire point and purpose. To change us in ways that demand action and movement and a degree of discipline we know we’ve never shown before. Indeed, Christ came to help us see exactly what that kind of reverence looks like. A soul entirely, eternally sold upon fulfilling only God’s will for our lives in this world we’re leaving behind. And such is now all we can do to show Him that we do indeed appreciate His message so very much that we demand His work be done in us, through us so that others might see a strange difference in us that inspires them too to wonder why.

That’s what His Word does. Because His Word is truly alive and active, and if we’ve the humility to hear Him out, well, so too may we find growing in us a fire that demands we do far more than read some words on paper. No, because to read those words is to show that we appreciate the message that someone else took the time to write for us to read. But to deepen that devotion in His direction and ask that He lead us to living His will, such shows that we in fact so appreciate His willingness to help us that we come to find an urgency to help Him help us, to help Him save us, to perhaps even live with such a fearless faith that others too might begin to listen themselves.

For if they too begin to listen, well then they too might too begin to do what His Word says. And if such does indeed come to pass, perhaps our lives will have somehow exploded into having meaning not just for us nor just for here but too for another who too listens to their Savior and too begins to move toward Him with the sort of reckless abandon that does indeed count these lives as loss for the surpassing glory of knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

Yes, we can appreciate the message, but do we have the courage to repent from our wrongs so as to show that we understand His meaning?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold