Day 3354 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

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 still think about what all such a gift might cost us in the form of loss we’re not ready to lose? How can we imagine His scars and say we understand what they achieved if we ourselves are not at all in any way willing now to try to make sure His scars are proven meaningful in our willingness to change because of them?

Indeed, we should be willing to change because of what He did and the horror of it all. And yet here we sit still stymied and stagnant as if faith is something for us to consider, as if it’s opened unto us in some sort of measured measure, as if He’s to be pleased by our wavering and wondering as to whether or not this path is worth the pain of letting go what we’d rather hold. And such violent inconsistency in terms of our faith’s intensity leaves a possibility our hearing something along this line as warned in Revelation rather than what should be our goal to hear as offered in Matthew 25.

“Well done.”

Alas we seem still a people more than content with this consideration of settling instead for ‘almost done.’ Close enough. Good enough. Plenty far, granted not as far as we might could have gone, but further than we’d have otherwise tried back in the day as lost in our old ways. Yes, we seem to imagine that He’s to be impressed with our leaving such things as repentance and reverence as the proverbial pools into which we merely dip the toe so as to not have to tread in the fullness of their impossible depths.

For perhaps we’re just a people entirely and eternally and terminally limited by such fear. Always unable to be anything but unwilling to risk anything in which we might struggle, may suffer, could lose or would fail. No, seems that we’ve gotten it figured in our minds in such a way that we would rather not try so we’d not have to fail than to try and welcome the fall. Simply because we think He’s more impressed with our inaction as opposed to the mistakes we would make should we try to move toward that hope we can’t see in that direction we’ve never gone before.

And thus Heaven remains for many merely a fragmented figment of a faith so foreign that they refuse the fight for fear of the failure.

But friends, what if our worst failure isn’t falling but rather never standing for something? What if our greatest weakness is allowing weakness to remain of such concern that it keeps us content in this portion of hope we know we know without ever daring toward the fullness of His promise that we know we can’t know? What if the most impressive way to deny Him is to sit in debate as to if His way is worth the weight, the risk, the loss?

Yes, what if we fail Him most when we show Him we’re too afraid to try?

For such is who we’ve become, so much so that we literally waste away still lost inside this discussion as to whether or not works are welcome in the realm of faith. Indeed there are those, and many from what I surmise, that have these eyes that see this path as one supposedly of lesser resistance than the past we’ve lived paved with our working toward all that we always wanted. But that demands the question, if we were willing to fight so hard, try so hard, focus so long on getting what we wanted, why are we now all but unwilling to fight, to try, to focus upon doing as He deserves?

Did we just blow all our effort, all our strength, all our focus and care and commitment upon our getting all that we’ve already gotten? Do we have now no ability to just open our hands and let it all go? Too fragile to forfeit what we’ve fought for? Too weak to relinquish what we’ve wanted, what we’ve won? Too doubtful to allow dreams to dissipate and desires to die upon crosses we’d rather not carry? Too afraid to fail to measure up to expectations we know we’ve already failed?

Willing to just accept such defeat at the hands of an indifference that never seemed to exist in us up until we heard about Christ and learned of the cross and thought about the cost and saw that it deserved of us a share in His loss in exchange for a share of His victory?

Perhaps therein lies the confusion. Maybe we just doubt still in His victory as the spoil seems still delayed behind a few years, few decades perhaps of suffering and sacrifice. Maybe we can’t quite equate Heaven’s hope with this world never again being seen as our home. Maybe we can’t really wrap our minds around letting go of what we see, trading such certainty for the uncertain hope we’ve only just begun to believe.

Yes, maybe we’re just unable to believe, leaving us dashed some days by disbelief that’s become in us reason enough to not go too far nor try too hard as this is all just so new that we know we don’t know what to do.

And so we do nothing, even so very well as to convince ourselves that such is exactly what’s asked of us.

As if the cross deserves nothing.

Then again maybe I’m wrong and reading my own misunderstandings into this message. Maybe I’m trying to earn His mercy as done through the feeblest of abilities to show Him anything as if He needs something from me. Yes, perhaps I’m just getting it all wrong in trying so hard to do this right for once. And thus maybe this difference of opinion has drawn the sort of line that we’re all all but unable to cross as it’s carved so deep inside of something we can’t rightly understand fully that we just square off to our corners assuming that He will sort it out later.

But friends, such is quite the promise! That He will sort it all out later, the wheat from the chaff, the lost from the found, the fearful and failing from those faithfully trying to be found among the few rather than within the other many. Such is referred to as Judgement Day. It’s a day upon which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. It’s the day when our souls will be weighed as we’re asked what we did and why we did it, and too what we didn’t do and why we chose so not care so bluntly.

There’s a story in Scripture that seems to come out of nowhere, flooding at random back into my recollection that seems to deal with this dilemma. It’s the parable of the bags of gold as told in Matthew 25:14-30, a passage I truly encourage everyone to both read and listen to. Why? Because we too have been entrusted with something valuable, only this gift is worth more than its weight in gold.

Far more in fact.

See, in that story this landowner is going away and entrusts to a few of his servants a share of his wealth, of his worth. He gives each a bit of gold and then leaves on his trip. Upon his return he calls the servants in to see what they did with that gift of his trust. Two of them were found to have put his wealth, his worth, his trust to work and in doing so had earned more, doubling his investment as it were. But the third, no, the third did what he thought wisest and of least risk. That third hid his master’s entrustment and thus did nothing with it.

Because he thought the gold was what mattered and he was afraid to lose what wasn’t his.

Much like our salvation. It’s gift given in trust, a promise entrusted to us to do something with, to make something of, to at least find of such worth that we want it to grow so as to show our Master, our Father, our Savior that His trusting us with His Spirit has inspired in us a willingness to fight for His increase. And yet we cannot do such a thing if we, against the truth of Scripture, hide ourselves under baskets of fear and worry we might fail and lose what He entrusted to us.

As if we can lose His mercy.

No friends, we cannot lose His mercy but rather we should worry that perhaps we’ve not found it. For as we talked about yesterday, if we have indeed found His mercy, His majesty, His love and kindness and promise of all the above waiting in a measure we cannot begin to imagine found only upon our exist from this most fleeting existence, then He should see in us a bold insistence upon pleasing Him however such might be possible.

But how can we possibly please Him if we do not do as He’s asked us to and put our hands to this plow and plunge ourselves into this harvest of souls like ours, soiled and starving for something to hope in? How can we say we know Christ as our Savior if we’ll not risk our having to suffer if it means we’re closer to Him? How can we claim a share in His Name if we’ll not do as He himself did and lay down our lives and work out this faith until He comes to finish what we cannot fathom?

No, it seems that if you read through Scripture you’ll see a great many actionary instructions. Arise, awaken, wake up, rise up, stand up, get up and get going because our faith is worth it!

Action, movement, effort, work demanded by Christ of the churches addressed here in Revelation. It’s not working to earn our salvation but working from our salvation to show the world that we’ve been given that kindness. Because this faith deserves evidence that we believe, that we’re changed, that we are actually fighting the good fight, fighting against the flesh, fighting against temptation, fighting for something. Striving for something. Longing for something with such a deep ferocity that we refuse to leave any doubt that it means everything to us.

No, friends I get it, I understand that He doesn’t call us to earn our salvation, but if our words and actions aren’t different after we have received it, then we should probably ask ourselves what it is that we think we’ve received.

Because if we’ve been forgiven and set free, not much should be the same in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives, in our priorities, our passions, our pursuits as seen in those years spent enslaved to sin. For it is our works that show we’re either living from a different mindset or that nothing has changed despite His dying to invoke such a drastic difference as our now working not toward want but rather now toward Him. And we should indeed beware of the latter and not take any hint of spiritual laziness lightly.

For one day He will indeed determine the worth of our deeds, the worth of our faith, the weight of our wrongs as measured against our fight to stop allowing them to so easily remain reasons to not try too hard for fear of falling short again. I don’t know as I’m not Him, but it just seems to me that He might rather see us try and fall than fail to try.

Because if we’re at least willing to try and fall then it seems to me that such shows that we care enough to risk not being enough rather than not doing anything because we agree we can’t possibly be anything more.

I reckon this is something for each to work out for themselves. It’s on us all to sit and decide what faith is worth and what we’re willing to do for it, to do from it, to do with it. Not to earn it but rather to show that we have it. I just personally cannot imagine the thought of hearing Him say, ‘almost done’. That I was close. That I left something undone, unconsidered, unrepented, unfinished. I cannot imagine hearing Him say that I left faith unfinished.

Not because it’s on me to figure out how to finish it, but simply because I don’t want Him to think I didn’t care enough to try anyway.

So may we try anyway. Not because He needs us to. No, simply because we should be willing to show Him that we’re willing to.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold