Day 3355 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

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 possibly find? We find rather doubt, fear, a violent hesitancy to waver upon wonder as to if it’s all worth the work, worth the weight. We wonder if it’s worth the wait. Both because we’re entirely impatient but also because the wait is held inside a world in which we neither belong nor have any reason to try otherwise anymore.

Such is the casualty of this opportunity.

Yet there’s always much made about the gifts of God’s grace. So many sermons and sayings resounding the sounding of His salvation and the security such mercy makes alive for us, in us. Indeed there are even churches filled to the parking lot with people hanging upon every word spoken by those who say that most pitiable presumption of His goodness, this Gospel being most beneficial within the confines of this draining time of a life we’re leaving behind.

Yes, some have indeed gone so very far in the direction of comfort and the contentment therein that they’ve promised prosperity and a growing sense of power to those who believe that such are all faith is for, all He’s meant to have died for, all we needn’t then worry about even struggling for.

And yet this idea is one that’s growing in its most galling nature, at least in my opinion. For it’s wonderful to expect the best, but if done whilst never planning for the worst, preparing for the least, embracing the loss, well then people are only being encouraged to build houses and hopes upon a slightly shinier sort of sand, one with streets of self-perceived gold and glory and gain, all proven here rather than humbly hastened toward by hearts unwilling to want for the temporary.

It’s breeding this disbelief in folks who are, like we all, all but unwilling to consider the fallout promised, the fears to be proven, the losses to be won along this way.

Because the fact is that we are sinners and as such we are selfish, fearful, most deathly terrified of seeing or feeling or knowing or going anywhere toward anything that is anything other than everything we’ve come to assume we need based always upon the wants we’ve always wished for in life, for life. And when we ourselves remain of any concern, any focus, any devotion then we’re inviting constantly a sort of struggle that is against flesh and bone. A kind of struggle that will make sanctification even more arduous and at times shattering as it’s meant to be.

For this growth into which He’s given us the gift to go is something altogether alien to we who’ve lived a lifetime assuming that our lifetime is supposed to be lived along the line of least loss. We’ve dissolved into a mindset set upon never needing to hurt, never having to endure, not once knowing the simplicity of necessity as excess has come to define us. Indeed, we’ve become so used to being used by ourselves and what this world has helped us to make of us that we’re not at all able to understand what it’ll be like to be used for a cause greater than some current preference.

We’ve no idea as to the difficulties designed along this day ahead, nor any reason to assume them absent or impossible. For that is not at all what we see in who we claim to follow now. As Christians we’ve claimed a Name that is above all others, a confession most confusing should we still be assuming that the path up and out of this life is one not aimed at the doldrums of uncertainty and the storms of coming calamity that we claim we have seen at least once before.

In Christ.

Indeed, such is both where we say we’re fighting to be found and yet still somehow sometimes where we say we find instead a gross misunderstanding as to this battlefield upon which we’re failing. Yes, it seems that the fights and failures of this faith have become for us these little excuses that allow us a sort of ability to continue ahead into only more misunderstanding as we seem almost insistent upon His merging His mercy with our materiality.

It’s like we’re still seeking out some middle ground upon which we’ll gain His grace but not lose this place inside the pain we don’t want to feel as we fall away from fearing our fleeing this life we’re leaving.

How else is that supposed to feel, supposed to go other than the only way it can?

There ought to be little that’s all that easy along this path out of this place. For along this way following behind the Way we’re bound to bend and break and become undone in ways that we could have never imagined, never ever wanted. We’re going to lose, to feel lost, to find a sort of loss that leaves us so alone and afraid and actually excited about it. Or at least we could. We could come to see this share in His suffering as something that sends us a step or two closer to the Son. We could allow Him to teach us the purpose of these pains we’ll feel, even perhaps coming to appreciate them for what we contend they’re accomplishing.

Or we can whine and complain and argue with Him as if we doubt still that He could possibly know what’s best for us just because His best at times feels quite worse than the way we’ve wasted in before.

And therein lies the chaos inside. It’s this endless insistence that this is supposed to be easier than it is. It’s our humanity shining through and sullying His salvation for the sake of our safety, our comfort, our complacency. It’s our understanding pretending still a misunderstanding as if we can’t quite comprehend what He made as clear as possible upon that cross. It’s our fear of such loss leaving us leaving room to quit should at some point our willingness have had enough of fighting for it.

Because to fight for loss seems the antithesis to who we’ve become. We fight to win. We struggle in order to succeed. We’re willing to work provided we win in the end. And though such is indeed the promise, still it seems that the pain along the path to it is of such extremity that we at times are all but convinced that it’s just not worth it. No, we’ll work and work for want and wish, but even then, if our hopes tarry or take some time, we’ll just move on to something quicker.

A perspective most problematic inside a faith that doesn’t at all work according to our understanding nor in accord with our preferred timing.

No, this path is paved His way, and well, again we’ve seen what His way won in this world. And in truth we should be thankful that most of us have already lived longer than He did down here. Never really think about that though. We don’t consider the hastened end He reached. We don’t really recall the pain of it all. We rather just look to the cross and insist such be considered our loss, thus leaving us nothing more to lose on our way home.

Yes, not even the sinful ways we’ve come to want to remain within. Not even the misplaced priorities that leave His story in contention for our attention. Not even the wayward wants and wicked wishes that work overtime to live as if we’ve plenty of time to get all we want without losing this chance at what we need. No, we want a faith that asks so little of us that it’s almost not worthy worrying about.

Because we’d rather weary ourselves worrying ourselves about this world and what we want while still within it.

And yet we don’t see the unnecessary battle this idea begins. We don’t see the crumbling of these walls we keep building. We don’t consider the concession of our comforts as they seem to us kindnesses that God should surely allow and understand. We don’t really think about going without as we head on out of this world, leaving its ways behind as we die a little every day into this hope of a new life waiting somewhere better, brighter. We don’t want to think about all we need to lose as we don’t still think we need to lose.

Thus we become our biggest opposition as nothing can be harder than our standing in our own way insisting that His way merge with our will as if His death is simply done to afford us an easier life.

And when this life is hard, and when faith refuses to ease that load, and when the truth confronts us in ways that wreck our world, and when He stands in our face and says that things have to change, if we’ve been building an assumption of this faith making a way that allows for our wants and wishes to remain won, we’re in for kind of hurt we cannot being to fathom.

For I can think of nothing worse than walking away from a hope unfinished. Especially this kind of hope He died for us to have.

You see, Christ did what was hard because easy just wouldn’t work anymore. Easy is what got us here. Easy is what keeps us convinced we can stay, content to stay. Easy is willing to walk away from the work, from the weaknesses that make this effort we’re called to undertake all but impossible to understand. Easy is always interested in quitting should things get hard. And friends, considering the way of life we’ve lived, what’s harder than changing everything?

That’s not who we are, not what we do, not who we want to be nor what we ache to do. And yet such is exactly what should be seen as an opportunity not some obligation. Christ isn’t owed some mere obligatory humility as if offered only in protest or pretense. He shouldn’t have to drag us kicking and screaming into this chance to change some things so that we don’t die only to stay dead. He should look upon us and see hearts breaking for the weight of the wrongs we’ve allowed to remain, not for the fear of the loss of all we’ve sought to want instead of Him.

He should see us striving to keep dying to sin, not wanting for ways to allow ourselves to think of how we can let it remain.

There isn’t a step of His walk upon this ground that wasn’t grueling. For within every second He knew exactly what He came to do, and that indeed He would arrive upon that purpose and the entirety of the pain and misery it meant. But that’s just it, what does it mean? Not to Him, that much is as clear as can be. What does it mean to us? What does His purpose and the path He paved toward it meant to us?

Because the simple truth is that if it’s not something we’re willing to share in, then nor is it something we should expect to glean from. Because we cannot give this faith what it deserves, what He deserves if we remain in any way willing to become at any time unwilling to keep going when this way gets worse. And it will. But only if we stay inside this same frame of mind that sees suffering and struggle as if a sort of loss we’re unwilling to welcome.

But if we instead become able to look upon the One who endured more than we ever will, then maybe we can come to see the loss of self and the sins we’ve come to love as a most exciting share in His purpose. Because He didn’t come to lay down His life for us to not do any work in ours, on ours. No, no friends He gave His life so that we might see that we need to start getting ourselves together.

And He suffered as if to show us that it would be hard. And yet He rolled that stone as if to say that the difficulty, though it may kill us, it cannot destroy the work He’s begun.

Nothing can destroy the work He’s begun, but make no mistake, we can give up fighting for it. We can walk away when that work He’s begun begins to become so hard and heavy that it breaks us in half. We can run and hide when His way wants us to leave something we love behind. We can remain our own worst enemies as we waste away wavering between what we want and what He deserves to see instead. We can make this as hard as we want depending entirely upon just how little we allow ourselves to surrender.

But friends, what we need to understand is that this path is already going to be hard as it leads us against the grain of a world living against our God. Why make it harder by allowing doubt or discontent to remain of any welcome in our hearts? Why keep hold of things we know we can live without, like fear, worry, hesitancy, uncertainty? Our faith should become in us so real that we don’t even believe in pain or punishment the way we used to. No, the only pain and only punishment that should come to matter is the mere suggestion that we fall short of finding as much of Him as we possibly can.

I don’t want to reach the end of this life and realize that I caused myself to miss the fullness of Him as hidden always behind my preferences and priorities and this unwillingness to let them go. Because I believe in a God who gave everything for me to have the chance to change. And so if I refuse to change, then what do I really believe?

No, when this road gets hard and the weight of our past lives grows heavier as we’re shown more and more the things of which we need to repent, let us not then relent as it’s meant not to break us apart but rather to build us stronger in Him. For when we are weak, He is strong. When we’re not enough, the cross already was. But friends, that isn’t an excuse to give up along the way. It should be an encouragement to never again let any kind of concession enter our mind.

Jesus didn’t. And though we’re not Him nor able to do what He already did, we can at least keep our eyes fixed on Him and our hearts resolved to show Him that we’re not willing to walk away. Even when that’s all we want to do just so we could avoid the misery that’s coming.

No, let it come, in fact, race for it. Because the truth is that we’ll not avoid it anyway. And so we may as well stare it down and refuse to hide in fear. For no, we might not survive the hardships and hassle up ahead. But that’s okay because in Him we’ve eternal life waiting.

So what are we worried about?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold