Day 3362 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 15:8 NIV

It seems as though perhaps the distance from our heads to our hearts is, at times at least, much the same as the separation we so often feel between here and hope.

For though our lips are geographically close to the hearts which pound inside a craving for more than we can say we need, say we know, yet sadly despite their being so near to our knowing what we need, we find that our mouths and our hearts are existing as if in two foreign places. Because while our heads may hold lips that let on that we know we need Heaven's hope as having come in Christ, our hearts remain among the ultimate deceivers as they lead us daily back into the brink wherein we break away all over again into disbelief as designed inside a heart’s desires kindling fires forsaking that faith which yearns only for a fellowship with He who is everything we could ever need.

Indeed, it seems to matter not what our tongues here confess as our hearts head us always into following the path our mouths claim we don't wish to walk anymore.

And here inside this incessant and most senseless resistance to His insistence that our existence is a substance of substantially more than we’ve otherwise come to settle for, turns out that we’ve become this brand of those self-blinded that believe belief is the betterment of a life we don’t care to live. And yet why is that we seem so incredibly hesitant to live that better life to which we know we’ve been called?

Well, it’s because such call deserves a sort of change that would otherwise demand we do something, and well, we like rather doing nothing as if nothing is done then no mistakes are made.

But assuming that we can now avoid mistakes having already made so many seems a rather pointless pursuit not at all worth the missing of this miracle made manifest in the Messiah coming for us. For if we could manage, as our spiritual stagnancy seems to assume, to never again slip or slide or selfishly satiate ourselves upon sins then all we would possibly accomplish is to live a life that dies anyway, just without the urgency or even the interest in meeting He who came to bring a promise of life waiting at the end of this ending.

Yet we seem to have become the sort who sort of assume we might find another way out that doesn’t demand things like devotion, dedication, discipline, discipleship. Indeed, while we may like the sound of salvation it seems the cost is more of a loss than we’re willing to welcome. And thus we wait still between here and hope, head and heart as if this middle ground so filled with mayhem’s misunderstandings is truly meant to mean so much that we miss the moment right before our eyes.

Alas, as our eyes are so close to these lying lips which lay below, so too does it seem that they too know better to deceive and be deceived than to dedicate and dissipate as shown inside our involvement in the undoing of all we’ve become at the hands of all we’ve done having long been things we knew better than to do, things we just couldn’t help but think and see and say we couldn’t do without. For such is the severity of sin as it corrupts us into such a calamity that we eventually become nothing more than a catastrophe of eternal proportions.

All because our hearts teach our lips to lie as if, as we’ve been discussing, God is to best be pleased by air rather than action.

You see, we’ve long been a people of such asinine assumption. I’ve in fact been reading through Jeremiah, the long lead-up to that most commonly quoted out of context verse that all know, and well, it seems rather shocking in a not at all shocking sort of way that many seem to miss said context. For nearly the entirety of the passages and prose posed before 29:11 is founded upon our Father finding the Israelites still lacking in both reverence and reason.

In fact, Jeremiah 18:11-12 seemed to fit this verse’s post for today. Verse 11 says, “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’”

Yes, not quite the flowery hope that many have bent Jeremiah 29:11 into meaning, is it? No, it’s rather a dire dilemma the people are told they’re facing. God has had enough of their wickedness wanting always only everything but to honor Him. And as He is a just God, something we talked over a bit yesterday, He’s decided to give the people over to all that they’ve so clearly asked for: A life lived without having to worry about God being there.

Be careful what you ask for!

And yet even in His anger, what do we see at the end of verse 11? It’s a chance for the people to do something about this problem they’re facing. “Turn from your evil ways.” “Reform your ways and your actions.” Turn. Reform. Actions. God speaking clearly that something more than words is needed to resolve this dissolving relationship between a Father and a people who no longer even pretend to care to be His people.

Yet what do the people answer in verse 12? “It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.” Yes, told of danger, disaster even, and yet the people prove themselves as faithless as ever as their hearts remained an eternity apart from He who made them to beat to the tune of this life we all still manage to take for granted as if God’s still not worth our worrying about nor being thankful for.

Indeed, same bloodline different lifetime. For we today are still in every way as stubborn and stiff-necked as those God sent into captivity in Babylon. We still hear without listening, we pray without praising, we worship while only wanting, we study without seeking, we indeed even claim we’re trying without any hint of trusting. Thus it seems our faith is but skin deep, a mere accessory to our lifestyle as if it’s meant to mean nothing more than a piece of jewelry dangling from our necks and a witty bumper sticker on our cars.

Yes, we walk this faith tongue-first as if our words might truly suffice. But friends, when will we learn? Will we learn? Why won’t we learn? Do we even care to admit that we need to learn if we’re to ever live for more than we’ve settled for? Because if we even lack the courage to try for that more, then we’ll forever be only what we’ve settled for. And while that is indeed all our hearts may desire as designed inside this world that’s all but taught us to live as if we’re not dying, I just don’t know how much longer we can keep from trying.

Because the God who sent those people then into captivity in a land they’d never known, a land not at all what they knew of home, so too are we still at risk of staying lost inside a world not what we’ve been given the hope to know of as our home.

You see, Christ came to cover our sins and forgive our trespasses. But it wasn’t merely for freedom from past wrongs that He gave His life. No, it was to inspire us to seek out something more than the mediocrity we’ve come to assume life to mean. It was to implore us, to impel us, to propel us toward the promise of peace in a place we’ve not known to have the hope of calling home. Yes, He came to tell us of another place in which all we’ve always longed for is not only able to be found, it’s waiting for us!

But the problem is that it takes everything we have to find the courage to follow the path that He paved toward that promise. It takes both mouths confessing, yes, but so too hearts finally agreeing to be reborn, minds adamant to be renewed. It asks for a humility our hearts haven’t known as they’ve lived thus far in utter hostility, eternal enmity against God. It deserves a sort of devotion that demands we deny ourselves anything that might become again a distraction from the narrowness of His leading us.

Yes, this faith that Christ fought for, died for, it deserves everything we are, everything we have finally tied together and agreeing, hearts and heads, hands and feet, mouths finally meaning what they say so fervently that we speak only what we’re willing to prove inside actions that match for once the air we breathe into sounds that have for so long carried only noise and nonsense, nothing at all close to anything we should expect God above to listen to.

No, for so long we’ve known a sort of falsified faith that’s found for us just as much reason to keep from trying as reasons to try for anything other than what we’ve already found, already known, already decided we want in life, of life, from life. Indeed, all this time we’ve been just wasting away inside this separation between our mouths saying one thing and our hearts heading the other way. And we’ve settled for that egregious existence simply for the sake of the ease it offers us.

Because what’s easier than words? What takes less effort than talking? Each of us can rattle of a perfectly rehearsed rhetoric that sounds as smooth as a greased playground slide on an icy winter’s day. In fact, all of us have become quite good at it, a fact held inside these lies we live hidden behind mouths that pretend we want it this way. But how can we? How can we truly want our lives to stay so lost and losing as they’ve become? How can we mean that we mean to stay in this place so far from peace?

Or better yet, how can we pray to a God we don’t want to know as shown in a way life spent walking away from what our words seem to say?

See, that’s the tragedy of living a life via the words we speak. It’s so easily swayed into what we assume another might assume. We seem to insist that God will simply believe every word we say, even when our actions and movements go another way. We live as if we can talk ourselves out of any problem, just so that we needn’t walk away from getting into those problems to begin with. But friends, we’re not only playing with fire, we’re playing with a wrath that promises fire forever.

Because God is not mocked. God is not so easily deceived. God isn’t going to be somehow proven unable to know anything but our words as He has seen all we’ve done. And so if we think that it’s with our words that we can either please Him or appease Him, we’re more decrepit than we could ever imagine. Because for us to allow for such spiritual neglect as to allow our faith to reside only inside words that carry no worth as our lives do not make them mean what we say, well such is as despicable a decision as I can consider.

And yet it’s one that I myself have done!

Thus we find the disaster we’ve become as a people who say one thing and do a million others. And while such has sufficed inside a life lived within a world that does the same, friends, the promise is that we’ll not be in this place forever. And when we are gone from here, so too will fade all the figments and fabrications of the falsities of this life we’ve lived and lost to the wrong side of right. We will have no excuses left for our having lived a life allowing our hearts to prove our tongues liars.

We will just be a people found suddenly before He who we never knew, a Savior who will not save those who don’t surrender all they are and all they now do unto that salvation and the sanctification such a gift is meant to start.

I know that many may be tired of the heaviness of these posts as most aren’t in any way the misunderstood Jeremiah 29:11’s that this world reads out of context. But friends, I just want us all to consider what’s heavier, having to read and think all the time about the mistakes we’re making and perhaps undertaking a new way of living that demands we don’t get so much wrong or finding ourselves face-to-face with the One we’ve wronged and not being able to say we tried to honor Him after hearing of Him?

Because you see, one day we will stand before God and my fear is that my mouth will have been the only thing pretending to lead me there. I do not want my mouth, my words, this air in my lungs to be all that I have to lean on when my forever is determined. No, I want to hear Him say, “Well done”, and since He didn’t offer to say, “Well said”, well then I’ll not stop at words spoken of a faith I never lived.

No, I know He deserves to see faith in action, and so I’ll ask of myself to do what I’m long said needed to be done. Not because He asks us to earn it, but simply because I don’t want this distance between my heart and my words to become a distance between my Savior and me. Just not worth it, even though words are easier.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold