Day 3377 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:23 NIV

It’s crazy to me that we’re so quick in allowing something as young as fear to inspire us to risk the promise of the permanency of peace as provided inside something as old as forever.

Alas much of life as we’ve come to never know it and never live is defined by the presence of an almost permanent fear founded upon our feeling as if we’ve something to lose, leaving us thus unwilling to try whatever may bring closer a life’s inevitable cost. For we all know the price of life as to be paid upon our exit from what we’ve known of it, done to it. Yes, we know the gravity of the grave being otherwise intertwined with the living of life.

And thus defines the fear we feel inside, a feeling so fearful that faith is found floundering in the wake of our worry.

But we seem to see no real reason to want for more than said worry as we walk still among a world perfectly content it would seem to waste away inside want and wish as if they’re somehow able to prove death deniable. That’s a right curiosity to me as seen from a side of life I fear many unwilling to wonder about let alone wander among. No, from the many mannerisms and messages seen and shared it seems that most are all but adamant to hear what pleases itching ears craving the coddling of a lie saying we’ve nothing to fear in the way of cost or consequence.

So it makes no surprise to realize that these posts I share are seen by so few and cared about by even less. Thankfully I’m not doing this to please people, for if I were still trying to please people then just as Paul so eloquently pointed out in the rest of the quote from his letter to Galatia, then neither would I be a servant of Christ. And alas, such is indeed all I care anymore to be, thus defining me as one who is here merely to share what I feel people need to hear about what I believe the truth says is coming sooner than we care to imagine.

Such is the inevitably of a life’s cost: We who are alive enough to know we’re alive are the same who owe a debt to the Creator of life against whom we’ve stolen this knowledge of life and death.

Yet still it seems we care only to consider the former as if the latter is so offensive that surely it cannot be promised. It’s as if we’ve disintegrated so deeply into this idea that God is nothing but warmth without wrath, just a great big congealment of cuddly consent contending that all we’re pretending is just fine by Him, as if nothing we do goes against Him. Yes, we live a life, lose a life lost in such pretend as to demand He do nothing that we deem unkind, uncaring, unloving.

No, it seems as though we’ve convinced ourselves that God is there to serve us the portions and promises of perfected plans we demand He agree to if we’re to agree that He’s as loving as the cross has already proven.

Indeed, the cross tells us everything we need to know about who God is via defining what He does and deserves in response to His not doing unto us what He’s done unto Christ. For that is indeed a kindness too kind for us. His mercy as made clear in the Messiah coming to carry our cross and thus save our souls from the loss of life as both demanded of life and too deserved of what we’ve done to life as lived in sin, such is the very definition of love, of life, of death, of reality simply.

The cross is the entire reality of existence as it depicts for us everything from life to death as well as the difference between God’s mercy and His wrath.

But again, we’ve fallen in love with only the half we like, leaving us following a half-faith that’s alive only to receive what we desire whilst giving God nothing He might want. See, that’s yet another rather confusing consideration I find. God provides for our every need, so well in fact that we can, and do, spend our time then worried about only what we want. And yet as God has no needs nor do we feel the need to consider what He might want. There’s some sort of sick and twisted narcissistic selfishness inside of that, but one we’ll save for another day.

Back to the clearing up of our confusion for today’s topic.

Because it is definitely a confusion well in need of its own depiction. For our fear of death, yes more talk of such demise, it is a rather big dilemma in regard to the Christian faith. Because just as much as we can’t live a life without a death at some point along the way, nor can any ever claim to understand let alone follow the Christian faith if we’ll not humble ourselves to admitting said death is so indeed well-deserved, far more so than the gift of His grace having turned that grave into the point wherein forever starts rather than just where life ends.

No, we deserve the demise, but nothing we’ve done nor anything we could do could deserve the new life that Jesus Christ has promised is waiting for those who admit, confess, renounce their sins and then run back to reality. For such is the promise of Proverbs 28:13. “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” Thus we cannot find mercy unless and until we admit we need it. And we simply cannot admit we need it until we agree that we cannot live without it.

And we cannot admit we cannot live without His mercy unless we can understand that we have earned the wages of sin, wages which were and are and will still be tomorrow the very death we fear, and yet somehow the very death we’ve chosen all this time.

But I get it, death is heavy, so cumbersome as considered the end of life that we find no reason to welcome talk of it within life. No, just leave us alone and let us live until we’re no longer alive. We’ll just deal with it then. Yes, we live like we’ve the time, the right to deal with death only when we’re dead. But friends, that outlook is the asphalt which paves smooth the pathway to hell as we cannot afford to wait until we’re not alive to admit that we already haven’t been.

Because if we wait until we’ve no time left to confess our sins and renounce the way of life we’ve lived so in love with them, then we’ll neither have any time left to beg for the mercy He so freely gives us now. And that is why I talk so much about it. Not because it’s fun. Not because it’s what we want to hear. Not because it’s what we enjoy thinking about.

It’s just because I know that if we don’t address our issues, our struggles, our sins, then we will never be able to understand just how dire our present predicament. And if we don’t realize the trouble we’re in then we can’t understand the true audacity of God’s grace as given us in His Son as our Savior come to save us from a life lived as His enemies.

But that is who we are, who we’ve been in the way of life we’ve lived. And friends, His kindness has made it clear why we need to face our failures. It’s so that we can find His forgiveness.

And so sure, many may find rather strange my fondness for the heavier side of Christ's hope as found within only the death of us marked then by a new life defined by our following adherence to the sharing of said story of such mercy as the Messiah making that way into that tomb now the only thing in life, of life that makes any sense at all anymore. You reading this may be among those who don’t really get why I go this direction so often toward the warnings and brimstone side of Scripture.

Truth be told, I do imagine that many might find even that mindset something of a substance entirely unsubstantiated in light of the way of life so many live and love in love with such false freedom as sin finds for all its followers. For indeed such a demanded demise of all that's otherwise stolen our eyes from the only prize worth a life, it is a rather grim thing toward which to grip, grasping as if among the few so blinded by past guilt and great regret that they, that we find ourselves bold enough to believe in sight restored even unto we who've so vastly dis-earned such a decision as Christ's dying for our salvation from our demise.

And yet how else am I to testify to His triumph over that tomb into which I believe myself now called if not told via the vanity and vitriol within which I've lost so much of my life, of my soul, of myself that I became the very reason that He entered it?

For that is who we are, is it not? We are, as sinners, the very enemies of God as His only right response to our irreverence of His righteous as shown inside our sins choosing ad nauseam such enmity rather than in humility choosing instead any semblance of the adoration He otherwise was always due. We've never cared what He deserved, most days still don't if we're to be honest. And yet since even honesty is a mannerism which is but a modicum of humility, seems we even struggle to just be truthful.

And we see this shown inside the way of life lived by so many who so lightly assume the Gospel some get-out-of-hell card that can be played upon the end of a game we called life taken far too lightly without any time left to alter our course of choices already made.

Indeed we make said choices as if we take no chances, as if neither choices nor chances bear any consequences. Oh but friends, indeed they do! And perhaps the only reason in which we try so hard to deny our wrongs is that we cannot deny what those wrongs deserve. We cannot contend for a conviction of some reduced sentence from the God against whom we've lived in endless contention. We've wronged He who's given us nothing but kindness, so very merciful as to come in the Messiah so as to save us from us, and thus it is us who owe a life lain before the cross as that is a line our old lives are not ever to be welcome across.

No, if we're to hope, as we'd like, in the promise of Heaven found only in the Name of our Savior, then we must become able to admit how much we need Him. But we cannot make such a confession if we see not the ways in which we've wronged Him. And we cannot see our wrongs committed if we consider those sins so light as not worth the death He said He died for us to live His gift of new life.

And thus we see that both death and life are encompassed within the Christ, and as much as the latter may be lighter, it can only be forever if we embrace the former so firmly that we welcome His direction toward the death of whatever may remain in us that is not welcome in Him.

Which is something that shouldn’t be so confusing as to allow us to live as if death is too heavy a topic to consider.

Friends, sin is not welcome in Christ for it cost Him His life, and though He made that choice, He did just that so that we might make ours. And so this life has become our time to make said decision, and if we cannot understand the death of the old, well then nor can we accept the grace of His giving us the new. Thus we need to acknowledge the death we need to endure, the death we need to welcome if we're to honestly expect His welcoming us into that place our pasts have proven we've never cared to fight for.

But we find our fight for that life in finding that that cross makes us from sinners to sons and daughters, and though that adoption demand a death, inside that tomb we find the very meaning of life we've never known all this time. We find in Him our very reason for being, and our readiness to fight for it like we never have before. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Ephesians 6:12.

Indeed, in Him we fight against the darkness and the evil in this world, and friends, in that fight we will find that said enemy has all but defined us too. And thus the need of the death of the past if we're live a more promising eternity. For it’s within the heaviness of our failures having earned us the death we fear that we can now find that He overcame even death that we might live in Him, and not just now but forever!

And though we may not enjoy having to look at, think about, repent from all the mistakes we’ve made, mistakes we have become, mistakes which have earned the gravity of death, we cannot ignore the beauty of such an opportunity.

Because in the end, we cannot allow the wages we've earned to keep us living in fear of accepting the gift of a grace we cannot afford.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold