Day 3388 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 18:27 NIV

To live a life lost within the darkness of our own deceitful desires is all but demanded in this place as such is the way all of everyone lives, but therein lies the beauty of the light which has now come with far different demands.

For God’s ways are indeed higher than ours, better than ours, thus simply different than ours. And since His demands as defined by His design are indeed so very different from ours, well, we’re left with a rather simple decision: Stay or go. Remain or return. Continue to rent or conspire to repent. And yes, I said conspire. For to conspire is to “make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act.” To conspire is to “seem to be working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone's detriment.”

And thus we find within this faith a chance at a change that will literally turn our lives around and thus lead to the salvation we so desperately need from the sinners we’ve so clearly become.

But the gravity is that to find such salvation is to now agree to conspire against ourselves. It’s to become our own worst enemies, a verdict I’ve been found guilty of from those around me. My own worst enemy. That is the uttermost beauty of this faith as I’ve found thus far. It’s to come to this realization that I’ve long been the single source of my soul’s stagnation, an enslavement to self that simply has stolen my story from the glory of God in exchange for the grime of mine.

Yet because I can now agree to see the slime of my selfishness and the wasted ways in which it’s wanted me to walk and wander into wonder as to whether I need to ever do anything other than everything I’ve wanted, no, I can see now the outskirts of the hope I’ve never had inside all the junk I’ve held as prized by eyes unable to believe beyond myself. For as it turns out, that is exactly where faith has always hidden, just beyond a hollow hope so heavy that we all assume it able to prove what it’s never provided.

For you see, hope as held inside what we have, who we’ve been, where we’ve gone has gone so far off the rails that we’ve become the jails in which we sit inside ourselves assuming salvation to be found hidden within our endless lists of wants and wishes as if we can actually be the ones who come to find what we’ve longed to find without any evidence of it ever having been found. It’s insanity, a most unsanitary complacency inside a conceded contraption considering only misunderstandings for the sake of our standing still without embracing the death it would mean to move.

That is why God calls us to now conspire against ourselves. For He sees who we’ve been as lambasted when compared to who we were created to be. See, He made us in His image and we’ve made a right mockery of that gift ever since. And thus, as such monsters as this mankind has become, monsters who would look upon the potential of piety and prestige and purpose and find instead reasons to rage for all that’s lesser as what we’ve become instead, no, now we’ve a war to wage.

Just one fought against who we are because who we are isn’t at all who we should inspire to remain.

Rather we should, as He did, conspire to change. Perspire toward change. Expire from the fear of change. Yes, die to this idea that we needn’t change, for here in this verse, this entire passage in fact, we see the gravity of grace giving us this gift of that grave into which we can crave the shedding of self in exchange for the sharing of Christ. For in Him is found everything we need, but all those needs are wrapped in all we’ve never been nor cared to be.

And thus we find the necessity of our now wanting to be more than we’ve been. And wouldn’t you know it but He does indeed acquiesce to the Psalmist’s request of Psalm 139:23-24.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

He will most certainly help us see every way offensive in ourselves and then help with the followed fighting against such foolishness for our then being welcomed onto the way everlasting, thus meaning our own ending. And in that we become outlaws against the laws we’ve conspired to commit against God, laws of sin which sell within this ridiculous idea that we can and thus should do as we please. As if our pleasure the highest treasure one might afford in a life we can’t afford to assume we can buy again.

See, that’s the insanity that I try to speak toward in many of these posts. It’s this idea that our pleasure, our enjoyment, our excitement and entertainment are worth, as the world contends, as much if not more than hope itself. For truth be told, hope is not had within anything we can have. We don’t hope in fun. We don’t hope in prestige. We don’t hope in popularity. There is no hope in profit. There’s no hope had in power. Hope assumed inside any of those things is a transient and temporal pursuit as all of them end.

They end.

Why? Why does fun end? Why does popularity waver? Why does life always change just when it seems like we’ve finally managed to scrape out some sense of sordid success? Because those things don’t matter. Never did. Problem is that they always have to us. And thus we’ve become the lawmakers who craft and create these constructs which we contend will continue to win what we’ve already won. For we know the fleeting nature of all things futile. But we love them so very much that we confine our lives to insisting they stay.

Simply because we want to stay who we are, where we are for we are utmost certain that this is as good as it gets. Right?

After all, we’re walking in a world which tells us incessantly that we can do whatever we want short of killing someone. If it makes you happy, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you find enjoyment in it, excitement from it, chase it as far as your little legs can carry you. If you can carry it and it carries some sense of intrinsic value, some sort of worldly worth, give your soul away in exchange for more of that store of something this place says is meaningful. Yes, let this world tell you what is meaningful by always agreeing, affirming what you want life’s meaning to mean.

And thus we’ve become the ones who make the idols that we serve, simply for the sake of still assuming ourselves right despite the endless array of wrongs which are proven by the pasts we’ve paved toward that perfect life we’re still looking for.

When will it show up? Huh? When will our best life be here? I mean, if life is so lackadaisical and lazy as to mean nothing more than our doing everything we want, well what else are we looking for, waiting for? We do that every day. We run wild and shirk responsibilities and ignore warning signs and listen to the voices chiming in tune with this funeral dirge our lives have become. What else need we for this ideal identity we’ve designed for ourselves inside the darkness of self-deprivation?

For that is what we’re doing, just not at all what we’re seeing. No, we see only the fun, the thrill of this ride we’re rolling over the edge into utter oblivion. We’re indeed so blinded by having lived for long in the dark that any hint of illumination or insinuation or investigation of our confusion is considered hatred most high. And thus we’ve become entirely convinced that the Most High is mostly just a rather hateful guy. Always just there to be mean as He screams into the scene asking us to do something better.

And thus we finally, albeit accidentally, stumble upon the purest hope possible.

It’s that we might see who we’ve become for what we’ve been. That we might catch sight of the sins we’ve made friends. It’s that we could happen to hear the truth which sets captives free and instantly see that we’ve held ourselves in such captivity. For He did come to set us free, but in that there is a fee, and that cost is our cross taken up in a share of His willingness to help.

Yes, to help. To heal. To hope again in the both. But such can only be done if we’re the ones who agree to see what He sees, even for a second. Because honestly, that’s literally all it takes. A second. A glimpse of truth. A witnessing of a wrong turn we’ve made. The realization of a rebellion we’ve committed. The courage to consider that maybe we’re not as good at all this as we’ve tried to pretend. Yes, a moment of perhaps admitting that we’ve just been pretending, and maybe then a curiosity as to the simplicity of what a life might be if we didn’t have to be.

Pretending.

Painting lies of light upon the dens of darkness we’ve dwelled within. Putting up posters of our popularity and power as purchased with the funds we’ve won from pleasing people. Wrapping our worth in boxes and sitting them upon shelves as if such is all we should want for ourselves, souls stored in stores sold to the lowest bidders. For honestly, that is what we’ve come to consider as our worth, just whatever someone else might be willing to offer. Just as long as it gets here quick before we forget all we’ve lost in order to find all this failure we’ve become.

Faith forfeited for the finding of fun and friends found down here in the filth of frivolity and the foolishness which allows us to consider staying enemies of God rather than enemies of ourselves.

I want to be own worst enemy. I want that enmity against me for once, not against God anymore. For He’s done nothing that’s left me as lost and lonely as I’ve felt for so long. He hasn’t made the choices that increased the voices that sell the lies that keep me inside myself seeking ways to please more people for more of that profit of the popularity they provide. He just saved me from thinking I need that for my life to mean something.

Yes, Christ saved me from a life lost inside such assumptions as there being something down here that’s worth me never wanting to be elsewhere. Saved me from staying a slave to self, a self that stares at a cell phone screen watching filth convinced that it’s love I’ve found shared between actors acting out depravity for all the world to witness. Saved me from the sort of acquaintances that inspired me down that path of insanity. Saved me from never wanting more than everything here. Saved me from wanting then to stay here.

I don’t.

I don’t want to stay here, not know that I’ve read of a gift such as this. That all of my wrongs might be forgotten, no longer held against me. That my past could actually be washed away, wiped away. That all the guilt and its regret might begin to fade. That I could be forgiven, and by the God of Heaven! A miracle so incredibly unimaginable as I cannot even forgive myself for what I’ve done. And yet He says He can, that He has in fact.

If I turn from my ways wrapped in wickedness and flee the wrath they want. I don’t want His wrath. I never did, just never could see that that’s all that I was winning in the war I was losing to the wickedness of this world welcoming me to make myself at home. No, I’ll do no such thing anymore for this world is not my home but rather my hope in Him is. Because He offers me something that not even I can imagine to give myself: Hope.

Friends, I don’t know where you’ve been or how great it’s seemed. I don’t know the mistakes you’ve made or all the lies you’ve come up with to deny them. I don’t have any way of understanding the path you’ve walked nor the wrongs you’ve agreed to upon it. I just know that all of us have made those mistakes. That all of us are in need of His grace. That all of us are indeed headed for a grave, but that in His grace we can find life waiting rather than just a life ending.

That’s what I’ve known to assume of life so far, just that it ends. And in that, because of the truth being as unrelenting as it’s always been, I also know that my many mistakes have earned a misery I can’t imagine. And thus I can’t imagine ignoring this chance to make this change and come to this place where the only thing I hate is who I’ve been. For I know of no other way to share in His sacrifice than to lay down my way of life in exchange for the hope that there’s still room for me up there with Him where I don’t belong.

And I know that the only way to prove I have that hope of that home is to live my life from here on out as if He really will forget my mistakes with such a certainty that inspires me to fight to stop making them. He died to give us this chance to change. What does this kind of forgiveness mean to us, and what are we doing to show Him how much it means?

As for me, I will conspire with God to “make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act.” Breaking the laws of laziness and laxity that I’ve created to keep myself comfortable. Yes, I will seek out the harming of that old self so lost in sin, to the very death of who I’ve been. Indeed, I will conspire to walk with Christ so as to be found “working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone's detriment.” The particular result being my eternal salvation, to the detriment of that idiot who never wanted it.

Yes, I will be my own worst enemy for that is the only way to lose the way of life I’ve lived so that I might now find in Him the only life that is worth living. One spent walking in hope as if I’m free not to do as I please but rather just finally free from thinking that’s all life is worth.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold