Day 3402 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 5:8 NIV

Perhaps the severity of the solemnity of sobriety is somewhat lessened when as it turns out we see that it’s become a rather necessity now considering the warning that our very lives are on the line.

And yet it seems most days that against such a truth is the only war we know to wage in life as lived within this world’s way. For here we know only to doubt or discount any and all of everything that dares ask of us anything that may in any way alter or alleviate our contentment within all this complacency inside of which we’ve come to find a comfort we commonly and communally consider worth well more than what Christ has promised His way has in store for those few who do as called to and carry crosses counting losses of all of this life we can before the devil sneaks in and does as the devil does.

For not all that much has changed about his game nor the ways in which he wins these lives we’re sadly none too content to concede. Indeed, he still comes only to steal and kill and destroy, all things we’d be wise to worry against.

Alas, no, it’s continually clear that our only worries are won in the way of want and wish in which we weary ourselves to wage war against whatever staves or starves our selfish inclinations as given us by the workings of wickedness already within us. Yes, we’re a people perfectly at peace it would appear to remain in place even though this place is so far out of place within the perfection for which God created all He’s created. For He didn’t make all this to be the mess it’s become, no, rather such a deliberate downfall has been instead designed by the one who wars against the warnings of God’s wrath.

Which is exactly what we want to hear, who’d have thought?

Well, the devil did. See, ever since He called God’s bluff and got rebuffed, rebuked, ultimately reassigned as it were, he’s been on a tear trying to tempt and trip and teach all to tally and tarry and test the waters of want and wish, telling us all that it’s within those idealistic ideas that we have that we’ll find who we’re supposed to be along with every ability and all the belief we need to make it happen. Yes, the devil designs all these lies we live in and live for, all for the chance to catch us napping on this truth that came to set us free from such mundanity as our remaining this replica of a ruined world we’ve become.

It truly is incredibly heartbreaking when you allow yourself to take a moment and look around, search within, consider it all. Now I’m not saying that all hope is lost as there still stands the cross which conveys the loss in which we can all still share in order to find the hope that is still there. And indeed that chance will stand until God says we’ve had enough time to consider all these other options and finally come to our senses. But what I am saying is that this world is in really rough shape and no matter how you slice it or dice it, that time we have left is less today than it were yesterday.

Thus again I sit here hammering hope into a laptop inside another dare to convince us to try to care a little more today than we did yesterday. And I don’t know where all these words continue to come from nor how I manage to every morning stumble again into the audacious hope that somehow this might both honor God and help someone else. But whatever and wherever and however and to whomever it might matter, I will try, as I’ve told Him, until He either tells me to stop or calls me elsewhere.

For that is indeed, as I’ve said, the last remaining hope in my life of the many I’ve had or held over the years. It’s just that I might spend out my last remaining days as if my mind, my heart, my life a bank account of conspicuous belief that I pray only to leave dry so as to leave everything behind, both of this world and also to this world. And while I may have little left to give that’s of any worth to anyone, I cannot seem to help this hope that says maybe I can say something that somehow glorifies God and thus gives another beggar some hope as well.

Because the fact is that we need it. We need hope in a sort of sovereign severity that I think we’d all agree we’re scared to consider. For down here we’ve come to consider that hope is held only inside everything. We do all we can to convince ourselves, to convince one another that hope is everywhere. It’s supposed to be inside our every dream, held inside every idea, promised within every preference and proven alongside every path we pretend we’ve the power to pave toward the plans we make toward those preferences we have.

And yet all this time we’ve seemed to find so little that we’re still looking, and therein lies the danger we’re in these days.

It’s defined in the fact that still we walk within a world welcoming wickedness to all but define us. We stand alongside souls so starved and stayed that we’re all at risk of staying here as well, lost forever in this land so starved of hope, of healing, of happiness and meaning. All because so many seem to just like it this way, or at least pretend themselves willing to accept it all for the simple sake of the ease it all affords us in just letting down our guard and going along with whatever anyone else seems intent to do or be or become.

Yes, we’re a people just bounding along life’s highway as if we still have some say in anything that goes on, all while just always going along doing as everyone else does, listening to only what everyone else says, agreeing with whatever everyone else wants, and racing against them to get it first so that we can have it longest before leaving it anyway.

That’s one of the biggest deceptions that the devil sells to soothe us into selling him our souls. It’s that this world has something we need to want, something we think we want to need. It’s this idea that, since our time here be as limited as his lie says it isn’t, we’d best get to enjoying the best of the fruits of this life in this land before we leave it all behind. Yes, such is quite the consideration anymore, or at least one of worldwide appeal somehow.

And if we can’t see in that fact the truth of our faith, well, I don’t really know but to say we’re so incredibly blind that it’s downright offensive for us to then assume we can find our way to much of anything worth much of anything. Because the fact that the foolishness of futility and faithlessness is indeed of such widespread worth within this world seems to match up quite well with the Bible’s defining the line which is narrow from that which is wide and well-traveled.

Yes, whatever is popular here is evidence to me of the need of sobriety to see beyond the disbelief which plagues most in this place. Just then a matter of when and where we finally break down and agree to stand up.

For that is the call of the cross, isn’t it? To reach the end of our brokenness only to then find the courage in Him to finally take a stand that actually stands for something? To consider the cross, to count such a loss that we see in Christ a chance to choose to go ahead and lose whatever of this world may remain in us so that we’re not of this world when He returns looking for faith. Indeed, when He does come back, a day and date we do not know, what will He see?

Will He see a people ready, any waiting for His return? Will He find faith on the earth, in our hearts? Will He return to the sound of any of us praising Him or just the incessant noise of a world in which we’re lost looking for peace so that we feel pleased and appeased without ever finding it? Yes, will He find us aching for His coming or instead unsure as whether or not we’re able to believe in such a widely considered impossibility?

That’s the devil’s dealings my friends. He’s convinced the whole to stop waiting for life, to stop fighting for life. He’s told us all, in different ways granted, to go ahead and do this our way. Convinced us that our lives are indeed our lives and thus meant for us to perfect and perform however we might see fit, and to even then change such blatant blaspheme every single day if we see fit or feel the need. Yes, live your best life and let none warn you otherwise against such a disregard for the design of the divine.

Indeed, the devil’s got us all convinced that we are divine and thus able to define the length of our time and too how our time is best to be spent. And we’re all spending more than we have as if our lives aren’t on loan with the chance of foreclosure looming for all.

But indeed, yes, God does still retain the right to revoke our life, to remove us from life, to hold us accountable for how we’ve lived this life, wasted this life. In fact, Scripture tells us plainly that such is not only promised, but that since none know the day of Judgement beginning, it is also perhaps imminent. And while many find in that warning plenty of reason to refuse God’s way for the sake of the sobriety it demands against the sinful drunkenness we prefer, well, He offered it not to those who think themselves well enough to live well enough.

No, He came rather for those sick enough to admit we can’t do this well enough to become well enough to measure up to the plumb line of life against which He said we’ll be measured and then died to help us understand.

Because we all know just how many times the devil’s got to us and convinced us to do as we know now what shouldn’t have been done. And considering the cross and the heaviest of costs paid upon it, we know that even if by some miracle that number of our mistakes was only one, even that lone error is worth the full weight of what Christ carried and endured in our place.

Now I know we’ve learned to think life is so light as to leave no gravity to our mistakes. After all, we’ve made so many of them and plan still for so many more that we do indeed seem to have plenty of reason to lean upon such a tired excuse as that we’ve here something to lose. For yes, the lawless at times go unpunished in this place. Liars are let off with little more than hurt feelings left in the wake of their misleadings. Those who hurt others are often brought to nothing most would consider justice. In fact, most who do wrong aren’t known for the wrongs they’ve done.

And that’s something all of us can say as we’ve come to fly so below the radar for fear of our failings being seen that we’ve come to assume forgiveness is something to be taken for granted, that if we need it, it’ll be there whenever we ask for it. It won’t though. That’s the severity of our Savior. He opened the tomb so as to open a window into His mercy through which we can barely fit. Easier for a camel as He said. But therein lies the challenge of our faith and the cost of this life and the chance to consider it lost before we lose it all anyway.

It’s to choose today who we let down. For the reality of humanity is that we’re definitely going to disappoint someone. Who then? Shall we do as we’ve done, as the Bible has defined, and continue ahead engrossed in the sin that our Father hates? Will we again today look at the cross only to turn away back to living the way we’re used to? Will we agree once more to a life lived lost in the shadows of selfishness and the resounding success such finds for a life lived our way?

Or will we rather turn today against the devil and learn to stand our ground upon this hope that is Heaven, a hope found only in the only Name that came to set us free from our fellowship with foolishness? Yes, will we find the courage to come apart from a world coming apart at the seams and reach instead for the hem of Him who came to stitch us back together again?

Will we continue to live without a care in the world, or have we finally had enough of being so devoured by lies and deception and the depravity of it all that we’d indeed rather lay down this life if such means we’ve even the chance to find the sort of change that faith claims is able to turn to a tomb into a threshold?

The truth is, and it’s a shattering reality indeed, but we walk among those, and many of them, who are willing and waiting only to be devoured. And that won’t change so long as we’re in this world so lost in the devil’s schemes and the fun they’re all having within them. That’s where all this becomes personal. We can’t lean on anyone else anymore to have our faith, to live our lives, to make our choices or pay our consequences. This is our life, a gift given to us to choose then what we do with it.

What will we do with it?

Just please know that whatever that answer is, it doesn’t have to be the same as the answer you’d have given yesterday. We’ve been given today to do something new, to try something better, to fight this fight a little harder, or to simply ask Him to help us find our fight period. Send up that prayer my friends, and then welcome with open arms whatever He asks of you knowing that His way is the only way out of this life alive.

No matter what the devils tries to make you believe, his promises end only in death, for that is who he is and what he does. Steal, kill, destroy, devour. Settle for that if you want, many will sadly. But why do what everyone else is doing? Where has that gotten us so far?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold