Day 3403 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 5:9 NIV

It’s otherwise common knowledge that to resist is to deny, and too that this faith therein requires a great deal of resistant denial, an undebatable if not undefinable amount to be exact.

Just then leaves one to wonder as to whether we’ve the courage to consider the loss such a resistance may cost both in life and of life as such does indeed now demand we deny our very best friend who’s been like a dear brother to us throughout all these years spent living as if life weren’t worth worrying about. Yes, for such is the way in which the devil works his way into our wonderings so as to inspire our wanderings into all our wantings and wishings for as much of this wicked world as we might have within our time within it.

That is the very outlook shared by all who live, leaving then only a few who find themselves looking into the barrel of loneliness, and somehow smiling at the suggestion that we can’t do this because we seem to do this alone.

Indeed, this path is truly one of such narrowing width that there are days here or coming ahead in which we’ll feel the only one walking along it. And that feeling, that realization, that understanding that where we’re standing is in fact well apart from the comfort of the crowd out there upon the wide and welcoming, well, it’s a rather grating thing to be sure. Because we’re a communal people, born and bred into this belief that we need a bushel of friends and a basket of fun had with them for our time here to be as full as the world says it can and thus should be.

Yes, this world is rife with this revelry in which we’ve all come to agree that we are to be nothing more than a number counted in the accounting of friends, fans and followers. Each of us then knowing only to seek out such belonging as we’ve long spent believing is what we’re constantly and consistently needing for our lives to have any meaning. Meaning then of course that we tend to just stay the course and ride the tide without rocking boats or being so brazen as to believe beyond them in what might land us a share of the inconsiderable.

Something like walking on water, a journey experienced by only two that I can think of, which is pretty rare considering the billions, trillions of folks who’ve come and gone along this ground. Only two have known the possibility of such an agreed upon implausibility. And even then, one of those two only took a step or two before our commonly shared sense of doubt and disbelief allowed him to begin to sink.

It’s a shame what we miss when at first we concede to let the devil’s doubt define our time.

Which is exactly why the call to resistance we read here. Because the devil has been doing the same thing since time began. In fact, deception-designed doubt is indeed what he’s best known for, the father of lies as Scripture defines. Yes, the devil lies to all, and in truth he is so deadly within his deceit that he’s found even ways in which to works his works into our hearts which lead us always away after those wants he’s convinced us we need more than even life itself.

Thus to be thankful for the truth which sets captives free should indeed be something a little more evident and obvious than it is, was, will ever be down here. For down here we know only to go, to run, to race and waste whatever we need in order to get whatever we claim we can’t live without. That is without question the most depraved of expectation as exemplified within these blinded eyes so down with disbelief that we only believe that to see is to know and thus to never know beyond what our eyes assume we perceive.

It’s all become rather precarious, this life and how we live it. It’s always spent chasing something as if we need something more than the simple beauty of God’s benevolent provision. Always looking ahead to better days, brighter ways, wanting within them all something we’re a bit too tired, a little too tried, a skosh too scared to even pretend to care enough to consider charging for today. Yes, we’re a people who resist only whatever may call us out of our rest, comfortable to a fault that will one day be proven ours alone.

No matter who may have instigated such a grand stagnation as our having become only what we’ve always been, lukewarm at best.

See, that’s one of the things we’re clearly warned against within the last book of God’s Word. Revelation recalls the warning given to those who’re found lukewarm in regard to faith. It’s a complacency that’s considered justly for exactly what it is and what it says about all who agree to settle for it. It is in fact a settling in light of an ongoing opportunity to keep on trying, to keep striving, to welcome suffering if need be just so we won’t be unready for what’s to come when He comes to call us wherever our faith has chosen for us to believe.

Hence the whole storing treasure in Heaven idea.

And that right there is a pretty dire dilemma as it were. For within every day we’re awakened to this war still raging within the choices we’ve yet to make, choices we’ve made a thousand times before. It’s now, on this right side of wrong as defined by the line He drew with that cross, it’s a chance to do something new, to choose something new, to lose the old and refuse it found again. And that right there is a pretty big problem for every single one of us.

For we know only to assume our treasures here.

Because again, the devil’s got us tricked into thinking that this life is all about all we think we’re needing, and when we live as if we’re in need of something within this world, well then this world will retain what we’re called to retake. Yes, in Christ we’re called to retake our focus, to steal it back from all the embarrassing blasphemes to which we’ve sold it, given it, allowed it to be taken however any might have wanted to get it. And the dilemma is defined in that we’ve done just that for so long that we remember not how to resist giving away what was never ours to lose.

It was God’s to give and the devil’s to want, and you and I are just the ones who’ve allowed our eyes to see the wrong prize as if it’s in these lives that we’re to win and reside.

Because it’s not. These lives, in the best of my own estimations, are merely our desert. This is our time of testing and temptation. This life is our trial at life, a tryout to see who turns out to try for more than the tired and torn as won within the wants and wishes of this world still wishing only that God would leave them alone to do as they please, which is always only that which pleases the deceiver. Which then begs the personal question to whether we’re to be deceived or delivered.

For those are the only two ultimate outcomes within this time of a life spent in trial and testing. And yet perhaps the beauty is best believed by the fact that we have gotten it wrong, for how else are we to learn best what not to do than to have done what shouldn’t have been? Indeed, it does after all seem as if God really does know what He’s doing in allowing us to keep losing our lives in exchange for all that cannot afford us more time. For which of us by worrying can add even an hour to our lives?

But how many of us, again by worrying, have lost years of our lives to wanting and winning things that the world, as controlled by the devil, convinced us we needed?

Yes, I’ll have to add myself to that rank as I’ve most rebelliously lost a great deal of my life, my thoughts, my time, myself to a whole bunch of worthless junk that I fight only to shake off my feet and out of my heart every single day. And it’s within that strange insistence to lose any of this substance that I’ve so long sought to have and hold that I’ve come to know that God is working in us despite us. Because I know without question that’s it never been in my estimation to lose anything in this life.

And yet here I sit not only eager to lose the rest of this lost way of living but also excited to now learn to resist the wanting, the wishing, the worrying and wasting as I’ve so clearly come to call living. And there is, to me, just no other way to account for such a change as that which has begun to allow me to realize I’ve never fought for anything, nor then do I even know how to anymore. And therein I find only this new opportunity to learn something new which can become something better than everything I’ve been or bought or become.

For within the resistance of the devil we find ourselves finally able to realize just how unable we are to do as we’re called to do and carry this Word into a world which will only hate hearing what we have to say. And yet, seeing now all the mistakes, wading through all the lies, considering again all the times in which I fell for all the lies that led to all those wasted and worthless years spent making those mistakes in order to keep having everything I now cannot lose fast enough, it’s sparked a fire in me to not live for me anymore.

Because I know now all that that can lead to, and simply put, I’m tired of the camaraderie.

Yes, I’m tired of being friends with a world living in enmity against the only hope I have at a life lived better than it is here. I’m tired of trying for things that don’t mean anything. I’m tired of having things I can only hold and knowing that they’re then of such fragility that they can’t hold my life. I’m tired of listening to what everyone else says I should do, lies told through those who aren’t living what they’re preaching. I’m tired of all this trial and turmoil turned out from our way of working against God. I’m tired of watching it all unravel and having to pretend I’ve played no part in the mess.

I’m just tired of selfish tragedies as if I wasn’t the one who agreed to them, because the truth is that I was. And of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, and I remember only a scant few of the lot I assume, they were all made at the behest of another. A best friend inspiring me to try this cigar, to play this game, to watch this movie, to look at this picture, to learn this joke, to make fun of another. And so here I sit overwhelmed by the misery of having the wrong company, a need I thought I needed to feel like I belonged.

All because the devil convinced me that I couldn’t be lonely.

And it’s that very same lie that we now learn to fear as we look upon a faith that follows along a narrow so narrow that it seems nobody else is on it, in it. But that’s a lie as well. For yes, it is hard to leave behind an entire way of life, losing the company and companionship you’ve won within it as you become the weirdo who doesn’t roll like that anymore. It’s strange to stop wanting everything that everyone else thinks they need, and to slowly lose things to talk about as you walk without a care as to what everyone else is caring about.

But that by no means means that we’re lonely out here. For such trials and testing is being undertaken by many in this world, just far fewer than those who aren’t willing to endure such growth. Which is where we find our choice for today. Stay lost and deceived and have plenty of others around, or do we instead dare to do this alone and lose whatever it costs to find out what only faith knows?

We’ve been told what faith knows. It knows that water can be walked on. It knows that oceans can be parted. It’s certain that mountains move and lame walk and deaf hear and the blind receive their sight. Yes, faith knows that the grave is just a gangway for those who get away from the ways of this world and spend our last remaining days within it resisting the wants and wishes the devil wants us to think we need before we leave. Indeed, faith knows that there’s more life to come only after we’re done down here.

And personally speaking, I can’t find it within me to allow me to settle for only that which is found on or in this soil. Because I have, and since I have, I know without a doubt what I know, and that is that that is as heartbreaking a concession as any of us could ever consider. Because it is not the truth of God which inspires us to conspire for us, to expire as us within this world that tells us who we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to want, where we’re destined to stay. No, that is not His way, for this world is but the beginning of forever, only the devil made us believe that it’s all there is.

Continue to believe that if you want, and yes, you will find plenty of company to keep you warm within the darkness of disappointment and disbelief. Not me. Sorry but I just can’t do it anymore. No, the devil has had plenty of time to live up to his lies, and he hasn’t. Just keeps telling more, and as that story changes to fit whatever I may want within any given moment, such only reminds me that God’s story has never changed.

Sin is still sin, and it still deserves a death. And yet, He sent Christ to die for me that I might live in Him. And if I’m to live in Him, and He in me, then my life cannot anymore look like what it looked like before. Not ever again. Because it’s the devil who doesn’t want us to change as he has us right where he wants us, broken and used to it. And I just can’t find a reason to agree to that anymore.

Not when the cross says He came to bring the dead back to life. And so I’ll spend my time here resisting the devil as best I can, and asking God to help me learn how to do so better every day. And when it sucks, and it will, I’ll be thankful for both the promise it all leads to as well as the reminder that I’m not as lonely as it might seem sometimes. For we’re all a family of believers, and thus we’re in this together. And though there may be few who find the faith that agrees to resist all that everyone else is enjoying, I’d rather be among the few who have a chance to hear ‘well done’ than among the many who don’t know that hope.

For to me, without that chance, life isn’t worth living. Thankfully we have it, and too the faith that calls us to not allow the devil to make us forget it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold