Day 3435 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:2 NIV

Having travelled sin’s road for as many years as all of us have, thanks be to God above that some of us find within its unchanging nature a realization that if anything is to ever improve, it’s that road we must lose.

And yet this is an altogether alien consideration as to lose in this life is to fail life itself, or so it seems as such indeed is as we’ve been taught to believe. Yes, our biggest beliefs always seem to align with this rather arrogant complacency in which we convince ourselves every day that this road we’re on will eventually lead us where our hopes have always waited for us to find them. We’re so vastly lost inside the stagnancy of the status quo that we think hope is something that always waiting, always in the distance, this sort of blurred betterment that begins always a ways away.

As if God blessings can only be held in the up ahead and not then known in the here and now.

Alas, this is by and large the way of the lost within this land which teaches us this idea of life in which we leave our improvements for another day still to come so that today needn’t be burdened by our believing in something so much better that we finally agree to stop waiting and instead to insist upon thriving. No, very little here could be even accidentally deemed to be thriving. Life here is rather about merely surviving, a sort of confused assuming that what we’re doing will get us where we hope to go, at some point we hope.

Yes, we always seem more than able to hope in hope but never quite able to hold it close. This seems to me a right perplexity, a saddened commonality among this society alongside whom we ourselves grow cold and clad with discontent mixed with a passing contentment which seems always there to hint toward our betterment, just not quite enough to call us off our duff into the rough in which a reward is always won. Indeed, it seems as though we’ve all but forgotten that such things as honor and valor and victory are only given unto those who fight for them, fight toward them.

Perhaps such a reality is all but lost upon the lost simply because it demands a measure of movement, a degree of displacement, a concession of comfort that requires us to tire of staying put, becoming buried underneath the nature of life being a gift of which we know deep down we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. For how can life not mean so much more than all this we’ve settled for? How can there not be more than this we’ve know so far?

Are all of God’s blessings given only to the past we’ve already been through or held always up ahead as that hope we can’t seem to find the courage to race to?

Indeed, it seems as though many do believe that sort of thing as it appears most days that most folks are more than fine with where they are, who they are, what they have and the fading hope of it lasting forever. For you see, that hope must be one of waning worth as this world itself is passing away, and thus all that’s had or held or hoped for within it will too pass away with it. And this is what ought to inspire a movement toward the better that keeps us going.

For rolling stones truly have no time for moss’s slothful consumption.

But that’s the very issue with sin itself, for it is also a moss-like material that envelops a soul, consumes a life, hardens a heart and blinds eyes to the point that they convince themselves that since belief isn’t always seen then it’s perhaps not really anything worth fighting for or fighting toward. No, if we can’t see it then we’re convinced we can’t be it either. And this makes for every excuse we could ever want to avoid the effort and energy demanded of such an eternal intrigue as Heaven’s hope.

No, far too few have the humility to chase something they know they can’t catch whilst in this life so filled with more than plenty that more than plenty consider to be good enough. That’s an idea I’ve grown to find personally offensive over the past few years. Good enough is this sort of half-reward given unto all who are equal parts aware and unwilling. You see, for good enough to have become such a finish line as it has for many in this life, you have to know that there is something better to be had, but always unwilling to want for it more than you want the comfort that comes from settling short.

And that is indeed what sin is, it’s good enough. It gives us pretty much all we could ask for in life. It brings the fun, offers the excitement, even surrounds us with a pre-made community who are likewise engaged in the same pursuit of personal pleasure and preference. Granted, we could do without the whole guilt part and the shame it seems to insist upon sometimes. But it’s not bad other than those things, which those around us can help us either avoid or ignore or deny, and in fact most of them seem to be rather excited to do. For we’ve here made a life out of such selfish denial as that needed to be so happy about staying put.

But you see, the thing is that nobody really ever mentions the inability of denial. For denial is merely an effort to discount, to disconnect, to divide oneself from the gravity of reality. Denial is nothing more than our understanding of such things as responsibility and consequence, just overruled by our stronger desire to not care about their threats or warnings. No, denial just allows us to do as we please, which we like, without having to bear the burden of admitting that doing as we please doesn’t quite mean that what we’re doing is in any way helpful or healthy.

Indeed, denying the truth, which is again what sin inspires us to do, it lets us off the hook. But only for a moment. Because you see, reality and responsibility and our inability to completely dissolve them as we did not ourselves design them, they remain a promise that none of us can avoid forever. The consequences of our failures and falsehoods and foolishness, they’re going to be faced at some point no matter how much we don’t like that promise.

But the issue is that we hate that promise so very much that we have all widely agreed to indeed settle for the good enough that everyone else is good with. If it works for them, we can find a way to make it work for us too. And thus we, like they, remain all but entirely enslaved to sin simply because we think it possible to continue running away from the better lives we were made to live. Yes, we live as if God is okay with us sort of meeting Him halfway. We’re not quite righteous, but we’re also not as bad as some.

We’re once again just sort of right there in the middle where we’ve come to believe exists the smallest of risks, even if too it also allows the smallest or shortest or most worthless of reward. Indeed, we don’t really need to go for the gold, silver still shines. Bronze ain’t bad. Trophies may tarnish, but we can polish them up. And so we settle for what we’ve already known, already won, always done simply because it’s again good enough.

We even come up with nifty little clichés that add to the comfort and help us stay lukewarm and unwilling to look further or fight harder. Indeed, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? If it doesn’t hurt, why worry about it? If we’re not in prison, then we must be a good person, right? Yes, or at least that’s what the world seems to assume. That our present surroundings are as much able to define our character as our dreams are able to design our reality.

Leaving us always to fall back upon the good enough we’ve already found just so we needn’t admit that we know we could do more, see more, know more, be more. No, we’re okay as it sits. It’s not so bad from down here. Sure, we don’t have the best view or the most joy or really any sort of peace be it personal or public, but hey, it ain’t bad.

Except that it is. For anything less than what He said is best is indeed a denial of the better for which we were made and for which, in Christ, we’re now called to return.

That’s what I hate about good enough. That sort of settlement is always only one denied advancement away. And yet that’s why it’s always going to be easier, and that it’s easier is why it’s always going to remain so popular. Because it’s demands effort to advance. It takes humility to embrace the hassle of admitting that we need to improve. It takes courage to consider the fact that where we are isn’t the best we can be.

But hey, this idea that so many have embraced of good enough is more than fine with where we are because we’re already there. And so we’ve become a people of denied advancement. It’s not that we can’t do better, be better, get better. No, it’s just that we know such improvement demands effort. And effort is hard. It’s scary. It asks us to do without always having the ability to know. And we’d just rather settle for what we’ve always assumed than to admit that there is more to it than that.

And it’s that uncertainty that’s well-known within such things as hope and the humility and effort it takes to reach for it that we just can’t tolerate. We’re a people who again seem to agree that seeing is believing, and that’s poses the problem with change because change promises that we won’t always be absolutely certain that our every effort will end up being worth the work. We have no way to guarantee that our blood, sweat and tears will turn out for the better, for us bettered.

We can’t promise ourselves that our persistence and perseverance will produce the promise in which we hope.

For indeed, we might fail. We may fall short, again. We might put in all this demanding effort and humbling hope only to crash and burn when our best intentions and their best inventions prove entirely insufficient. And having endured that kind of crushing disappointment so many times before, we’re perfectly at peace not risking it anymore.

Again, we’ve become a people of denied advancements. It’s why you hear things like “come as you are”. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful message, and one that indeed has a place in faith. But unfortunately, due to human complacency, it’s one often shared without context. Come as you are, yes, but understand you ain’t staying there! That’s not what Jesus died for, our staying the same as we’ve always been. No, rather He died that we might see that we’re going to lose a life too. He laid down His life to express to us what’s to be expected of us.

Salvation demands life for life!

And it’s this bold transformation which begins in that tomb that defines why the world won’t understand us anymore. It’s because, in Christ, our days of good enough are dead and buried. We’ve got a whole forever of better to fight for now! And those around us just won’t be able to understand that from souls that have been given over to a debased mind. For a debased mind is willing to settle short. A debased mind is willing to retain their revelry in rebellion simply for the fake sense of false freedom it allows them to feel. A debased mind will always find a way to deny something, simply so they needn’t do anything.

Simply so they never need to change anything.

But the honesty of the truth as breathed out for our benefit by the benevolence of God above is that if we don’t change, we will die. Because sin is death my friends! And perhaps we could get by with barely getting by if we didn’t know that truth. Maybe if we could honestly say that we didn’t know that anything we were doing was wrong, maybe we wouldn’t be guilty. Indeed, if we were blind, we wouldn’t be guilty of having seen our way to living wrong. But the problem is that sin cannot be committed if there’s no awareness of the righteous law of God.

And that’s where all this nonsense about good enough and status quos and staying put becomes eternally obliterated. We all know the righteous law of God for He wrote it upon our hearts. The issue then is ours as those hearts have grown petrified inside, so much so that they’re not but stone thanks to sin. And as the years of wasted life have washed over our hearts, hardening them even more, those hopeful commands have become but faint ideals that aren’t considered worth fighting for anymore.

But that defines the biggest problem of them all because Christ came and laid down His life to prove that they’re not only worth fighting for, God’s promise is worth dying for. And that’s exactly why the call to crosses taken up and carried toward where crosses go. It’s because again, salvation demands a life for a life. We have to lose what we’ve loved if we’re to leave what we can’t keep. And while this indeed a hard lesson to learn and an even harder act to undertake, we’ll find that once we’re underway, it does become easier.

Because belief begins to remind us of the point and purpose of His promise. It’s not just to lead us toward streets of gold. It’s not about the rest we’re told awaits once there. It isn’t even about the perfection of it all. It’s about our becoming the better He made us to be because that’s something we’ve never known and simply cannot find without Him and our faith in Him. And we cannot have that faith which leads to that life that’s lived in Heaven and all of its perfection if we don’t come to terms with the fact that the road of sin, while wide open and completely comfortable, it only leads nowhere.

And this is something that all of us have seen and felt and heard and known for longer than we care to admit. We know there is no hope, no joy, no reason, no meaning, no purpose, no point, no profit, no promise, no perfection, nothing permanent to be found in sin. We know that there is no life in sin, for if there was we wouldn’t be afraid to die. But yet we are so long as we live in sin as we know deep down that our deeds will not go unpunished.

Yet the beauty of the Gospel says that if we will simply humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways and seek His praise and pray He would accept us and the little of the little we have left of what He gave us to be, then He will heal us, forgive us, accept us as the prodigals we’ve become.

And so perhaps today is the day we begin or begin again. We just have this way of always resorting back to where and what we’ve always been. But friends, if we have truly died to sin as is a cornerstone confession in our faith, how can we stay the same? How can settle for what we’ve known or where we’ve been? How can we who are in Him not ache for, race for, war for the better that He came to remind us we were always supposed to be?

By no means!

For “don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:3-4 finishes up this little reminder found in today’s verse. It’s all about living a new life as found only in the death of the old. For again, that is what salvation demands, a life for a life.

We cannot do as we’ve always done if we are in the Son. For if we can stomach the idea of doing what we’ve always done, then we should really question our faith and where it stands and what it is because if it doesn’t change us, it will never better us. And if we think He’s okay with our never being or doing or wanting anything better than the way of life He came to die to forgive, we’re nuts!

And while we may live in the proverbial peanut gallery, that doesn’t mean we need to plant roots among the weeds. No, let us instead begin to leave as again we’ve now in Him somewhere better to be.

Let us then, again, be on our way!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold