Day 3443 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 6:4 NIV

Be it a fear of being alone or of merely being left holding the brunt of a life’s responsibility, it seems we seek perhaps too incessantly this sense of community in which we’ve come to find perhaps a bit too much comfort.

For while it’s wonderful to be so surrounded with people who prove opportunities to both love and be loved, to edify and be edified, to lift up and also to lean upon, the fact is that it’s sadly too often taken entirely for granted. It is a truly amazing gift to be so adrift atop a sea of faces within whom we might find a reflection that reflects this reflex in which we at once felt this need to feel alive. Indeed, we might see inside of someone else a courage we can’t feel in or for ourselves, a resilience that we’ve never known, a boldness in belief that we know we need but have never managed to find or feel.

And this miracle as made among mankind having been made in the image of our Heavenly Father, it does afford us a great many moments in which we can indeed grow and learn and improve and find thus the beauty of this blessing of belonging to something.

The problem is that within this world and the way in which it works its wicked wants into the ways in which nearly everyone walks, we’re anymore far too at risk of being lulled unto building a sense of belonging within a place rather than a purpose. And that’s not to say that this place has no purpose nor that there are no people here without a purpose themselves. That in fact couldn’t be further from the truth of life as it was meant to be lived.

For God created this world as a place in which our purpose is proven useful. He created an entire creation over which He sat us as if overseers seeing to the care and appreciation of this most beautiful creation. And within that reality, so too did He make me and you with a meaning, a reason, a path to walk filled with both provision and possibility. And so I’m not saying that this world is without purpose nor that those around us have none to be found either.

It’s just that this world has long chosen to remain frozen inside the coldness of mercilessness making life here and our living of it a most precarious, in fact a perfectly perilous pursuit in that, as we talked about yesterday, we are now living amongst a majority who have no concern for our life’s outcome. Bad company has become the vast majority of the buffet of friendships from which we’re here allowed to choose from. It’s not that it was meant to be this way, again, our being made in God’s image made us to remain a people of all that God is:

Mercy and love and kindness and compassion and caring and honesty and morality and righteous in that regard in all truth as He Himself is the very Author of truth and thus too the reality formed by such an objectivity as the purpose for which He made us and placed us within this place in which He promised to provide for us until we’re back home with Him where we belong.

But the problem we’re beginning to see unfold in a sort of boldness that it’s not even being hidden or denied anymore is that while God made us alongside His objective truth, mankind has only opted to object to His truth, to His purpose, to His reality simply because it’s based upon a righteous responsibility that we’ve long failed to find of any worth within this world so rich with rebellion and revelry.

And that is the problem against which I speak today.

It’s not that we’re not to have friends, to forge relationships, to enjoy this opportunity at this sense of community as God did indeed place us around a great many others who are likewise made in His image and called according to His purpose. It’s just that the vast majority of them have no interest in His purpose, have no concern as to His call, have absolutely no willingness to humble themselves into letting Him lead us where we simply cannot be should we insist we do this alone or along with the world saying basically the same.

Indeed, that is the very essence of this message that mankind is still shouting at God. “Leave us alone.” “We’ll do this our way, don’t need yours.” “We can manage, make do, make believe if we need to.” Indeed, that is pretty much all that so many have settled for assuming a life worth living. It’s this sort of make believe in which all anyone believes is only that which they can see as thus they assume simply undeniable, undebatable, unavoidable.

But you see, once that whole clichéd concession begins to set in, the mindset set upon joining those who you can’t overcome, can’t beat them then just join them, once that sets in, our hearts forget that this isn’t home as we set our concerns to live as if otherwise as such is simply what the majority of those around us are doing.

And eventually, a fact proven perfectly within the evidence offered within the pasts we’ve let the world live for us while we just agreed to not try and beat those who we found it easier and safer and more socially pleasing to join, we end up nothing but a replica of a world lost in rebellion against the very Maker of life itself. All the way until we, like they, learn to lean upon ourselves or those around us to find for us a falsehood that forms a firm-enough foundation upon which we watch the world build cultures and communities and companionships and relationships, and a whole lack of responsibility to any of the above within all of the above.

Indeed, this world teaches us all to let down our guard, to put aside our priorities, to ease up on our beliefs and to simply settle into a life in which we just agree with whatever everyone else does so that we can win what everyone else wants, which is oddly enough everything this world offers us all: A sense of belonging in which we feel as if we’re not so alone so as to remain afraid of not having an alibi for this life we’ve otherwise let slip by as we let the world live for us so that they’d love us.

For that is all the world knows of love. We find this very truth as spoken by Christ in John 15:19, a verse it seems like we discuss quite a bit in these posts anymore. “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.” And that is indeed a feeling we’ve all fought to find in life, that feeling that we do belong to the world, that we are loved by the world.

And thus the problem comes in what the rest of that verse says. “As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” And to really hammer home the hardship we should stop trying to pretend isn’t possible or acceptable or as necessary as it so honestly is: “That is why the world hates you.” And it’s possible and necessary and should honestly be both expected and joyfully accepted because of what Jesus says in the verse just before it.

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.”

Because it all comes down to who we follow as there is no life that doesn’t trace the steps taken by another.

You see, in this world we look at all these roads and rails and ruts and routes that have been carved all around us and we find ourselves assuming that those who carved them and then the many more who’ve since followed them, that surely they knew what they were doing and that surely they must then lead somewhere worth being, to our being something worth becoming.

And in truth, we see a world filled with people as if sheep simply being led wherever someone else says to go. This has exploded within this age of social media bringing an endless sea of suggestions and successes that we’ve come to assume give life its meaning, its reason, its purpose and profit and power. But only if we follow along and do whatever this person we blindly trust says we should do in order to become just like them.

Because again, we look at all these paths and assume that those holding the maps must know better than we where we need to be in order to be what we’re supposed to be. Yes, surely this world has figured out and followed all these roads toward something we need, toward somewhere we need to be in order to be what we’re meant to be. Surely they all lead to something good, since so many seem so happy whilst following them so blindly.

But what if they don't?

What if they lead us where we don't want to go, toward who we don't want to be? What if we're not supposed to follow someone else's lead? What if we're actually meant to be the only one who walks our life along the line for which God put us here to live? And yes, what if our life is meant to live in a different direction from those many disasters this place has designed?

For that is the risk of the wrong sort of friendship. We’re told that friendship with the world means enmity against God. And while enmity is a world seemingly fit better within antiquity as it’s not used much anymore, anything that says, “against God”, well that’s probably a really bad idea as nothing that sets itself up against God will stand. No, rather we’re told that in the end, the end this world so often denies, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Christ is King.

Will we be able to fall upon the mercy of our having lived a life in which we knew that well before so many others are set to find out the hard way when their way doesn’t end up avoiding the judgement He said is coming?

And to that, since again so many here seem so able and happy to deny that we should be judged, why should we be judged? Why should we embrace this burden of responsibility as shown inside such things as self-control, modesty, honesty, humility? Yes, why this need for humility when we see an entire humanity running wild as if they can do no wrong? Romans 3:10-18.

“As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’”

Now I personally really like that whole part in there about how “their throats are open graves”, such a painting of the hatred and division boiling up from within those hardened into hating the Maker of life and Savior of themselves! But it’s perhaps that final line that really sums up why we need to perhaps be a bit more willing to be a bit more cautious as to the companions we allow into our lives, knowing again from yesterday, that bad company corrupts good character.

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

For this world is blind, blinded in fact by so many things that each of us have our own particular inability to see. Perhaps it’s greed. For some it’s gluttony. For many it’s lust for a great many things, a great many folks. For others is vanity, this need to hear that you’re pretty or handsome or hot as if you belong on some stinking weather forecast. Indeed, this world has inspired us to settle for a great many human concessions within everything from language to the meaning of love itself.

And those pasts we’ve all lived at both the behest and suggest of someone else, pasts filled with mistakes and shame and regret and guilt we can’t get rid of no matter how much fun we have nor where we hide, they’re evidence of what happens when you outsource your thoughts, your choices, your priorities, your passions, your opinions, your opportunities, your very life to a world that doesn’t care if you’re here nor where you might end up.

Far too few people here are ever going to care about the outcome of your life as defined upon the verdict you hear upon Judgement Day. The sad truth is that this world lives as if hell is going to be a happy place, and many here live as if they can’t get there fast enough.

Friends, we have to do this by ourselves, because the simple truth is that nobody else is going to be there when you’re found kneeling before God awaiting the difference between the sentence we deserve and the gift of salvation He offered. This world will, as a whole, wholly reject His offer of salvation. Rather, they will continue ahead taking pride inside whatever this world plants inside of them so that they feel as if this world is where they belong to the tune of cheers coming from those they live to please.

And the problem with worldly pride is that when we set out to compare ourselves to others either to see what they have that we're lacking or to boast about what we have that they don't, we are in both cases allowing in whatever worldliness is awaiting our attention. And while this is true in both manners of comparative consideration, it is perhaps most true and thus most problematic in that situation in which we look at the lives or loves of those around us to see what joys or excitements we seem to be lacking.

Because we will then begin to reach out for whatever they have, begin to emulate or mimic whatever they may be doing so that our lives will be able to start looking and feeling as we think theirs must be. We will invite into our eyes, our ears, our hearts, our minds, our souls, our time whatever it is that anyone else is doing, saying, thinking, assuming all so that our lives look or feel as full as we believe theirs must be.

And in that we will inevitably invite into our lives an untold and potentially unending measure of this world's wickedness as we lower ourselves to comparing ourselves to a life we're not living which is likely being lived in accord with the broken ways of this fallen world.

And having done entirely too much of that in our own pasts, we simply cannot allow for such a concession again going forward as such would basically equate to asking Christ back onto the cross so that He might pay for our need to feel as if we’re supposed be a little like the world we're in for a moment so that we can again, as we have in the past, feel a little more like everyone else in regard to the pleasure and success and enjoyment we see them having.

But that is not what we’re told to do here. We’re not here to compare our lives to those of those around us. We’re not here to gauge our worth or success or purpose or meaning based upon what seems most popular or powerful in this place. We are not here to take pride in the things this world takes pride in, for this world prides itself upon wickedness in ways that simply shouldn’t be possible.

Which is why we’re asked here to test our own actions, to take pride in ourselves alone, to live our own lives knowing that we alone will answer for everything said and done within them. It simply does not matter whoever else may doing the things this world says to do nor the amount of people joining in and making that message ring ever louder. It doesn’t matter how much fun or success or excitement we see this world enjoying. It doesn’t matter what this world does.

All that matters is that we are personally responsible for whether or not we do what God says is right. And simply put, we just can’t lean on the world to lead us the right way in this regard.

We have to take responsibility for our own lives and live them in such a way that honors God as done only in accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior as that will be the only way that we’re welcomed back where we always belonged before we set out to feel as if we belonged within this world that only fell away from that hope in that home and settled instead for assuming they could make a passing replacement within themselves within this place so ruined by the worst kind of pride.

For there is no other Name given to mankind by which we must be saved. And thus it comes down to a person’s relationship with Christ or lack thereof. Do not let the world make that choice for you as it’s perfectly clear the choice so many have already made.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold