Day 3447 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 10:14 NIV

Perhaps our particular problem with this procession of spiritual progression is that it runs along upon the regression of pasts which were paved perfectly upon every wrong path possible.

Indeed, that is the entirety of the perplexity of this path now paved into the grave as it now asks that we turn back toward where we’ve long denied we need to be. It asks that we undo all we’ve done under the sun, as none is now welcome if we’re to be found under the Son, in the Son, the Son in us as it was so promised, Holy Spirit and such. Yes, the struggle of sanctification is that such affords us only the loss of us and all we’ve made of us, wanted for us, planned for us.

It’s the utter rejection of every past progression as proven within power and profit and popularity and other likewise byproducts of politic and pride.

For all the above have always had a price that we didn’t feel ourselves paying in order to remain staying standing where we’ve become to be just like those around us as if this is where we’re supposed to be. It isn’t, never really was as we were, a word we discussed in detail yesterday, we were created in the image of our Father and called there to remain. Alas, to remain has always to humanity felt this stain, this sting that says we’ve fallen and failed to find the furthering for which those in which we’re in fellowship have fought for, fallen for, failed toward.

Indeed, it’s just such a contrast that this redeemed mind being renewed by the day comes to think and say even still inside this society that still assumes such a difference to be both demented and too disappointing. Yes, we will in fact become quite the disappointment to those who we’ve in the past lived to please as we grow in Christ. For as we learn of Him more and more we’ll find ourselves concerned less and less with the ways in which we’ve lived in the past.

And that most definitely means that at some point we’ll eventually mature into finally finding ourselves as the utter antithesis of what this society is, the opposite of that said in John 12:43 in fact. Yes, for at some point within this faith as it refines us through a fire that consumes us and renews us, well, we’ll come to love the praise of God more than that of man as we’ll, in Him, come to see that pleasing society accomplishes absolutely nothing that lasts beyond a society’s interest in whatever you may pretend you have to offer.

Yes, that is one of the saddest outcomes of life as lived within this world’s way. We all see one another as just a picture of preference and opportunity, a pool of such varying depth that each person we meet is considered company for only as long as it takes for us to dredge the desires we have for us from them. We seek out those who can give us something, confirm us something, just justify something that we’re doing so that we feel validated in our doing whatever we want thanks to the praise and approval of people.

But once those rounds of applause begin to fade, well, seems that friendship starts to wane as well.

Or at least it has for me. Indeed, as I’ve made my choices in regard to my faith and where it’s to be found upon my list of personal priorities, it seems that it being in a different spot when compared to those I once considered friends, such began the framework of a fracture to our friendship. I reckon that once folks begin to have less in common, those with whom they’ve now less in common come to consider their company expendable.

Thankfully tears dry while the well of hope held in Christ never will.

For you see, we are bound to endure such growing pains as the loss of friendships, the ending of present pursuits, the burying of past plans and perhaps even the utter decimation of present dreams. And it’s all these things that can either form for us a foundation of distrust as we come to defy His design deserving that we do something new, thus leaving the old behind. Or we can relish in that rebellion against who we’ve been as we come to, in Him, find that we can be something entirely better, eternally better.

I guess the struggle is found in that it is a process in which progress is proven over time, which is a rather perfect problem to we who are so utterly impatient.

Indeed, that is perhaps the greatest difficulty in regard to this work we didn’t begin. I mean, that in and of itself is a pretty big problem too as our pride likes only that which we began as then we can become the ones who get the glory of this story we can thus insist we’ve written. But still, I’d venture to think that the biggest hurdle over which we’re bound to struggle in terms of a faith not being a matter of such stagnation as the status quos for which we’ve come to be known is that it just takes time for us to realize that we didn’t plan for this.

In truth, we didn’t want this. No, we’re instead a people perfectly at peace remaining always in place and merely pretending that we’re still somehow improving. Indeed, we do this with pretty much everything we do. We come up with these little pretend goals that we know we can reach and pretend them evidence of our improvements. That’s why we love planning so much. It allows our pride to pretend that we’re the ones in control and too that we can do as little as needed to get where we know we can’t fail to reach.

And that’s why so many come to despise this faith’s audacity to ask that we do what we know we can’t.

Because we know our pasts. We know our problems. We know well all of our struggles and assumptions and this constant consumption of whatever delusion allows us to remain so diluted that we deny improvement for the simple sake of staying something that we don’t have to change. Yes, we know our problems and we’ve made peace with them so that we can stay in place and not risk the chance that we see inside every single change.

We don’t want to change because we know we might not do it well as we know very well all that we’ve really messed up thus far. And thus we know that were we to venture further, we’d likely only fail more. And that’s just a really unacceptable thought when considered by the same pride that is so used to pretending that we don’t need any help.

But friends, we need all the help. Like as much help as anyone might be willing to offer. Well, not just anyone, rather the only One who can actually help us. Because you see, society will indeed help us, but only to stay the same. They’ll tell us all these lies about how it’s “okay to not be okay” and how you can “come as you are” with this unspoken implication that it’s perfectly acceptable to stay there. We’ve been surrounded by such foolishness for as long as we’ve been alive.

Clichés aimed at complacency.

And thus those lies now live inside forming the fear we feel toward faith’s asking us to do something, to move something, to change something by choosing something, chasing something that we’ve never known to even imagine before.

No, this faith is in fact formed upon everything new. That is what we read over in Revelation 21:5. “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” 2 Corinthians 5:17. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Ephesians 4:22-24. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

It’s a fact found all over the place within His Word as breathed for our benefit.

Because for anything to be for our benefit, it must start with everything being new because the old is that which holds our every flaw, our every failure, our every single moment spent forsaking the Father. The past has to go because we’ve completely botched it. We dropped the ball. We obliterated every single opportunity in which we had the choice to do what was right only to have chosen to do what we now know was wrong, may have known was wrong then as well.

And that is why Christ came. Yes, it was to atone for our mistakes and cover the price we couldn’t pay, but it was also to help us see that we couldn’t buy our way back to a better outcome than that which our sins so clearly deserve. The wages of sin are death and we’ve all become billionaires, but we had to become spiritually bankrupt to get there. And that’s just it, where are we? Who are we? What do we have? What will we have when the bill comes due?

Because it will.

Such is the promise given to all people. That upon our exit from this existence, every knee will bow and every tongue confess. But what will have to confess? Will we merely confess every sin we lived trying to deny? Will we confess all the times we could have done better but settled instead for the lesser? Yes, will our confession be to the tune of things we could have done, people we could have helped, people we could have been?

Or will we be able to say that we’re not who we were, and that only because we trusted Christ to lead us beyond us?

You see, the Bible calls us to be everything we can’t be. God asks us to be holy, righteous, perfect in regard to both in fact. How can we when we’ve been everything but either already? For if we’ve made a single mistake, we’ve taken perfection off the map. If we’ve at any time been irreverent or indifferent in regard to faith or truth or love or honesty or modesty or morality then being righteous is gone from the realm of possibility too. Indeed, if we’ve ever known the right thing to do and failed to do it, then we cannot possibly contend that we’ve been holy.

But “Jesus replied, ‘What is impossible with man is possible with God.’” Luke 18:27

And that’s the gift my friends. It’s that He can do what we can’t imagine. In fact, as the Gospel teaches us, He has done what we can’t imagine. He still does things that we can’t understand. He is still working in ways in which seem to feel as if they’re only working against us. But that’s just it: That which is against that which has been against us is for us. And since we’ve lived against ourselves as defined by our eagerness to win the wages of sin, which are death, well then that which is against our winning our death has instead won back our life!

Yes, He is our life, and even if that means He changes our life, calls us to lay down our life, teaches us let go of our plans and preferences for our life, this faith reminds us that it’s only because He has something better for our life. He has better plans for our life. He has better promises for our life than our plans have long pretended to provide. Indeed, He is more able to provide for our life a life to live beyond this life we’ll leave because He came to overcome the death our way of life was won.

And while there might be a pair of words within this verse that seems rather problematic to our most perfect impatience, that’s just one more misunderstanding that is going to eventually wash away along this ride back to life. “Being made” speaks to the process of sanctification in which we grow, little by little, day by day, moment by moment in fact, to become a little more like Him and thus a little less like who we’ve been. And while it proves that it is a process that will occur over a period of time, our being made holy means that we’re being returned back to who we were always meant to be.

We just have to understand that it is going to take some time, some patience, some persistence and perseverance because, let’s face it, we’ve got a whole life to unlearn! We have so many doubts to overcome, so many desires to let die, so many dreams to let go, so many new ones to believe in. This faith changes everything about everything that we’ve ever known about anything. And that is just going to take some time, but the times it takes is only lengthened by such things as doubt and hesitancy.

That’s why trust is so crucial. We have to be willing to go when He says go, to lose what He asks us to leave, to love what we may have at one time hated. It’s all about learning a new way of life, and that is a truly amazing gift indeed. Because this new life that He helps us learn, it’s one that doesn’t end. And so as it turns out, all we have to lose is just the life we’ve already lost and will leave one day anyway.

May we start that ride home today, and do so with a joy in our hearts at everything we lose along the way. For the more we lose of who we’ve been means only the more we find of who we were meant to be. And when you realize that this journey is one in which we only lose what’s kept us from gaining what we come to gain along the way, hope and such, you’ll find you don’t mind if it takes a while.

After all, awaking to find your joy renewed every morning really never gets old! No, let that joy come in as the tide, and if it happens to wash away a bit more of who we were yesterday, well, guess that just means we’re something new today, and in that I guess we know that He's still working on us.

And I don't know much that could be more hopeful than that!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold