Day 3470 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 1:24 NIV

That one might be saved.

Way back going on ten years ago when I started this daily jaunt through God’s Word I never really knew to ever even begin to imagine the many oddities that I’d find along the way. It was just a simple social media challenge, to post a Bible verse every day for seven days, and yet somehow God saw fit within that to alter the entire course of my life in ways that I would have never imagined being able to be thankful for. Because we don’t often understand the ways in which He works as His works are indeed a daily mystery unto us of little faith and often even less interest in trying to see it grow.

No, we’re rather a people perfectly poised to prefer the present proven painless than to take pride in persecution, laughing at the losses, welcoming the wrath of the wicked amongst whom and yet still to whom we’re here to perhaps share this hope of salvation that as many as possible might board this train before it leaves the station.

And as that day draws near, whether it a matter of days or decades it matters not. Nah, all that seems to matter anymore is that it is coming closer, that coming of the Christ again. And it’s yet another oddity in this opportunity unto once blinded eyes open into belief in that which was breathed for benefits that we at once perhaps assumed offensive. That is in pretty much every way the personal experience of the Gospel’s news in that it does indeed turn every table of self-imposed knowledge upon its head leaving us leaving the dead and yet walking amongst them still.

It’s things like that that I’d have had no reason to consider in years past back before this became a daily necessity. For these thoughts I think and these words they implore me to share, they come not from either myself neither the world around me. It’s all simply altogether foreign as it seems to invade from outer space into this waste in which I’ve walked always away from doing anything that might even accidentally have any meaning.

For that is the sadness of life as lived by all. It’s all just a matter of time lost to the past without a care given unto the up ahead. We live our days doing things that oughtn’t be done, knowing likely that fact but forsaking it for whatever of a million reasons we’ve stuffed away in hearts so hard to hope that we fear stumbling upon it simply because it might reignite something inside that we’ve otherwise grown accustomed to leaving slumber.

Yes, we are in so many ways a people fast asleep, resting on everything from our laurels to our laughter, not inclined to take the time to reconsider why we find all this life so lighthearted and laughable.

Indeed, for we all know well both how and why such a lukewarmth began. Be it the lies of the serpent or the desires inside that were merely waiting for that deceptive invitation to act upon them, the result has become the same and so widespread that it anymore infects and inflicts and inspects the suspects who suspect that perhaps something is amiss amongst the mass of mankind so mindless and mundane. Yes, sin has made it mainstream as it’s streamed from screens that scream the scenes which show us how to go about living this life losing this life as if we’re not all losing this life at all.

But we are.

That is the tragic hope beheld inside every mindset scattered amongst mankind. It’s this inevitability that will be proven either tragic or hopeful, or perhaps both somehow. For as much as I’ve managed to thus far surmise from within the 3470 days of doing this it seems that we’re bound to embrace both, a matter then of where and when. For joy comes to all as much as the grave does as well. So too do we all have fun but face fear. The truth will be confessed but it’s evident anymore that lies are just as welcome by the itching ears of those who know already what all the truth has to say.

Yes, we all know what the truth has to say, and yes, it does indeed invade our personal space wherein He confronts our current concessions and asks us unto crosses carried all our own so that we might in Him own both that share of where He is but also how He got there.

Alas it’s that surrender of self that so many struggle with. And yet therein we find this fact that struggle is indeed an unavoidable in life. We all struggle whilst here, again perhaps just a matter then of through what and why for. For we either struggle to avoid struggle the likes of surrender and sacrifice, or we embrace that sort of selfish loss and let it do the works He intends it to. We either weary ourselves worrying ourselves for ourselves, or we humble ourselves by letting Him humble us through the fires and flames we’ll still feel along the way.

For that is the overall trajectory of life as lived down here, each of us pointed straight into something of suffering the sorts our selfishness sees always fit to fight against. Because we’re a people vastly comfortable where we are as who we are doing what we are where we are. And yet, again that sort of slumber is not at all something that we should seriously consider so productive as to provide us protection from what our eyes closed shut to belief simply don’t want to see so that we don’t have to fear that what we see is what we might indeed soon feel.

No, we fail to find the faith that forges forcefully, fervently into the fire eagerly expecting the loss of a lost life needed to afford the room needed for the new He died to begin to begin.

And yet that’s exactly why we’re here isn’t it? Because His good work has begun? Because He has a reason for us to still be here where He isn’t loved by all? Because He isn’t loved by all, leaving us to lean into that love He has, that love that He is so as to show it unto all who don’t yet care to consider that He is this love that is the Life that leads us to lose what all isn’t alive in us nor leading us to life?

Indeed, we are but messengers entrusted with a truth spoken so as to set captives so free that free indeed is that only fee we grow willing to expect, accept. For it is nothing we’ve known in life so far. We’ve known fragments of freedom found in following ourselves to our selfishness. We’ve watched the world perhaps partake of a greater measure of that sort of maniacal assumption of what freedom is supposed to feel like. And yet that’s perhaps the problem in that freedom can’t be felt as much as it must be found.

But we seem always to walk both by sight and too by feel. And thus we struggle with anything, everything that seems off, feels off as if our sight or our senses aren’t as singed as the Son says they are from up there upon that place that is ours but was taken by Him on our behalf. No friends, this isn’t about our doing only what feels good, chasing only what looks good, listening to only whatever we agree sounds good enough to please our own itching ears.

Rather this is about seeking and serving the glory of the God who sent the Son to save us from what we’ve done and who we’ve in turn become.

And we are here only to help others hear that He did that same suffering for their sins as well. For that sort of brutal truth is bound to betray that blasphemous tepidity that we’ve turned into thanks to our inability to be anything but indifferent in regard to all the difficulty both asked and promised within this faith which follows this path that we can’t walk, not by ourselves.

Which is the message of the Gospel itself.

That we can’t do what needed done in order to overcome all we’ve done that shouldn’t have been done. It’s that Christ came to seek and save the lost, of whom I am indeed the most vile and violent. Indeed, each of us can and thus should at some point seek the shame that allows us to say the same, for it is that that we’re all promised we’ll one day confess. My hope is that both I do so in whatever way He shows me I need to before I have no more time to, but also that He leads me unto the humility that demands He work through me to achieve that same urgency for someone else.

For we’ve all but little time left, and I anymore shudder at all the things I see and hear people worrying about these days.

Because so much of life as we’ve come to live it is but a pack of lies chasing us down like dogs seeking whomever might be stolen from. And our having grown so lukewarm and unwilling, well such has left us almost welcoming of that sort of defeat as desired by the devil who seeks still to steal and kill and destroy whatever, whomever might be willing to let go of the forever to which we’ve been offered a far better outcome than that one we’ve so willfully earned thanks to sin’s wicked wage.

And yet this world’s become so wealthy within that wickedness that we walk among many who are simply unwilling to wager their present wealth upon the warnings of His wrath as promised unto all. And in fact so many are anymore so fallen away from that reality for sake of the responsibility it demands and deserves, meaning then that those same many have no endurance for sound teaching. We are surrounded by those craving lies to gluttonous degrees in which they can no longer see anything besides themselves, beyond themselves.

A sad truth which is proven in all these wantonly wicked messages so many here are sharing seeking to inspire others to join them in their denial of life itself as offered in only Christ Jesus. And anymore their hatred hides not behind snarling smiles or within words bent in just the right way to sound compassionate or understanding. No, anymore the venom and vitriol of those who viciously hate the truth of the Gospel is on full display, leaving us all fairly well aware of what awaits should we stray of the way in which this world’s told us to live.

Indeed, such is the social sort of suffering thrust upon any who veer from the course of those in contention against God’s righteous intentions. We will be hated for what we say as those at rest in lies want not to be revived unto life by the truth which rouses those in rebellion to lay down their arms and admit they cannot overcome the One who overcame death and holds now the keys to both it and life, deciding justly who receives either.

But what I wanted to hopefully inspire today is a reminder that it’s a good thing to be hated by a world that doesn’t accept Christ, simply because it proves that we’re doing something so different from the wicked things this world has decided that we’ve begun to live lives of evidence of His good work being done. Indeed, “those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” 1 Peter 4:19

Because, “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

And in fact, “it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.” 1 Peter 2:15

Because in the end, “they triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Revelation 12:11

And so, “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28

For that is the outcome we’ve been promised. Christ himself said that we would suffer, that in this world we will be hated, that we will here have trouble, but His Word also says that those who share in suffering like His, in a death like His, those few will also be the same who share in a resurrection like His. And that is the hope we simply cannot agree to forgo, not for ourselves nor anyone else. No matter how much they might insist we give up.

As this verse says from Paul, it’s for the sake of His body, which is the church, which are those called in Christ and strangely willing to come unto that cross where we all then take up our own and raise them high so that the whole wide world can see in us a willingness to die to us, a willingness so strange that it tells everyone all they need to know about just how real this faith really is, so that some might see and decide to taste and find out for themselves that Christ is indeed good to the tune of eternal life!

Alas, this world will continue to seek to undermine this effort given unto mutual edification. And while many will indeed worry themselves about whatever this wicked world wants, we should know better. For rather than living to please people and thus prove ourselves not serving Christ, no, “instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

That is why we’re here. To go into all the world and speak the Gospel that turns those long dead back to life in Christ as He is the only Name under Heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved, and thus the only hope we have of something better than everything we already deserve.

The point being that it doesn’t matter what it takes nor what we’ll face as the point isn’t our personal profit or protection as He is our victory and our Savior, thus we need nothing in the way of profit nor protection as considered from worldly perspectives. We need only to serve His will and welcome that it severs us from this world in which we never belonged to begin with. This world is just the place in which we live the version of life that we’re all promised to lose.

Let us live to lose it well in hopes that someone somewhere might see that we believe so fervently that we indeed do not shrink even from death but rather welcome whatever might help us shine forth a share of His suffering and thus His victory given through the faith that tells us all that it’s not what we endure that matters but rather why we now have this ability to endure it with a smile.

For that will undeniably tell all the world all they need to know about who we serve and where He’s called us to be, given us the hope to go when we’re done here. And such an unshakable joy just might ignite another to seek the same for themselves.

That one might be saved.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold