Day 3481 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 18:6 NIV

Perhaps it's only the heaviest of a life's crossroads that might finally inspire the courage to find out where the cross goes.

For there’s a demanded degree of distress designed inside this decree to die that new life might be lived from within the ashes from which we came and through which we’ve run within this life we’ve run aground atop our every assumption having only assumed we’ve too much to lose to leave a life behind for even that which is to be proven better forever. Indeed, it seems that forever is felt too far away, so distant that it’s none but a pretense not at all worth the pain of prayer as spoken only in humility.

Because there’s simply no other way that a people such as we could be so bold as to come before the King we killed, the God we denied, the hope we’ve not had and the peace unproven in this place.

Yes, we’re altogether too much this place to withstand the standing before the face of grace. And thus defines the humility needed for even a prayer to be repeated should we actually dare believe that we’ve both something finally worth saying and that He’s not had enough of our lies spoken all this time. For that is what life is for the most part anymore, it’s just a lie in which we lie in wait for only what we want and in that remain unwilling toward whatever we might not.

And it’s as if that list of the things we might not want, may not like, probably wouldn’t enjoy, definitely wouldn’t choose is one which seems to grow by the hour leaving us only more to lose of all we’ve thus far not known of life having not lived one as of yet.

Talked about that yesterday in what is one of those verses that seems so perfectly poignant to our present predicament as it’s a truth entirely and eternally encompassing of all that we’re both doing and thus too missing. For among the strong we are like the dead, at least most days. Because most days we decline to try too hard, to hope too big, to pray too long, to believe too much. For all the above boast a burgeoned risk that remains only growing as we drift into the dust which is our destiny here.

Only problem with such a limited willingness as designed by a lack of foresight having so instilled inside of us a blinded indifference as to what might actually be best for us is that we’ve come to deny that decay as promised unto all we who are but dead men walking for whatever many more days we’ve left down here. That is that promise of every life lived within this land, that it’ll be lost.

And yet while that’s so sadly come to resemble a risk from within our fear of what we so clearly already are as defined by our sinfulness, the reality is that such a promise of this life lost ought to be one of what could be and thus should be a surpassing joy as it proves the passing away of what in all honesty hasn’t always been all that joyous.

I think we could all agree that life as lived here is one in which we’ve had our share of struggle, seen our share of stumble, embraced more than our share of disgrace and indeed chosen our share of despair. And all this broken reality through which we’ve roiled and rebelled, is not such such a perfect backdrop for a life to be left? Do we not want to be past the problematic and decidedly difficult? Is death as defined by our time here done truly not a prize won when our time here is held by a hardship that we can’t seem to shake?

And that most definitely not a matter of our lack of effort. For all of us have tried until we’re weary and worn to win an easier day, a simpler life, a more peaceful place within this place of so little peace. Each of us seek incessantly the substance of things hoped for, and who doesn’t hope for such things as calm, quiet, tranquility, sufficiency, sustainability, a break from all the insanity we see so constantly? Indeed, those are all things that all of us hope for or have hoped for.

But maybe that’s the issue at hand.

Maybe it’s that we’ve hoped for what’s not here for so long that we’ve just given up on any of it existing anywhere. Maybe our having not found love or community or that inherent need for some semblance of some sense of belonging to someone or something somewhere, maybe not having that here has conspired against us and inspired us to so give up on hope itself that we all but demand it be nowhere at all. For if we cannot have what we know we need, then we convince ourselves that we need only to hate whatever we’ve not had.

Indeed, I think this may in fact be the reason why so many have such a hatred of God that they settle instead for a life lived perpetually unhappy. I’ve known folks who literally live as if they like the complaining so much so that they seek out things that afford them a measure of further unrest in this life so that they’ve something against which to fight against the light not making any of this immediately easier.

Because that’s one of the oldest expectations in our enemy’s playbook. You see, the devil inspires us to always assume that we’re entitled to things, and not only that, but that we’re entitled to whatever things we want within the timeframe in which we want them. And this wonderfully egregious sense of selfish expectation breeds this discontentment in life that designs inside a hatred of anything difficult or demanding, patient or enduring.

No, just as the Word says, we’ve not anymore the ability to endure even sound teaching as teaching begets learning which begins within that humility that both allows us to pray and to also help us understand that at times we don’t know how to pray or for what to pray. And this is something we’ve all felt more times than we care consider. Not because we don’t want to do better, live better, feel better, believe better.

It’s simply because again to find better asks that we at first admit that whatever is at this moment isn’t the better we believe in. And that’s always going to be a deadly detriment to our pride.

But if we could just see that such vanity is only a form of insanity we just might be able to at least begin to imagine what it might actually be like to finally be free. We’ve talked about that quite a bit lately, this confused freedom we’ve found and pretended we’ve felt within this life in which we assume that to be free is simply to do whatever we want whenever we want. But again, what is that kind of outlook accomplishing in terms of outcome?

Are we any better for any belief given only to personal preference or popular opinion as both always centered upon our innate impatience inspiring always that unwillingness to wait for what would be undeniably better than whatever we could just as easily and far more quickly settle for?

I personally cannot think of a single thing that I’ve rushed toward that ended up being so amazing that I didn’t find myself at some point wondering what else could have been had I been a bit more willing to wait. And that thought, which is one I think without ceasing it seems, it’s one that’s come to define a new kind of despair that I was never prepared to imagine might even be possible let alone something that feels so personal and permanent.

And yet what’s odd is that within what I believe is a humility finally hoping in what I was never willing to wait for or work toward is that I find myself begging God to keep me feeling broken so that I might always have reason to remember how much I need Him.

Because I know how easy it is to forget that fact whenever life is easy and I’m able to manage more or less by myself.

I just know that I cannot do this by myself as I have indeed tried that way far more days than I’ve found any of them actually able to accomplish such a task. No, we were not built to believe in ourselves, and that this world tosses that idea around like candy to children, it’s only furthered this failure toward faith that’s left us only willing to hate all that He asks we embrace to finally leave this place and find some peace on the path paved home.

That’s where the cross goes.

Challenge is that we see only where it starts. We see the pain. We imagine the torment. We ponder through the particulars of the present and pretend that they might not get better. For that’s the way of life we’ve known, one in which some things just never seem to better. And indeed this world is so wrapped within a way so wicked that in fact many things here will not get better. But thus the beauty of belief as perceived beyond the seen and found outside the felt.

Belief is there unto us as a constant companion always reminding us of the better still coming, giving us an anchor not here but rather tethered to the better that we can most days barely imagine. And that’s honestly something we all need more than we’ve ever agreed. We need that hope of Heaven to lead us through the hardship promised along the way. We need the hurts that render His healing a gift greater by the day. We need the hassle of hatred and misunderstanding to sure up this faith upon which we’re standing.

Yes, we need to embrace a share of what He gave so that in that bond we might be bound to finally believe beyond the things we feel and how fast we fall whenever we fail to be enough to measure up to these asinine expectations impressed upon us by this weird world we’ve always thought we needed to impress.

We don’t need to impress anyone as such is something simply not within our ability. No, we are a widely and wildly unimpressive people so filled with folly and failure that we at times can’t even look in the mirror. How then are we to look toward God when we know He’s seen more than we even remember?

But, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

That’s what we’ve all grown unable to see. It’s that while we can in no way possibly even pretend to impress anyone, God most of all, we can seek to please Him. And while this is something we’ve most certainly not done throughout our lives so lost in sin winning the wage He never once called us to want, I think what we need to ask ourselves is what other choice we have.

Are we truly content with staying so hopeless as to believe only that our best is to be found here? Are we so obtuse to peruse the paths of man and pursue their prizes of lives lived in personal prosperity and presumption preferring the present to the permanent? Are we really so able to give up on life itself as to live it as if we’ll not lose it, thus allowing us to fill it what all that cannot further it?

No, I for one cannot so agree. Simply because I know I have in the past and I find that I cannot now move far enough fast enough from who I was as I know I was nothing but blind and without belief. And I personally can’t imagine continuing to exist in such a life when I know now that He calls us to be alive. No, I find that I feel almost physically the vast difference between living and being alive.

And I just can’t settle for the former anymore.

Even if it means I must embrace such things as disgrace and distress. Even if it means I must embarrassingly come before the One I’ve left down and still disappoint more often than I want. Even when it means that I’m left so broken and unraveled that I’ve nothing to say other than “I’m sorry”, something I can only imagine that He’s long since tired of hearing me say.

But again, what other choice do we have? I personally believe that it’s all down to we either stay broken or say we’re sorry.

And so I will call upon the Lord as often as I might have the opportunity for I know that in that is found a growing humility that allows me to finally learn that this isn’t on me but that it’s from Him. And in that I find that as this is from Him then I feel the need to do better for Him. And when I feel that need to do better for Him I find this fight that refuses to fall short of the better I know He called me to be and cleared the way for me to become. And when I hope of that better that Christ died to begin inside of me, I find that I cannot agree with anything that asks that I do less than what He was willing to do to begin this ability for me to come before Him.

Both now and forever.

I want that forever, even if it means that this life lived here and now is one that breaks me every single day. If that is what it takes to keep me on my knees begging Him for the help I know I need, then I couldn’t think of a better gift than a life so filled with hardship that I ache for Heaven as I struggle through a life so brutal that I can finally begin to imagine what a life might be like once home in that place where hardship and hatred aren’t found anymore.

Friends, don’t wait for life to become so easy that you can do it well enough that you feel you can come before God with some list of personal accomplishments that you think will allow you a welcome into His presence. He’s not waiting on us to figure this out on our own, that’s what the Christ came. He came to lift the weight of our wrongs off of our hearts so that they could be renewed in faith and continue to soften through the fires that refine us by burning away all that’s left us all but dead to belief.

And since He came to carry our burdens, well then every burden we still find or feel along the way has become only a new opportunity to ask Him for His help one more time, giving us inside of that chance one more moment in which we choose to trust in Him to be what we aren’t.

And in that we just might find a relationship that’s built on trust will begin to grow as we grow to become children relying on their Father to prove the way when we can’t see it.

He will, it’s just that He might do so through what we could never imagine would be in any way helpful. Because the point is that He just needs us to learn to trust Him. And well, when better can we learn to trust another than whenever we’re faced with something that demands faith take the lead as our stubborn hearts finally then agree that we cannot be whatever we need to make it through whatever we know we can’t face on our own?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold