Day 3489 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 7:5 NIV

For when.

Such is the way our new life begins as all that is new is otherwise compared to all that wasn’t new but was rather already known, already gone, already sold, already dead as it were. Or at least that’s the gravity of this gift of grace that’s offered us both a new place and too a new life to live in new ways along the way toward that place that isn’t the old but is rather the comparative by which we consider the costs and consequence of this chance to choose a change that might truly become a change so impossible that it otherwise demands an eternity to experience it.

Indeed, quite the opposite of all things already known and long since gone.

And the amazing part is that this shift is one found and felt within each person as such is the substance of a relationship the likes of which our faith was always meant to be. Unfortunately we’ve all long known only to look to ourselves, lean on ourselves, live for ourselves, live by ourselves. For such is the necessity of a life given over to such mundanity as a mankind making for themselves their best guesses as to what life is all about.

For that is indeed all that we’ve ever done, just guessing and making it up as we go nowhere so that our play of pretend performed from platforms might prove that we’ve not lost all that much of life compared to the little we’ve ever known of it after all. Because the fact is that we have truly lost more of life than the figments or fragments of any semblance of an existence considered to be hiding inside or alongside something made by mankind for mankind. All because there is no life in something we make of lifeless ingredients.

Because that ability remains forever beyond us as it’s bound only within He who found reason to create something and then to breathe the breath of life into His intention for this new invention of a creation that’s since fallen into contention against His creation.

But why?

Why is it that we’ve continued to settle for such a show of such animosity against a God of sheer generosity? I mean we’d literally not be here if it weren’t for His wanting us to be here. We in fact shouldn’t still be here still breathing this breath of life in light of all the life we’ve lost to not living the kind of life He created life to be living. For surely we can honestly agree that much of what we’ve done within the realm of the flesh for which we’ve all but always lived to please isn’t all that much of a living.

I mean are such things as guilt, regret, remorse the very best evidence of a wonderful existence? Is shame truly able to share a story so filled with glory that we can gloat rightly about all that we’ve so gotten wrongly? Indeed, is our ability to admit that we have done anything wrongly the sort of story for which God created us to live and experience and share whilst here?

Have we not otherwise only settled for such a tragedy only because that’s the sort of story this society seems content to share?

Indeed, so much of what we’ve done and learned to do, longed to do was nothing but an idea given us by a world that’s so filled with ideas that many of them have become ideologies which have given birth to idolatries that inspire us all to seek and serve only whatever seems to serve us best. And whenever a soul is sold to assume what might be best for itself, all of the sudden that self becomes a slave to the same self that also pretends itself a king.

And thus we’ve lived both coming up with the dreams for the things that we want to do and be and see but also we’ve had to be the worker bees that buzz around and fly all over the place seeking the ways to make those dreams for those things come true. Because we cannot anymore bear the thought of our doing without whatever we’ve become convinced our lives are not complete without. And so we’ve become the substance not of things hoped for but rather of things worked for, merely the result of our ability to imagine for ourselves what all we want for ourselves.

Meaning only that our lives are nothing but the outcome of our best efforts given only to our ability to believe in only whatever we can eventually believe to be best, a calliope that has us living in just such a way that we do nothing but chase ourselves as we chase our tails looking for tales to tell of all we’ve come to consider the very best evidence of our very best intelligence as confined within the very best that this world has to offer in order to inspire us to perspire for only what we want for us.

We are so wrapped within the flesh that freedom is folly as it seems too unbridled to really ever accomplish anything, rendering us a people who seem to almost prefer this sinful enslavement to self and society simply for the sake of such issuing us the applause of others who likewise know next to nothing of freedom all because none of us know what it’s like to just be alive without some outside suggestion begging for our attention.

Indeed, we don’t know what to do without the attention, the applause, the validation, the affirmation of our every inclination. We thrive only when the world cheers us on as we assume success a matter meant for numbers too, just the same as the safety we conspire to steal out from under God’s wings so that we can be the ones to instead fly for the sky that’s long been allowed to become the outermost limit of our imaginations.

Yes, the sky’s the limit is one of our favorite clichés as it seems to invoke this idea that everything is possible in this world. And yet that’s where that idea has finally lost me as far as I’m concerned. Because I’m not really looking for what’s long been considered possible in this world. I’m not really interested in whatever this place things is reasonable, realistic, really cool or just really not worth it. No, I’ve listened to so many of such voices over the years that I’m kind of just fed up with letting others be the verifiers of my beliefs.

For as I learn more about all that God is through all that Christ did, well I just seem to find no reason left to imagine that this place has much left in the way of understanding, of comprehension, of even common sense or the vaguest of concerns for what is eternally best for a soul. For that’s just so clearly not the way this world knows to go in regard to how a life ought to be lived. Again, it seems that we know plenty of such things as guilt and regret, so much so that one of our biggest undertakings has always been the hiding of such feelings and the pretending that we’ve never known them.

I want a life in which I can live in just such a way that I don’t have to hide, that I don’t have to fear, that I don’t need to feel the faults and failures as found within a world so bound to this ground that all that matters is whatever a person might want for themselves within the moment in which we’ve so vastly come to take all of life for granted that nearly every moment seem to not matter at all.

That just doesn’t make any sense to me as it seems an oxymoronic way of thinking. For how can we know what matters most within these many moments in which we set our sights on only what we want and yet at the very same time pretend that any mistake made along the way to those wants is so easily erased as to pretend we’ve done nothing wrong? How can we get some things so right that we revel at the chance to tell others all about it but at the same time do things that are so embarrassing that we dare not tell a soul?

Doesn’t that pretty much prove that we have absolutely no idea about what we’re doing from one moment to the next considering some of those moments are spent making choices that make us look and feel amazing whilst others are just as equally ruined upon other choices that make us look and feel so foolish that we seek only to hide what we thought would otherwise impress our pride?

It’s this endless mindlessness that’s become so numbing that life just isn’t lived here anymore. We go about our every single day doing things as if they only matter when the outcome is just right. And this just makes me wonder as to how then anything can matter when it’s all so dissolved into our doing whatever we think best and simply covering up what we happened to be wrong about. I can’t do that anymore because having done it before, it just gets you nowhere other than again relying on yourself.

And since I know that no human has found a way to achieve absolution, well then there is simply no solution to our gross resolution to continue this rampant rebellion against the Author and Creator and Perfector and Protector and Savior of life itself. We are all on a collision course with life as we are all returning to that from which we came, yes dust to dust but so too breath to breath. And since this breath of life we’ve been given this gift to breathe came from the God who breathed life into us, we are thus returning to Him.

And I just can’t find any way to again imagine that that meeting can possibly go well if all I give this life to is everything that only proves that I’ve no care, no concern, no interest, no willingness to appreciate that life is a gift nor any way then to honor the One who gave it to me before I settled for giving it away for everything that could never give it in return.

For that is the reality of sin. Sure, it makes us feel good for a moment, but then we feel ashamed for far more moments afterward. It allows us experience pleasure and preference and the excitement of our personal enjoyment, but again, only for a moment and then we feel pain, shame, these irremovable stains that remain and thus force us to paint over them with fake smiles and empty laughter as if to tell the lost world of which we’ve become a part that we’re not coming apart.

And so we just live a lie as that is all we know to do so as to at least try and convince ourselves that we’re truly so free as to spend our time doing only what feels good always pretending then that nothing ever feels wrong.

But friends, the thing is that again we’re returning to that from which we came. And considering that we were made in the image of God, so too were made in line with His truth for as we’ve been so kindly shown in Christ, He is the Way, the Truth, the Life. And so since we’re returning the Author of truth, it really only stands to reason that we might start embracing a bit more truth and honesty and reality in our lives before they’re judged inevitably upon those sorts of things.

Because the Living Word to which we’re going to return breathed not only for our benefit the breath of life but also the Word alive which tells us that He will reward a person fairly, but only on the basis of what they’ve done. And thus we find the dilemma in that at least some of what we’ve done as done for the likes of the flesh to which we’ve indeed become all but enslaved, at least some of it is some stuff that we can’t quite seem to manage to make ourselves able to deny wasn’t wrong.

Why else would we hide considering we love showing off all that we get right?

And so you see, the very reality that we will be weighed by what we wanted and won within this world is now a pretty much perfect problem as all of us have indeed sown to please the flesh. And what does His Word say about such a crop? Well, we read over in Galatians 6:8 that, “whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

Thus we’ve smacked headlong into the biggest uh-oh moment in human history!

For we’ve all sown to please the flesh meaning then that we will “from the flesh reap destruction.” Probably not the harvest we’ve spent our lives wanting. Right? Well, in the event that we can in fact admit that that isn’t at all what we want as even an outcome in this life let alone the final outcome for our lives, there is hope. For within such humility as that able to confess such honesty there is the gift of healing that is so complete that it truly rebrands, rebuilds, repurposes, refurbishes, refinishes, refines a life so fully that we are all but indeed reborn into Him who is again the Way, the Truth, the Life.

And it’s only in Him that we begin to live the life for which His truth paved the way both back to where this all began but so too to the tune of a far better outcome than fear or finality. No, in Him we have a future, we have a family, we have freedom and we indeed have it fully. But only if we, following His lead, put to death the flesh we’ve lived to lift by lifting it upon our own cross that we daily carry so as to refuse to lose anything that He offers in exchange for staying here in this world that offers only destruction.

Friends, the way of life we’ve known is one of sinful passions inspired by this almost insatiable need to live outside the law. It’s that whole ‘don’t look down’ conundrum. Only this situation deals not with a fear of heights but rather a loss of life. For God has made clear what is right and all the rest that isn’t, and our problem is that we’ve gone after the all the rest that isn’t simply because such is so popular here that it’s all but expected. But thanks to His goodness as given in Christ Jesus, we’ve now the chance at the freedom that allows us to aim for meeting an entirely new set of expectations.

And while they are indeed far higher than those of this world so fallen, there is miraculously far less fear to be found. For in Christ we learn that it’s not on us to measure up but only to stop agreeing to stay so far down. He has achieved that our sins have been absolved. No more hiding. No more worrying. No more shame or sorrow or regret or anything. It’s all gone. But with that comes the task of not going back to that wasted way of life that won those brands of destruction.

That’s the challenge: The change.

And while yes, we’ve always known to be only adverse to change, considering that our lives as lived in sin have also now in Him been proven to have been adverse to life itself, safe to say seeing things from a whole new way might not be quite so bad after all. For up until now we’ve done things that have only shown Him we don’t care to live for more than whatever we’ve settled for. We have now a chance to change that.

And if we can agree to do that, well, then as the next verse says, “by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” And thus we are no longer under the law we’ve long sought to refuse, meaning then that we’ve finally been given what we always wanted, only with a gift that makes it even better than we could have ever imagined.

For when we were in the realm of the flesh we bore fruit that brought death. But in this realm of the Spirit, we’ve now the chance to bear fruit that brings life.

And not just here. Not just now.

But rather forever.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold