Day 3492 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 5:17 NIV

Tis a strange feeling to find that one’s self exists within this confusion contained of such an internal conflict as that of the Spirit of truth waging war against the many lies in which we've come to live.

But perhaps what's stranger still is to still see fit to settle so short of the Spirit of truth that seeks only to lead to life those so long lost inside the living a life that was never alive after all. And yet despite the obvious oddity within such a personal concession as that of which we’ve all lived doing as done by our always giving way to the easiest side of whatever predicament or preference we may have found ourselves divided by, it seems that all we’ve lived to know is merely what we might become able to convince ourselves is good enough in the long run.

It’s just then that that ‘long run’ as viewed through eyes wide-shut to the substance of things which exist well beyond the already known and far above the usually seen is otherwise eternally constricted into the substance of things already known and usually seen.

What I mean is that all our lives we’ve been taught to lose this fight as demanded of faith simply for the sake of our having something easier, quicker, more personally pleasing and thus probably socially popular. For that is what this world is all about, what this world goes after and thus goes without. We’ve all collectively become unraveled in regard to the rewards offered simply because we’ve been told which of the lot is supposedly best by those who’ve long since retired from trying.

And that’s the danger in letting this world so lost and lazy lead our way toward what is nothing more than what everyone else has decided for.

For we are a communal people, it’s just how we were made. God didn’t create any of us islands cast so far from one another that we can’t see or hear or even believe another might be out there. Rather we are all bundled together in cities and assumptions in which we become more congealed and considerate of such concessions as those we see the whole of society chasing. And when seen long enough, those same priorities and the common pursuits toward them become so standard that we lose the ability to believe in anything bigger, anything better, anything at all perhaps.

Which is right when this battle is lost.

Because you see, the entirety of the human condition is altogether quite simple to comprehend to be honest. Life as lived here is a struggle in which all of us both stumble and strive depending upon the time and tide. It’s almost as if the story of life is to be lived within what is a fairly equal share of both highs and lows, the lows looked for less often in favor of our favorites bringing those highs that allow us to hope again, to feel happy again, to maybe even feel whole again.

But that’s the thing that I fear we fail to recognize in all our disdain for the days of rain and the times of pain. We seek to rush through those moments of decidedly more misery assuming them there only to rainout our parade of pride and preference. And because our pride is so tied to our preference, as such is again the standard amongst which we’ve grown and thus as whom we too have become known, it seems that our preference is the only real priority we know to appreciate.

Leaving then any and all lesson afforded by such things as loss, fear, uncertainty, humility all but forever unknown.

Leaving then all of us anything but properly grown as nothing grows without effort and urgency.

And you see, that’s why God designed this life of such equity as exists between the highs we like and the lows we don’t. It’s because there are lessons to be learned in both, only that we’ve again left unlearned all the lessons taught in those lows that we seek only to hurry through leaving us no time to really find anything worth seeing or feeling or agreeing is able to add to our overall outlook on life as a whole. And too because we assume that all the sunny days are as close to perfect as we might ever get, it seems even in them forget the general median of all life’s meaning.

Because what if the highs we like aren’t always meant to make us feel as if we’ve got it made but rather there to sometimes help us learn to appreciate those times when life isn’t quite so great? What if some of those good days we face are supposed to inspire humility rather than the haughtiness we so often glean from the scenes we see? Indeed, what if those lows we never look forward to might be able to make those glory days a bit more glorious so as to in that inspire us to appreciate them rather than take them so for granted that we in turn only hate the struggle even more?

See, the reality of life as designed by God and then saved by Christ is that there ought to be a more even-keel to the deal. To be content no matter the circumstance is both a Biblical trait that’s stuck with me from within my study of the Scriptures, but it’s also something that I’ve come to personally find is an almost perfect measure of maturity both in life and of faith. For it’s easy to smile and be happy when the days are easy and life simple. And too, it’s simple to be angry and feel sorry for ourselves whenever life isn’t going the way we want for ourselves.

But to be able to blend those and insist they become a sort of spiritual consistency is something that seems both truly important but also increasingly rare. For again, that’s just not how we’ve come to see life as we’ve learned it lived down here.

No, here everyone hates the rain, despises pain, pretends that times of strain are only there to shrink our ability to think until we’re all but on the brink about ready to blow our top. And again, as equal as we always seek to keep life, despite either the ability to actually accomplish or in fact even understand what it might take to achieve that outcome, we also seem to always agree that the better things in life are probably the best things for life. And so we end up losing the half we hate while over-valuing the part we prefer.

Leaving us again all but completely imbalanced and unable to see what’s really going on both around us and even more so within us.

For the reality is that life here is a battlefield in which we walk amongst those the Word has warned us against. See, contrary to common misunderstanding, not everyone is our friend. Not everyone is out for our best outcome. Not everyone is worried about Heaven, not willing to admit we all deserve hell, not able to confess the Christ who came to save us from the latter and in that open wide the narrow door unto the former. And in fact the Bible warns us time and again about improper friendships and our being unequally yoked with unbelievers.

Why?

Everything’s a lesson in life.

And despite our pride always pretending otherwise, our pasts have proven we’re not necessarily the best at picking up what God’s putting down.

Truth be sold we suck at it!

Thankfully there’s still time today to learn something we may have avoided realizing yesterday or in one of the thousands of days before in which we took the good for granted and the bad for something deserving of only being forsaken. For the fact is that within a battle plan, that kind of thinking just isn’t at all conducive to victory. If you’re only ever willing to learn from what goes well, you’ll never be able to fix the mistakes that led to what went wrong.

And with such a drastic difference of outcome held up ahead, I don’t think we can really afford to never learn from the battles we’ve already lost in this life if we truly hope to live life again inside of forever.

Because the cold hard truth is that we’ve gotten more wrong than we have right, thus leaving a whole heap of lessons to learn if we’re to avoid repeating the mistakes we’ve been making that have led us to all this losing we keep on doing whilst pretending we’re only winning.

For there’s just no honesty in that, and where there’s no honesty, nor will you find such things as humility or growth, courage or contentment, godliness nor the gain of which it is undeniably the greatest. For you can’t improve what you can’t admit isn’t working, and when it’s our souls that aren’t working because of all our efforts having been thus far only ever given to try and ensure that our lives keep working the way we want them to so that we keep both looking and feeling good, leaving those failures unfixed will only fail to keep our hope afloat.

And in a battle, in a war such as this life is as waged between wrong and right, darkness and light, we cannot at all afford to lose hope as hope is what keeps our courage up. And if our courage falls, so will we follow. As our pasts have proven.

And this is proven in every single time we had the chance to choose to do right but went left and got lost instead. It’s proven inside everything which stands now as a memory of a mistake, a regret won, a shame that’s stained our outlook up ahead and convinced us that maybe we can’t do any better and thus should just agree to stop trying like so many others have. Yes, maybe we should just accept defeat and join all those many upon that wide street looking for their best life here, and in only a hurry to have it before it’s finally taken away anyway.

That’s the war. For we fight not against the flesh and blood we see and hear. Our battle isn’t against one another but rather the powers of the air that we breathe that make us only believe that we should agree with everything as it’s done and wanted and won and hated and rejected and constricted and confused in this place so filled with lies that none of us know all that much about life let alone how to live it well. Again, how could we when we’ve left so many humbling lessons unlearned inside those hard days we thought we were supposed to hate for the losses of enjoyment and excitement and elation that we thought mattered more?

See, that’s where we find this dividing line now drawn in our lives, in our hearts, our minds. It’s the Spirit God gave us going against the spirit of doubt and disbelief that so many here know far more about. And that there is here so much denial and doubt and thus folks doing without, going without, living without all that God is holding out for us to reach for, seems that such is only evidence of this war that’s now been allowed to be waged even within us.

For there's an unrest at work within every human soul as a result of all we've sold of all we at once had the chance to retain, to remain, in order only to buy the lies that so many here all around us are living by, living for, living in. Indeed, this war is fought between the rewards of a life given over to self-gratification and the recompense promised unto all who seek instead to glorify the Spirit as opposed to, in opposition to the flesh.

This much we know without question to be true as it is eternally undeniable that the things we’ve done to please ourselves or someone else didn’t always bring about the outcome we expected. We thought that saying the right things, doing the right things, believing the common things, buying the popular things would leave us believing that our lives were right and thus going according to the plans of avoiding hardship that all humans prefer to have.

And yet this is why we so often feel such things as guilt, regret, remorse. It's not because we've not managed to find elation or euphoria within our selfish expectations or the fervent efforts given always only unto reaching them, meeting them, besting them, beating them. No, this guilt we feel and the remorse we can’t always manage to outrun is won because to continue beating our best desires and biggest dreams demands we too keep beating our souls into quiet submission.

So that we needn’t do anything that our souls might try to save us from, warn us from, lead us from and guide us toward.

And while we might manage most days to keep silent that still, small voice calling us beyond ourselves, that we can never silence Him altogether is evidence of God knowing what's truly best and too being all but eternally unwilling to give up on His design for our lives in exchange for our fallen delights. No, we’re the ones who proven an almost perfect penchant for giving up. For indeed we've given up every time life got hard, turned off that path so filled with hardship and headed instead for those hills of happiness up which almost all of everyone else had or has retreated.

But see, the cross proves that He never will quit on us nor the plans He has for us even should, even when death is demanded to beget such redemption of all we’ve since discounted or destroyed in these lives lived as if fire sales seeking to sell off what’s challenging in exchange for more of what’s more comforting. For that is His recompense as rewarded unto our humility embracing a share of His suffering as seen inside the Son.

And that His love did all that just for us to remember that we’ve another home in Heaven, a better home in Heaven as it is one spent forever with Him, well that just ever-reminds that there's more to life than what we want as so sadly defined by what we've usually settled for as determined by always what’s easier, what’s quicker, what’s safer, what’s standard.

Friends, loss here is standard. So many in this world have accepted a victim’s mentality as that is by and large the only thing that gets you anywhere anymore. People don’t care about those who keep trying only to keep failing. Call them fools, those few who refuse to let go their hope of finding, of feeling, of being something better. Call them weak for refusing to accept the easier path to a quicker payout. Call them freaks for finding in faith something worth dying for.

Yes, they call us lost for our willingness to lose everything in this world if that’s what it really takes to not lose the battle that’s meant to lead us home.

And that’s why I can’t care what this world thinks of me, how I live, what I live for, what I lose in order to live how I do for what I do. It doesn’t matter. For again, my war is not against flesh and blood, that is other than my own. For as we talked about yesterday, and as this verse for today so eloquently reminds, the flesh wants what the Spirit doesn’t, and too the Spirit wants what the flesh doesn’t.

That is the battle that each of us are either winning or simply not willing to try anymore. Because in the end, there just is no other direction. We are either trying to live the kind of life for which God created us, or we’ve instead given that fight up and settled in alongside the billions who’ve walked away before.

Friends, just know that the road spent walking away from a once-held hope in something better is in fact so long that it will last forever. The good news of the Gospel of Christ is that within this life we have a chance to turn back around and fight like hell to be found in Heaven. The sad news is that that fight isn’t something this world is willing to undertake as it’s not one that most even care to acknowledge.

No, this place is convinced that all that matters in life is our doing as we please, so much so that that is the standardized definition of what it means to be free.

But to me, I just can’t quite agree as I’ve lived a long time doing just that, seeking to gratify and glorify myself through doing only whatever I wanted to do at the time. But ever since I heard of Christ, I see only that those choices I’ve made at the behest or suggest of my selfishness, they’re only chains that I now fight through every day trying to lay down afraid that I’ll not be able to find them all nor shake them all off before the clock runs out.

I need His help as this war I’m fighting within is one that I’ve just recently learned is truly a matter of life and death. And that same truth goes for all of us.

Please don’t listen to whatever your heart says as His Word says that our hearts are deceitful above all things, and our past mistakes prove this much is true. And don’t waste any more time listening to the world that only repeats those lies either.

No, we’ve something better to live for, and it’s so worth fighting for that our Savior embraced the cross just for us to have the chance to start trying.

And make no mistake, if we take Him up on that offer to start fighting this good fight, He will do far more than meet us halfway. No, He will go before and behind all the way home. Surely we can find it within us to do our part to reach that undeserved promise. Even if it means that one of the first things we have to do is lose everything we thought we knew about life and how to live it.

Because maybe life isn’t actually about how we think we’re supposed to live it but rather what we’re willing to lose it for, and too what we’re happy to lose along the way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold