Day 3493 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 9:27 NIV

As this story we’re living approaches the closing chapters what we’re all going to find is that we’ve known more enslavement than freedom for that is simply how life goes down here.

And while this is a truly gut-wrenching realization to be found and felt alongside this waning foolishness which has long assumed otherwise, what such a blatant honesty provides is an opportunity unlike any other we’ve either taken full advantage of thus far, or, and undeniably more likely, unlike the many more opportunities that we’ve all but completely denied in order to reach this place so mentally, spiritually debased that our lives are otherwise deprived of the bold ability to be so unashamed of our past mistakes that we confess them so as to progress them beyond the stagnancy that so much of society seeks inside the same.

For again, that is simply how life goes down here.

All around us there are those who’ve become so adverse to such things as change, chance, the choice we have to either dance with who we’ve become or continue trying to outrun that dishevelment. And that number is so large and still growing because the world has taught us all to deny our inabilities, our insufficiencies, all of our rather disagreeable decisions made as they’re now known as mistakes made instead that we’ve, like all, reached a point wherein we’re all but unable to admit our struggles simply for the sake of not having to show a world pretending itself perfect that there is no such thing capable of a fallen man.

Nobody here has the stomach left to admit that we’re failing, that we’re falling, that we’ve in fact fallen so far into failure that we almost love that outcome for the pity it offers in which our pride revels at all the compassionate attention gained and gleaned from a crowd that just loves, that only loves coddling those who’ve shared in such a socially standardized loss of courage that all we seem to cheer for anymore is nothing but the demise or destruction of another.

Indeed, we are a sick breed to be sure, and even as the Bible says, perhaps even beyond cure.

Because to cure a wound or a wandering demands at first an admitting that perhaps our wandering is what’s left us so wounded as to want only to whine and hide and hope that nobody sees us for anything other than the victims of all this chance that we still seek to assume is so driving life behind the scenes and over the edge. But what if there is no chance? What if this isn’t some sort of roulette wheel in which we each just happen to fall prey to the play of wherever some ball lay?

No, what if rather all of this is truly forever designed to confine and consign to a will for a life that none of us can either write or erase?

What if our only place in this story of grace is that of the pauper laying down what we prefer so that in doing so we can renounce our rebellion and in that put God back on the throne?

Because you see, contrary to common conceding, maybe this war that we like to call life is one only won when we finally surrender our every assumption and presumption and opinion and let the Father take the lead so that He can lead us to that home that our pasts only prove we've rarely thought about, cared about, been more than happy to imagine we might somehow go without. For that is what we’ve done within all this time given unto the gain of the whole world via the validation and justification, the affirmation we’ve all sought and most seek still for sake of the solace assumed inside.

For the sake of the solace consumed inside.

For that is what our enjoyment of such violent enslavement has always been, just a quiet consuming of our every better ability and bigger belief in exchange for the chance to only avoid change and thus take no chance at letting down those we’ve come to rely on to hold us up above the fact that we have failed every opportunity to become the better we were created to be.

Because that is a truth far too heartbreaking to allow ourselves to see we’ve only brought it on ourselves.

I heard this adage the other day and it, though fabricated and quite obviously so, seems to hold a strange measure of a sort of truthful reality that I think we could all use the opportunity to consider as I think it reminds of a responsibility that is anymore commonly ignored by almost all of us for what are a billion different reasons, each of them as worthless and wasting as the next, but all alike in that they unanimously seek to absolve our agreement to our responsibility in life, for life, to life, perhaps most of all toward the Author of life for having given us life and thus far not taken our life despite the little we’ve done right in our life.

The story was this:

It’s said that as eagles get older they eventually come to this point in their lives when they face a rather dire choice. See, after a number of years, their beaks and talons wear down, their feathers grow a bit stiff or thick making it a little harder to fly quite so high, and thus they become unable to continue hunting and catching their food for the tools they rely on for that ability have become dull or otherwise unable to uphold the task and are thus no longer fit to the task of continuing onward.

And when this happens they face a choice, either leave these inabilities unaddressed and die due to their then accepted inability to eat or even protect themselves, or, accept the challenge of doing what’s needed in order to carry on living. If they accept the easier of the two, as is understandable compared to the processes of the undeniably more difficult and damaging, they just fizzle out and fade away. But on the other hand, if they embrace the harder of the two, they must undertake what’s required to fix their weaknesses and dullnesses and inabilities.

This harder of the two means breaking off that beak that’s bent, broken, worn and dull. And then as that takes the time needed for a new one to grow in its place, they have no choice but to learn patience, dedication, discipline even. And this latter trait comes in handy once that new, sharper beak has grown in. See, if you’ll recall their talons were worn out as well, making it impossible to catch their food. So with this new beak they’ve undergone the misery of making way for and then enduring the patience of waiting for it to grow, with this new beak they tear out those worn out talons so that new versions of those may grow too.

And this again means both pain and patience, two things we’ve oddly enough grown to see as all but synonymous ourselves. But once they too have grown, these new talons they need, the eagle is back on top the chain and able then to not merely carry on alive but is in fact able to thrive once more.

Again, this whole story is one entirely fictional as that is in no way what eagles face nor what any of them are asked to do, endure in order to stay alive. It’s, if anything, seemingly a fable written the likes of that old Native American story of the two wolves living within a person, warring within a person. They’re somewhat modern proverbs in that they’re presented within a proverbial sense rather than a true reality as able to be actually witnessed in life itself. Because I suppose that sometimes proverbs are just better ways to convey an idea than trying to go throughout all the nuance, and too to address the naivety needed to be overcome to break down barriers such as doubt and disbelief.

But you see, while this story is a fable, a work of fiction in that it’s not literal, the lesson it offers is one that I personally find to have some meaning, some merit, maybe even some worth.

See, I’ve lived the majority of my life gratifying my flesh. I gave years, decades to all manner of decadence and delight. And along the way doing always only whatever was easy or fun or self-fulfilling, I grew so filled with self and sin that I literally grew fat, worn out, weary, worthless and all but unable to carry on. And then, like that fictional eagle, I too faced that choice:

Take the easy road, the common road, the road so well-walked by so many that it is in every way the one in which we win the understanding of those around us who prefer to show us their pity so that they themselves can retain this sense of pride for the sake of this feeling of power they enjoy lording over us. But that easier path, that more understandable road is one of leaving every underlying issue uncontested, unaddressed, unfixed. And it’s easy to see why it’s clearly more common and thus more commonly chosen.

Because the only other option is to smash the dull parts of a life against the Rock so as to clear away the old and make way for the new to begin to grow.

And wouldn’t you know, but my being so inclined and intrigued by doing as the world doesn’t, I allowed God to inspire me unto that strange path, that strained path, that path of struggle and road thus often rejected. And He did indeed help me to crash into His Word and smash my selfishness against His purpose and embrace the misery of realizing the mistakes I’d made were all my fault and thus all my failures to find, to feel, to be anything better than everything I’d become, it was all on me.

But still, I felt then and feel now this need to see what that cross says He sees in me, and so I ask even now that He does His will in my life, even when, especially when it overrides, overrules my own. Because as that new began to take root, I too learned some things about patience, perseverance, persistence, pain. And as that new me continued to grow, I used that new to rip out even more of the old. Even more pain, even more patience. Yes, all those things this place has taught us to hate!

And yet as I sit here today, I find I can personally understand the difference now between servant and slave, so much so that I can even offer you a very real measurement of it from within my own life. Indeed, for me, in one way at least, that difference is about 130 pounds. Because that’s how much I’ve lost going from someone who lived to serve himself, to glorify himself, to gratify himself to the person I am now that indeed strikes blows to my body and makes it my slave so that it does as I tell it, not the other way around.

Not anymore.

For you see, there was a time when I gave myself whatever I wanted. Food and drink in whatever poor quality and high quantity I wanted. I allowed my body to convince me of all this rest and relaxation it needed all the time. I gave way to such things as the enjoyment of entertainment so as to fill the time that I didn’t know how to appreciate. I bought Bibles so that I could feel closer to this God that so many others seemed to have found joy and peace and purpose within serving, but I left every one of them closed, too afraid to read all about all the truth I knew was waiting within.

And in all that self-gratification I grew obese, gluttonous, greedy, selfish and lazy. I, like that eagle in that made-up story, became alive but alas all but unable to go on living. Thankfully God didn’t agree to that outcome though.

No, instead of letting the light of life burn out, taking hope and purpose along with it when it went, He lit a fire inside that grows only more desperate, only more diligent, only more urgent to find the better that He’s told me, showed exists in me.

That is why Christ died for us, is it not? That He sees something in us worth such a cost?

Indeed, and if He sees that worth in me then perhaps I should try to see it too. Even if to see it means going through that transition from a servant of self to a slave of truth, of life, of focus, of faith, of hope, of healing, of health, of humility, of honor, of gratitude. For I know that normal way of life so lived without any of the above nor any care about any of them either. And so I know without a doubt that it’s not a life at all!

No, rather I’ve found that life is what you find after the fights that should have killed you but somehow didn’t. Life is what you feel when you face the days you don’t want to go through but decide to anyway. Life is what you experience when you do something you hate having to do because you believe it makes you better. Life is what you find when you finally find that life isn’t about us being comfortable and contented with our complacencies but is rather about honoring God with everything our hands do, our hearts feel, our heads think and our lives try.

It’s about laying down our preferences in exchange for His praise, however it might need be offered. But maybe one of the best ways we can honor our Father is by refusing to lay back and die and instead embrace the misery of smashing away, breaking off, tearing out anything and everything in us that is holding us back and preventing our moving on ahead toward something more than just being alive. Because the simple fact is that He created us to do more than be alive.

He created us to live and to thrive while doing it. And so let me ask, are you thriving or are you dying? Because make no mistake, there is no third direction.

Friends, this world will continue on telling us that this life is one that because it can be easy, that this means it should be easy. And the fact that many will continue to buy into that lie will make it harder for us not to do the same. And sadly, the same can even be said of faith. Many here share these false theologies which are aimed at affirming our insufficiencies so that we don’t feel bad enough about them to seek out the only One who died to overcome them.

And make no mistake, these false theologies, false gospels, false teachers, wolves dressed up like sheep, these messages they send, they sound awful good to itching ears.

But while many think that they’ve found some alternate version of life, of faith, of love, of hope, of meaning, all of which are so incredibly easy that they are undeniably popular within this place, please understand that popularity has never been proof of something being proper or prone to the growth toward perfection that God both requests and deserves to see in us.

The bottom line is that there is in life, as a whole not as it’s unravelling around here, there is in a life a prize toward which we’ve all been called in Christ. And that prize is life eternal. And while many here have fallen so far away from that hope that they’ve left no courage to try for it as it demands the ongoing denial of self, such is why it’s something so priceless that the Prince of Heaven laid down His life for us to have the opportunity to come apart from a world coming apart and move on toward that place He’s made for us to call home.

None of us should be as willing as this world has become to reject that chance, especially those who know that there will not be another. This hope that we have in Christ, as it is our only, it is worthy of our doing whatever we have to, enduring whatever we have to, losing whatever we have to in order to one day hear that “Well done” instead of that “Be gone”.

I want that latter for no one, but alas I cannot make anyone’s choices for them, I can only offer up all that God’s helping me learn. And so please don’t let a lost world convince you to accept for yourself this idea that a life lived here is better than one lived forever. Sure, that might be easier, but if what’s easier only achieves what’s lesser, then I for one see no reason to settle for it.

Especially now that Heaven is on the table.

And since I do truly want that outcome for everyone, I give my word to both everyone who reads these daily posts and to the Father who sees them all as well that I will do my absolute best to not betray this opportunity I have to put my shoulder to this work and do whatever it takes to keep that only hope we have the only priority I have left.

Because nothing else matters all that much when compared to that prize we’ve been given the chance to have forever.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold