Day 3496 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jude 18 NIV

Those found within as still mixed with those still lost without will come about to realize the reality of this rebellion as it’s one only overcome within a scant few who do not do as the rest seem intent to.

For that is the promise as given us in His perfect way with words warning that within this world we would have trouble and that when it came we might remain assured of our faith in that it’s this world that He came and overcame. And that is a kindness, a compassion, a kind of continuing mercy that finds new ways within these darkened days to scream inside this silence a reminder of that most blessed hope found and felt in that promise that He’d left to lead that way, to be the Way toward that better place He’d made for us, made us for as well long before we made our way into the world and allowed this world into us.

And that is the now perfect perplexity of this promise proven within such an encroaching vicinity that the venom and vitriol of those many still lost without as their hatred comes ever closer as we fall ever-further from worrying about what the world wants us to.

What the population doesn’t seem to quite understand, be it a matter of unwillingness or just plain unfruitfulness, is that it’s not about us anymore. What we do and what we win, when we lose and what it costs, what all we go without as we go home and just how oddly happy we are along the way, it has increasingly less to do with us than life already did. And yet that’s probably the problem. It’s that we’ve all been lied to for so long now that we can’t allow ourselves to imagine the sheer level of deceitfulness piled up around us and within us.

Because to even begin to imagine it would beg that we admit it possible, and if we did admit it plausible, well then we’d be otherwise forever unable to be blind again to the problem.

For once we become those who do see, we cannot then ever again fall back upon that excuse validated by genuine blindness. We see this perhaps best of all within the original fall. See, Adam and Eve didn’t know what they were getting themselves into nor what they were letting into themselves. They, like we, just saw something that looked good, heard an idea that sounded nice, bought the hook and let it sink so deep that all of the sudden life itself wasn’t as worth living as it seemed before having now heard this novel word which said there was more there than ever before.

So they bit and still we bite it every single time we accidentally slip up and let ourselves acknowledge reality. That’s why so many fight so viciously against it. It’s because again to admit the presence of a problem is to equally confess that we’ve at least allowed it to become present if not actively insisted it become the problem it’s been allowed to be. And so we resort always to this fervent fantasyland in which we’re still innocent in regard to whatever we dare not agree to the consequences of having utterly messed up.

And even more so, that whole ‘encroaching vicinity’ part I talked about a minute ago, well it’s felt within the scoffing part promised in this verse.

This one isn’t even hard to realize anymore. People hate those who speak the truth because the truth, while able to set captives free, can only accomplish that feat by at first helping said captives embrace the present absence of said freedom. And there’s not much that upsets that hatred of reality and it having been built upon such things as honesty and personal responsibility than that word which says that sinners we are, thus enslaved to sin we’ve been, thus free we’ve not, thus the problem proven that our pride has spent all this time trying to deny.

It’s almost the very definition of a catch-22 in that the solution to the problem is our admitting that we are the problem which is only a problem because we’ve been a problem for so long now that to admit the problem being all on us would be to thus admit ourselves contrary to everything we’ve always fought so stinking hard to convince everyone we’ve always been. It’s truly a perfect catastrophe. For we know we need help, but we need that help only because we can’t help ourselves, but we’ve tried to help ourselves to the very things that have left us needing now the help that we can’t offer ourselves.

Ain’t no wonder we’re all so messed up and afraid!

We’ve been chasing our tails for years completely oblivious to the fact that we have absolutely no idea what we plan to do with them should we catch them nor that we’re just running in circles trying to gain something that we both already have and too really don’t need. And the problem now is that pride has become a matter of such staunch substance for the sake of its glaring social glory and thus successful gain of basically anything and everything anyone may want from everyone else, such has all but dissolved any willingness to endure sound teaching.

Sound familiar?

It should, both because it’s written in the Bible and we’re to the very point of living it out basically every single day. We’re all so adverse to the honesty of reality that we again exist only off by ourselves within this fantastical fiction made entirely of figments of our own imagination as designed alongside, thus designed by, the rest of a fallen mankind meaning then that we’re all the same and thus unanimously out of our minds.

And again, the one solution to the problem is seen as only a continuance of the problem in that it not only only works when we confess our own guilt but it only stands to prove us continually guilty in that again once we confess we’re the problem, no longer can we fall back on that longstanding insinuation of our innocence.

Once we agree that there is a problem and that we are that problem, we’ve not only no excuse but also no defense.

Which is again why the world fights so hard against our faith and makes us who are doing our best to live it as well as we possibly can look like fools to the rest who are only still fooling themselves. Yeah, we’re the bad guys because we have the blanket audacity to confess that, yeah, we’re all the bad guys in this story of God’s glory which came and raced into the grave so as to visually show us what our sins deserve. It’s just that that’s right where He tends to lose most everyone.

Because here in this world so lost that it only scoffs at any reminder of the truth, there is any more so much ungodliness that even the inescapability of the design of life and death being inseparable has become something of a challenge amongst society in which we watch so many try so much to overcome this glaring problem that, again we created, that the vast majority are almost insufferable in regard to their hatred and disdain for those of us standing in the rain of His grace trying to convince everyone else to drop their umbrellas as it’s meant to wash us away.

And yet here we stand six-feet deep and that rain’s still coming down and it seems only that the world around us is still convinced that they’re going to drown should they step out of their boast of doubt and disbelief unto the sea that is the Son who came again to overcome all that we’ve seen and done as done and shown to please the world that isn’t our home nor allowed to remain in contention for that title any longer. We have somewhere else we hope to be someday soon, and as His mercy rains down upon our madness, it’s only washing away with it any worry we have about anything the world may want.

Take it up with Him.

Like, seriously, please! I beg you, charge His throne with all this anger and resentment that this world has said you ought to have because of His truth trying to set you free, go and try and start that argument with God and I promise that it will be resolved. I promise.

Granted, it’s only ever going to be resolved one of two entirely, eternally different ways. But the good news is that while we’re alive within this life that we’ve still left to leave and thus left to lose, there is that chance, that choice to speak the Name that is above all others and perhaps find in that courage to confess that Christ is there a share in His mercy which will again overcome the madness.

All’s I’m saying is it’s best to try now while failure isn’t exactly fatal because one day that luxury won’t be there anymore.

Which is pretty much all we ‘freaks’ are trying to point out. Unfortunately pride has convinced us all to take everything personally, and so it seems that no matter how kind, how meek, how mild or even how wild we may try, chances are all we’re going to accomplish is making someone so angry with us that they hate us because that’s what pride tells us all to do. Again, catch-22. It’s just that in terms of faith, those who live it and thus can’t help but proclaim it, we’re the ones who’re seen as the problem, leaving then pride all but allowed to go ahead and continue to undermine the obvious.

The obvious being again that we’re all sinners and there’s simply no amount of godless chatter than can change that fact nor what we owe due to the fact that we’re the ones who caused the problem because we’re the ones who are the problem.

It really all just boils down to either the willingness to admit it hoping that there be mercy hidden within that honesty or rather the fear of finding out that there is mercy within His honesty and that thus we’ve been fighting all this time against the One who literally died to help us find that way of life that isn’t a fight anymore but rather one finally walked in freedom.

Catch-22.

Friends, my point is apparently two-fold, as that seems all of the sudden the direction most of these posts tend to go. On one side my point to the world is that the hatred and misunderstanding is understandable, to be honest, it’s expected. And so while anger and violence and vulgarity and the like do in fact work quite well for the getting of your way within this world, understand that the way of this world isn’t working in us as much as it once was.

And so it might have a rather waning effect in days to come as we continue to live knowing that we’re heading home and thus we know what it means to say that for us to live is Christ and to die is gain. Thus the worst we know this world can do is nothing short of sending us home. It’s like a Draw-4 in Uno, changes the game. Just know that we, like you, didn’t write the rules.

No, we’re just the messengers tasked with telling the world that there really is unlimited forgiveness even though we’ve all broken those rules countless times thus far.

Secondly, now that the world’s perspective is hopefully assuaged somehow, of which I doubt, my point then is to my brothers and sisters in Christ. And that point is this: We have a job to do. And as with most jobs as we’ve all known them, we have a boss that we have agreed to serve in exchange for a certain wage. Now, that wage as won in Christ is eternal life, far different than the wages we were earning back at our old jobs. Sinners earn death, Christ did some figuring and found the exchange rate and now, if we’re in Him, we’ve been absolved of our failings and are now walking in that promise of everlasting life spent in His most glorious presence.

And that matters more than whatever this world continues to think and thinks we should do about it.

We cannot allow our faith to be either the substance of someone else’s assumptions nor the result of anyone else’s threats. This faith is meant to be a personal relationship between us and our Savior as that is the only way that substitutionary atonement can work. He takes our sins and gives us His righteousness. And since we each have a whole host of differences and variations in regard to need and struggle, He deals with each of us on a one-to-one basis.

But we’re here to help others hear that they too can have that intimate experience with the very real Jesus who sends still forth His very real Spirit who comes so as to lead us toward His very real promise that we will all either be welcomed into or turned away from. The challenge is that we are here in this world that lives as if it isn’t His, as if they’re not His, and that is a very real problem for a whole lot of people. And that should be to us so utterly heartbreaking that we’ve no time to worry about listening to a world that scoffs, screams, throws things, mostly tantrums, because of this illogical hatred of truth and life and freedom and love and all other good things which come as they always have.

Only from God above.

Friends, I don’t know if we’re in the last days as He’s not sent us a memo letting us know the specific particulars such as that. What I do know is that His Word hasn’t changed and thus nor then have either of His promises. One is for our good, the other not quite so much. We are to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, knowing well that it probably won’t go all that well. That’s why He warned us that we’d have problems here, and also why He told us to get a sword if we didn’t have one.

And then, being the kind of provisionary Father He is, He went ahead and gave us one just to be safe. Ephesians 6:17. “Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

We’ve got our helmet in that nothing this world does can destroy our salvation and we’ve too got the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God with which we can quench the flaming arrows of the enemy which are these days launched at us all but continually from the hearts and minds and mouths of those already feeling the heat.

Can’t leave it like that.

Go into all the world unworried when it inevitably doesn’t go well. It’s not on us to ensure this fight is won as it already is. It is on us to live such good lives among the pagans that they see our good works and glorify God on the day He visits again. Just don’t let this world’s hatred and scoffing and general godlessness cause you to forget that on that day when He visits again, some go home while most don’t. Do not give in to this world demanding you stay silent about your faith out of this fear this place pretends it has the power to inflict.

It doesn’t.

Why? Because we fear God alone, and thus we fear no one else. Keep that mind, because judging from how things are unfolding, we’re going to need it more than we ever imagined. So strap up friends, the war is over and so this battle is just getting started.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold