Day 3510 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Timothy 2:16 NIV

As the smoke rises from the hordes of those blowing it, what’s left for us up here upon the high ground of a higher hope than merely being heard is to hesitate to rejoin such a reasonless rebellion.

Because there’s no doubt that we’ll be widely welcomed back down this hill that Christ climbed on our behalf. That’s what this world so colonized by community seems to seek incessantly. We’re all invited daily into all these discussions and disagreements within which those engaged seek only to wage a war for their own worth as proven within their win of every word, the final being always most valuable. For here we cannot dare allow another to be heard last as this will leave us feeling as if we weren’t heard at all.

And for a people so filled with so much to say that our selfishness feels the need to have heard so that another might share that we needn’t feel all alone as the only ones living our lives, this risk of coming in last is as close to death as we’re willing to walk.

Leaving us always wanting for words, worried less of their meaning than their motive.

For we all know the motivations and mannerisms spoken underneath the words through which we’ve come to live. We know why we say what we do, and why then we so often fail to do what we say. It’s because down here words are such a vast backdrop for the entirety of society that we needn’t worry that we’ll ever run out. There will always be something new said and so we’ll always have something to say that someone else wants to hear, expects to hear.

But that’s where the problem begins in that words have become so wanted that those itching ears of which we were warned are now wanting from us what they expect to hear. And to further this calamity we find ourselves smack inside an insane society filled with more than plenty who clearly have no problems with so discounting themselves as to engage in the expectations continually placed upon us.

If for no other reason than they ensure that again we’ll be heard, and here, that’s about as much evidence of our existence as any might hope to hold.

Apparently.

And I say apparently as I’ve personally become one who is widely unseen, unheard, unknown, as I’ve said in the past, a nameless and faceless enigma is what I’ve delighted to become so that by none knowing me, the more might know Him through me. For I find that anymore I can only seem to agree with Paul in that I am not my own because I was bought at a price I couldn’t match, and one now that I’d never want to. Because for me to defiantly proclaim that to live is Christ and to die then gain, I cannot live to seek my own glory, gain, notoriety or notice.

Because I know I can do nothing for anyone, unless that is I give my life in its entirety to being used by He who died to prove that He knows better what to do with my time, my abilities, my opportunities than I ever have.

And so I seek not to be known, to be seen, to be heard. For I know that He came for me while I was the one who’d wandered away from the rest. And so I know that He knows where to find me even if I’m off by myself living quietly away from the mess.

But we live in a world in which this sort of mindset isn’t mainstream. If anything, I’m probably considered mad, outside of my mind, a man of low account and thus no real worth. And whilst I can find a rare elation in that worldly condemnation, many here can’t because all of us have become so convinced of the necessity of so much that’s entirely unnecessary that they can’t themselves break away from the betrayal as this world doesn’t ever speak to this other way of life.

Because this world doesn’t want anyone to know that there’s a real kind of freedom that doesn’t rely upon some human to grant it or agree it had.

And it’s this kind of indeed kind of free that I personally seek for everyone who happens to have the rare audacity to believe beyond cities, beyond cultures, beyond comforts, competition, condemnation, confrontation. Because those are all worldly things as offered us in either welcome or rejection, leaving most to worry as they always have about what this world promises to take away. But when we begin to realize this other Way, we find in Him that we’ve both nothing to lose and thus nothing we have to do unto those who pretend they can take something from us.

No, we needn’t live our lives so engrained in the expectations of man that we give our time, worry or intention to pleasing their insinuations that we’re here to be heard by our saying what they want to hear. And, to carry this beautiful freedom even further, nor must we tune our ears to hear what they want to make sure is heard. In fact, as we see here, we can’t. Why? Because if God isn’t in it then we can’t allow into us.

And looking around at what the majority are doing and listening in to what all the masses are saying, and combining those two proofs into an understanding of where and for what this world is standing, we can clearly now the reason for our separation in body, mind, spirit from this world so vastly discounting all the above always in order to look like, sound like, and thus be liked by those around them.

It’s just that we’re called to revere the One above us. And just because the world so clearly continues to settle short of that call to have no other gods, that doesn’t mean that we need to do the same.

In fact, again, we just can’t.

Because again, we are not our own. Never were, it’s just that we’ve kindly been now allowed to learn that while still inside a world that never will. And it’s not for lack of His patience trying to lead all of us to repentance, it’s simply because again, there’s an unmistakable presence of humility inside repentance, and that’s just entirely unbecoming to the pride so many in this place have become. For do you not know that that to which you serve is that toward which you grow?

No, this world doesn’t know that, and that’s why so many live as if there isn’t such a dire line drawn between the sin we’ve been and the righteousness we’re called to become.

It’s seen inside every conversation not seasoned with salt. It’s heard inside every seed of gossip sown into the attention of someone who was living a life of better worth without such worthless worldliness. It’s realized within every minute of every day in which someone somewhere says something that doesn’t benefit those who hear it. We talked about that yesterday, the power of our words as defined by His Word as offering both life and death, the difference left up to us to decide. But again, that’s become where the problems begin.

Because we live in a world that doesn’t let us decide for ourselves what we say. Again, we’re surrounded by this constant expectation to do as the Romans do, to say what the influencers say, to repeat the popular lexicon so that we’re not left outside looking in to a world in which we don’t seem to fit anymore. Because we’ve learned to fear that outcome. We’ve learned to agree that we’ve here something to lose. And inside that worry, we’ve resorted back to winning wars with words in order to ensure that we’re heard saying what others want to hear so that we are, by them, allowed to feel as if we belong here.

Because somewhere along the line we’ve all seemingly agreed that this world is our home and that we must thus do as the world does, speaks what the world speaks, become but replicas of what the world is and in this lose however much of ourselves, our peace, our own personal purpose as needed in order to achieve this somehow normalized necessity of our being recognized by those who don’t in any way live like, look like, sound like they care to know God.

And that’s right where the only line that matters was drawn long before humans started drawing all these others that we’ve come to live within.

Is there God in this? That’s the line.

Contrary to common confusion, what matters most and makes something thus most meaningful isn’t whether or not it’s popular. It doesn’t actually matter if something is normal as considered by a world without the authority to determine such normality. It doesn’t matter who is doing it or how many are sharing in the saying of it. All that matters is whether or not there’s God in it, because again, if God isn’t in it, then it shouldn’t be allowed into us.

And this is becoming a pretty big problem within this world so lost and unwilling to leave the laxity behind. No, most here make it daily clear that all they care to be is whatever someone else tells them to become. And this is again accomplished best by that evidence we all love far too much simply because the fruit it bears is more easily reaped than anything we might find inside the silence of our living our own lives. Indeed, this world loves the fruit of the tongue because, again as we talked about yesterday, words are just easy.

Words get the ideas in our minds into the minds of others easier than anything else we have by which to try to invite others into their share of our lives. And this is a massive commonality in this society as, again, people are simply terrified of living inside the solitude of realizing that no matter what we do, what we say, who hears it and either likes it or hates it, at the end of this road it will just be us alone before the God we either fought to know or never did as we followed instead a world that refused to.

And this is why we cannot agree to simply do as the world does and so allow ourselves to so undermine ourselves by all this worrying and warring about words and the wants of those around us to hear only the things that they want to hear, always only messages void of the Messiah simply because of this world’s realization of their rebellion, but overcome by their unwillingness to accept its defeat.

That’s why we’re so surrounded by so much godless chatter. The noise of it all drowns out the silence in which waits the understanding of every mistake we’ve made being far bigger than this world contends. For this place tells us that to do as we please is what makes life worth living. And if no other message were ever shared, this one alone is enough to condemn us all to hell as it inspires inside a life given unto serving ourselves and thus never coming to a knowledge of the truth that such a pursuit is done only at the expense of our honoring God as the only One who deserves such glory.

And so that message alone, so godless in every way, telling us to do only everything that we want to do, it’s proof positive that this world has lost sight of eternity and thus reason enough for us to be a little more leery about what all we allow ourselves to listen to and become involved in.

Because you see, in such a society as this that’s all but succumbed to the scramble for such things as semantics and sentence fragments, we run the risk of listening perhaps a little too much to perhaps a little too much. There’s just an incessant and excessive influx of information and input all vying to be the loudest voice lying in order to gather our attention and garner our appreciation. And within this volume of volume we have to be the ones who determine what we listen to, what we worry about, what we focus on so that we can ensure that it’s leading us in the right direction rather than just leaving us further lost.

Because that’s what most of the noise around us seeks to do.

Because it’s godless.

It’s gossip and grandstanding, it’s a sort of selfish satisfaction sought through thoughts hearing themselves heard to the sound of applause and the bobbing of heads. Everyone wants everyone else to hear them as in that we all feel less unknown and thus less alone. But we have to be supremely cautious as to the company we allow into our lives, our eyes, our ears, our hearts, our minds. Because the bad company which corrupts good character isn’t just confined to people alone.

It’s also ideas, ideals, suggestion and expectation. For all of these can also serve to lead those who love to listen for what they seek to leave. For that’s all that every message does, it seeks to lead a person or a people into a perspective that the one sharing it feels is of enough personal importance that they want others to see it and feel it for themselves and thus share in this supposed gain they’ve gleaned.

But the problem is that not everything everyone is reaping is worth our hearing. In fact, judging from the overall decay of this place, most of the noise we hear is just nonsense we don’t need. Again, it’s godless. It’s gossip. It’s water cooler rumors and scuttlebutt whispered about in order to undermine the peace that we’re all missing anymore. That’s why we’re called to caution. It’s why we told here plainly to avoid it all. It’s why we’re told to have nothing to do with godless chatter.

Because it does nothing good for us. It provides nothing good to us. Again it’s godless. And that’s the importance of discernment. We need the ability to decipher what matters from the most that doesn’t. We need to be able to differentiate between the edifying and that only magnifying the mundane. And yes, anymore it is a heavy load as we are in a world that we are perhaps trying to help, but that doesn’t mean that this world is in any way trying to help us.

And friends, we have too much to lose to take it lightly. And so contrary to commonality, we should be thankful for the opportunity to undertake this call to avoid godless chatter. We should relish the chance to safeguard our peace. We should revere His help in helping us heed the warning to not listen to all that’s worthless and thus harmful in this world. Because that’s what most of this noise around us is. It’s harmful. It hateful. It’s a darkness so dim and destructive that it sinks souls as if ships once inside these vessels we often forget we are.

And that’s simply something we can’t agree to go along with anymore. Again, there’s just too much at stake to allow anything godless to be what’s left to lead us. Because the simple fact is that if God isn’t in it, then we shouldn’t allow it into us as we should know the results of having done the opposite. All of us have lived a portion of our lives doing as the world does, saying what the world says, listening to what the world wants us to hear.

Where did it lead us? Is it where we wanted to stay? Or was it instead that place that we cried out to Jesus to come and save us from?

Friends, the point is proven inside the very next verse which speaks of gangrene, and if you don’t know, gangrene is the death of tissue that spreads and destroys more and more as it consumes from the inside. That’s what godless chatter is my friends. It’s a cancer that eats away our focus, our resilience, our persistence in this pursuit of godliness into which we’ve, through Christ, been now invited. And while the world has fought to make godlessness seem normal, right to the point of crafting all these common clichés to make it part of our every conversation, that doesn’t mean that it needs to become common for us.

Again, it can’t. Because like cancer, godlessness kills. And so if you want to live, perhaps one of the best ways to aid in that outcome is to stop listening to a world speaking death. Because God is life, and so if it’s godless, it’s lifeless. And if it’s lifeless, why let it live anywhere near you, let alone within you?

No, ask Him for that gift of a growing discernment which helps us to learn not only right from wrong, but more importantly, right from almost right. Because this world will continue to seek to blur that line.

And we just can’t afford to listen along as they do so.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold