Day 3519 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 16:17 NIV

Though not at all all that quick to be found in agreement, the poignancy of Scripture’s often pointed purpose is proven perfectly within an urgency painted inside the naivety which defines us all.

And we’re not quick to be found in agreement with such personal debasement because it’s an almost perfect opponent to this vile pride we’ve come to prize so highly that we simply cannot dare be seen anywhere near what may be considered lowly. We can’t allow a world filled with the jaded and judgmental to see us as anything other than as perfectly pretensive and personally pious as the rest of a fallen and yet swollen society has so clearly become. Indeed, we can’t become the one living by truth in what’s then a life displayed amongst a land so lost in lies that to face the facts is to all but agree to die.

For that is the purpose of Scripture, and thus the obviousness as to why we all fall in such great lengths to avoid being seen in agreement with it.

Because none here want to embrace the crucifixion of self. Because what benefit might be beheld by dead men walking? What welcome would we win within this world so lost in faithlessness were to be or become so faithful that our very existence were evidence of the ability to believe beyond oneself, leaving the world only further guilty than we all already are but only now more unable to debate it? What debate would there be if we held so tight to Christ that the cross He bore felt more home than here?

Yes, what message might that send to this world so vastly certain that here is home that the majority haven’t the humility to even hope anymore? Because the truth is that they don’t. Hope seen is something lost. Hope held is something temporary. Hope heard is a sound sent only into the past as we move, all of us, closer to the closing scenes of this calamity that we’ve created of God’s creation. Indeed, there is just such a culmination coming, and against all intents and pretenses, it’s coming sooner than any of us might imagine.

Especially when our imaginations have become so communally considered that we’re not even the source of our own suggestions anymore.

Indeed, that’s the tragedy to be soon proven within all this outsourcing of our living to a world not living for the right things at all. For the wages of sin are still death, and so we walk amongst a graveyard greeting each of us with an oddly warm welcome every morning as soon as we awake from those dreams through which we dance inside a life we’ve never lived out of either fear or failure. Yes, tis a sad existence when it’s only our dreams that form the substance of something anywhere at all close to a life worth living.

And yet that’s the only outcome to come from a world so lost inside itself and its sin that death is again all that anyone knows.

For this world is so wealthy in its ways of both wickedness and want that whatever we seek to win as won within is only our welcoming of our share of the surroundings against which we’ve been asked to not succumb. That is what we talked about yesterday as what is a message found so often in Scripture that it’s among the most pervasive purposes to ever be proven worth the profit we can only find within a fall away from a world on fire. For as my college professor used to say, if it’s repeated, it’s probably on purpose.

And this purpose of God’s repetitive calling us away from those who live only to lure others into their too being so lost that they don’t care to live for anything other than everything here, it’s to save us from the overall trajectory of what all that’s here is heading toward. Wide is the road that leads to destruction. And He tells us that there are many walking comfortably along it so that we don’t find ourselves wavering toward their welcoming us to join them on their jaunt toward eternal judgment.

Because while indeed all will be judged, the particular problem with having lived looking to the wrong company is that should we be found before His judgement seat without a Savior, well then all we’ll have to help us avoid what we already deserve is a society that lives only as if we don’t deserve it. It’s yet again one more of those Catch-22 situations in which to live leaning upon a society that denies the Messiah will only leaving us leaning upon said same society to help save us when found before the Father without anything in the way of appreciation for the Messiah.

And that’s probably not the best of ideas considering how brutal that must have been for Him to sacrifice His Son for us to have the chance to stop living a life that had us standing amongst a society smiling while He did it.

Which is why the call here to keep away. Which is, granted, just about the last thing we’re told to think inside thoughts thought for us by those who seek to assimilate us into themselves so that we, as then living like they, are but a continued comfort as considered inside only numbers by this world that seeks to enumerate everything so as to evaluate our profit and progression toward something new yet always nothing at all.

For indeed, this is a world so happy to chase its tail that the overall triumph of human society is nothing more than human rules based upon human teachings that seek only to please human masters, of whom we should have none as God didn’t create us to serve other gods, let alone people who only pretend themselves such. We talked about that not too long ago as well, and well, again, the overall idea is summed up yet again in our keeping away.

From what? Well, everything basically. Now, not literally, as that would be proven a physical impossibility eventually. But we’re called to come out of the world, to live apart from those running away from life, from faith, from the love of the Father who sent the Son who left the Spirit to lead us home along that Way so narrowing that we must walk behind Him without even relying upon our sight to see the steps. Yes, we are called, time and again throughout the antiquity that is Christianity, even before it was deemed as such, to have no such part nor party with or within a world living in enmity against the Creator.

Because that is the basis of the calling of all creation, to honor the fact that we are created rather than creator so that we can, in only the humility won within such an understanding, glorify our Creator even if/when such must be done amongst a calliope of contention against Him.

Problem then is that while that is the call of all creation, to honor our Creator, seems it’s a message that’s been vastly left to the voicemail of the voiceless.

And though it might sting for a second, fact is that that is what all of us have been, perhaps are still or risk becoming soon. We are the voiceless. Why? Because we’ve listened to this lost world for so long now that we’ve not any of our words to say but rather only repeats of what we’ve been taught by those who’ve taught us how to think according to their thoughts as given them by others before.

Indeed, we’ve unanimously retired from trying to live our own lives here inside this incessant insistence that the substance of human concession is considered the best we could ever possibly achieve or assume or begin or become. Which is exactly the message we hear daily from those who either didn’t get His message or just choose to continue living as if they missed it.

Missed Him.

The Messiah.

For that is indeed how this place seems entirely too content to continue. So many live so utterly outside the simplicity of wrong and right that both are anymore, apparently, a matter of growing subjectivity. Can’t stay in the lines of His Law? Draw new ones! Can’t adhere to His expectations? Convince yourself they don’t exist. Indeed, why stop there? Convince yourself that He doesn’t exist! But wait, there’s more!! Listen closely and you’ll hear a world all warm and welcoming welcoming you in once you agree with them that He’s not there!

Yes, finally, friendship and family and that forsaken feeling of feeling as if we’ve found where we belong! Oh what a wonderful day is that upon which we find the arms of this world wrapped so lovingly around us that we lose sight of our responsibility as proven inside the fact that our lives are fleeting and thus that our failing to live them in honor of the One who gave them to us and then came to save us from what we’ve done with them, in them, to them.

Indeed, that is the direction we’re given should we desire to go along as footloose and fancy-free as this world’s come to be.

Just follow this outline, stick to these steps, listen to those around you seeking to lead you into your being what they love and you’ll be just that, loved. Yes indeedy my friends, we can be just so loved by the world should we learn all the lessons that they think they know about life and how to live it well before, well, there is no losing of it part in their version. And a lot of folks like that. That’s why it stays so popular. In fact, that’s why it’s been so popular for as long as the Gospel has called us to avoid it.

Because the only thing this world wants to avoid is the responsibility to live right as found within the fact that we don’t live forever. Here, that is. And yet that is the issue at hand. It’s that so many here do indeed seem to assume that the here is all they have. And so they’ve all sought, either individually or collectively, to determine the best plausible outcome as defined by the delights we can have and the dire consequences we’ve come to be convinced we won’t have to hold.

Yes, just do as you please and ask for forgiveness later. That’s even become a cliché all its own. Why ask for permission when you can ask for forgiveness? Forgiveness then taken for granted as if it’s simply going to be there when needed, which is usually when we’ve run out of fun following all the steps along that path laid out for us by those blind seeking our becoming the same. For such is faithlessness, it’s just blindness in which a person follows the leadings of their own deceitful hearts rather than the hope of something better than everything we’ve convinced ourselves can somehow be good enough.

Friends, aren’t you tired of good enough? Have you not yet had your fill of fellowship with foolishness? Is there any joy or enjoyment left to be found or felt within living so carefree and careless that nothing you do really seems to matter anymore? Indeed, is there anything left to gain of this world, anything left of your soul by which to gain it? And even if there was and there is, is it worth it?

I mean, we’ve all tried so long to climb the ladders laid out before us by those blind who seek to guide us into their estimation of what our lives should be. All of us have given this world ample opportunity to prove itself of something of some sort of value that renders us having not lost far more than we gained in the end. But that’s just it, and again something that Scripture warned us against in this regard.

For what will it profit a man to gain the world and yet forfeit his soul?

What have we received in response to all we’ve lost? Where has all this following of man’s expectations truly gotten us? Are we happy with who we’ve become? Looking around at the world today, would we be pleased to become like what the world is still becoming? Is this world and thus this life as lived for a little while longer whilst within, are they worth our taking our sight off of forever and the Savior who came to lead us there?

Not at all, because this isn’t forever, forever is forever. And if it’s not spent with our Father, well then it ain’t a forever I want to find!

Because God is the antithesis of all that this world is. He is light, love, mercy, compassion, caring, grace, goodness, everything good in fact. He is everything good, and as for this world, well, I don’t think we can really say the same. For here we have such things as war, hurting, hatred, hardship, fear, confusion, delusion, division, destruction, depravity, darkness. Why make this home then? And even more, why listen to those who already have?

No, this world wants us to believe that faith is harder than the way of life their losing. They want us to do this their way so that they feel special or important or powerful. Since when were we here to play puppets to power trips and pride? Are we again not instead here to honor our Father? And since we are, well then how can we listen to any message from any person who isn’t doing the same? And since the majority here aren’t glorifying Him in any way whatsoever, why should we let them lead us to our doing the same?

It’s unacceptable my friends, if for no other reason than that He warned us to watch out for it. Keep away from those who create diversions, distractions, divisions, disagreements, divestments from the only Way we’re called to live. And friends, since Christ is the Way, well then we don’t need anyone else to tell us or teach us or show us how to do what they think is good enough. No, we can, and thus should, do that on our own.

We should all be studying the Word. We should all be spending time in prayer. We should all learn what it means to worship in Spirit and in truth. Even if we do it alone. Because, though contrary to common consensus, it’s better to walk alone than with a bunch of friends walking the wrong direction. Because again, they won’t be there when we’re before Him. It will just be us and God, and if we’re wise, we’ll have the Christ as well to intercede for us with the answers we won’t have.

Don’t listen to a world that doesn’t even care to consider the questions.

And don’t pay then any attention to anything they suggest or expect us to abide by or go along with. We’re not here to please people, especially if those people aren’t trying to please God but are rather only living to set up stumbling blocks that keep us from growing closer to Him.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold