Day 3528 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 26:34 NIV

And so we see that Christ has always known everything, right down to the quantity of our depravity, much less its depraved quality as found so eternally deserving of what He took in our stead.

Yet instead we live as if we might have hopefully hidden at least some of our many horrors from He who took such a horrible cost upon Himself upon our cross. For that He stole our place hanging up there inside an agony no human mind can imagine, a price deserved by our having stolen His praise and placed it upon things that give no life but rather destroy the gift that we never saw it to be, it is the most supreme kindness ever to have ever come here to exist.

Because He did it all knowing still we’d fall away when found upon those many days in which He knew we’d fade from the faith that is the life that His love came to restore.

For as we’ve been talking for a few days now, God’s delight was to do as He did in Christ. God set in motion this glorious commotion as has now come calling the still small whisper of the Savior who said here, even to Peter, I know. He knows. He’s known. He is the all-seeing Almighty and as such there’s simply nothing at all of all we’ve done that He’s been left unable to recognize. For every sin is measured against this moment in which the precious love of Christ cried out in that night, “It is finished.”

And yet that we’ve still not ourselves finished with it as defined by the many mistakes still we make even all the many years now past that promise, it’s arrived at only this fear in us of our having failed in regard to faith’s simplicity as could have always and thus should still always be seen inside a change of life which is only possible because of all He purchased back of all we’d convinced ourselves not to keep.

We talked about that a bit yesterday, this fear we feel in regard to faith. Fear, if anything, is sort of this internal anger as realized and allowed within our knowing the better we could be and further we could see if we just had the courage to remember whose we are. And yet those trepidations as tarnished and tainted as they’ve always proven themselves to be, they’ve alas not seemingly proven horrible enough to have thus far inspired in us that audacity to do this His way despite the faith such an opportunity demands. An opportunity only ever to be made our reality should we venture beyond ourselves and their fears and find reason there to trust in He who is unseen.

Knowing we can only because He can see that we can’t.

And even in that there’s likely a hint of hesitation in that such things are the kinds left to imagination as none here can see or hear beyond the sights and sounds resounding all around.

So we know not how to really deal with His dealings with us as they’re entirely and eternally and intrinsically so different than our indifference and indecision and deep delusion that they seem an outermost impossibility best relegated to the thoughts and theories of the things we call foolish.

Things such as fairy tales and comic books and other cartoonish make-believes that are seemingly more catered to kids than they’re anymore allowed to be considered by adults. No, we’ve talked about that at times in the past, how faith is matter best manifest amongst the smallest of us. Yes, it seems that our world having determined faith to be foolish has become for all of us an urgency toward denial so that we’re not deemed defiled by the audacity to believe beyond the seeing in which most here will die believing.

Yes, that’s why I hate that cliché so vividly. It’s nothing but another human inconsistency that calls us to rely on us, our sight being the sound of all we’re here allowed to believe possible. Meaning a Messiah hanging in misery in a place fit for us is a message then left lost on us who agree only with a world that says we’ve done nothing to deserve such a disappointing end to a life we’ve never started to live. All because back at the start of our lives, well, that was the last time we knew how to trust without expectation. It was only as children that we could believe without trepidation.

The youngest amongst us are the best of us as even their language is considered at first unintelligible, but only because they seem to speak half English and half God.

And we learn to set aside such curiosities as we age amongst those who inspire us to fear such looking weird as our saying and doing and thinking and believing things that most find unfathomable inside minds so melted to the moment that they can’t allow themselves to see that He’s seen all we’ve tried to hide. A truth leaving all this fear we find a most irrational outcome of our having come so far in the wrong direction away from life and faith and love and hope and how they’re all not here.

And well, that fear of our too failing to find them and too failing to hide the mistaken places we’ve looked for so very long, that fear we all feel in faith is found because we know what all we've done that's left us so undeniably undeserving of His kindness and compassion. We know all the things we believed in along the way and the little they ended up amounting to in what feels most days this end of hope as we struggle to find reason to try again for what we know isn’t found here, a fact proven in the sheer numbers of others trying so hard to keep finding still nothing.

Thus we fear the fact that we’ve done just that. We hate the reality we’ve created as it’s one that seems to only have us believing that, despite all our failures and flaws, that somehow we can someday manage in some way to find that something that makes up for all we’ve lost and failed to find. And yet that we never do only seems to add more to that understanding of just how perfectly undeserving we’ve chosen to become in light of our every choice made after having known of all He’s done.

And yet, as we see here, perhaps that’s just it. It’s not that we’ve fallen but that we’ve tried to hide what was never hidden from Him. For again, here we see Christ telling Peter that He knew he’d deny Him, and even how many times, before the rooter crowed to ring in the morning. And sadly what we seem to see inside this warning is the failure on the part of Peter, missing then completely the mercy of the Messiah. For that is the message of the entire Gospel, that He is mercy personified.

It’s just that we’ve made so many mistakes that we’ve reached this place where we believe only that there’s no possible way He could still have anything left in the way of forgiveness to offer unto us who are the ones who continue to do as we shouldn’t whilst living in fear of someone else finding out that we knew the difference. And we feel this fear because we do know the difference, between wrong and right, dark and light, Heaven and hell, and thus yes, even here from home. It’s just that again, we know how many times we’ve all but willfully gotten the choices required of those divisions so defiantly wrong.

So we know just how many scars we bear and skeletons we hide. And so we know just how dire the predicament should they be seen or known or heard by those we’ve tried to convince that we’re something we’re not. And that’s where the fear felt in faith comes in to knock our hope out of our hearts. Again, we know all we’ve done that’s been done so clearly only against Him. And so, thinking of the cross and the misery felt upon it, we’ve found every reason to fear His feeling nothing but a burning vengeance against us for having earned what He endured.

Yes, we know we’re only perfect at being now undeserving of all He’s done. But friends, the beauty of His benevolence is that our fear doesn't change the fact that all He's done was done to show us that it's not about us deserving it.

Because He did it all knowing all we’d do even on this side of that death He died.

This idea hit me yesterday riding down the road toward my mom’s turkey sandwich. It’s amazing the places He speaks to us, almost as if buildings and schedules and plans and routes and routines, even such things as hours and days of the week don’t actually mean a thing! Strange how we get so wrapped up in them anyway.

Anyway…

As I was thinking still more about yesterday’s post, as I often do these days, something out of nowhere dawned on me that I’ve always thought I knew all along. It’s that He knew. He always has. Always will. For such is His will, to know, to see, to be both who He is and too in everything. For as His very Word reads, “He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:2-5

And yet we allow the darkness of doubt to overcome us still here so stuck inside this fear of that all too common human hope of His not having known of all we’ve done that we’ve always only tried to hide but, as realized here, only failed to do so.

Indeed, in just the one example recounted here of Jesus telling Peter that he would deny Him three time before the reminder of the rooster, such proves that forgiveness has been factored into the very fabric of our existence. For if He knew that Peter would deny Him, down to the very number of times within that one night, thus too He’s always known how many times we’d fail Him, deny Him, refuse Him and lose sight of Him. And the scary part, the part that instills our fear of faith, we know we’ve denied Him too, but unlike Him, we’ve no idea as to how many times.

We just know that we’ve made a lot of mistakes and that, according to the foundation of our faith, each one carries with it a death sentence to be paid in full upon our being found before He from whom we’ve run and tried to hide the ruin we’ve found along the way.

But somehow, no, not now. Because again, He knew Peter would deny Him even having spent so much time with Him. He knew that he would take every chance to avoid the consequence of having been a bit too close to this Christ the world knew only to despise. He knew that Peter, who had walked on water, would set aside every memory of every miracle in exchange for the opportunity to miss out on the hard part of where faith has to walk.

For it’s easy when there’s no mountain in the way. It’s easy when we’ve no giant taunting our inability. It’s easy when we’ve not has a drink in couple of months and are finally learned to not crave the taste. It’s easy when there’s no expectation, no fire, no refinement, no responsibility. But it’s not quite so easy to prove that all the above are so negotiable as our fear needs them to be. For this path spent following Him, and like Peter here, doing so quite far from perfectly, we need there to be no responsibility.

Because where there’s no responsibility, there’s no accountability. And where there’s no accountability, there’s no consequence. And where there’s no consequence, there’s finally nothing to fear.

It’s just that none of the above are in any way true of a Christian faith.

Because He knows. And because He knows, we should know that nothing we do will be unseen, unknown, unheard, and thus none of it will go unpaid either. Which is where our fear is found. Because we know, again, how many times we’ve failed Him. But as we see here, He knows too, in fact, far better than we can ever remember. And yet, here’s where it all becomes rather miraculous:

He knows.

He knows we’ve messed up. He knows we’ve denied Him. He knows we’ve made the worst possible choices countless times thus far. He has always known that we would fall short, and so yes, He knows that we’re going to get things wrong still up ahead all over again. And yet, His Word still hasn’t changed. The cross still stands. The Word still breathes the benefit of our eternal forgiveness. Even though He knows how many times you and I are still going to deny Him in preference of other priorities, other pursuits, other promises.

But we’re still here!

And so does this mean that because we’re still here that there’s still hope? Indeed, for is not a new day truly this most amazing evidence of His forgiveness continuing to find reason to relent upon the demise we’ve earned a thousand times over? Yes! Because friends, He’s always know how many times in life we’d fail Him, and too that each one of them deserved His wrath, His vengeance. And yet, we’re here. We’re alive. And this proves that His forgiveness is part of our existence.

Because He’s had every reason to utterly annihilate us from before His presence.

And we give Him more reason to do just that every time we set Him aside so that we can focus on something else, something easier, something more normal and more widely understandable by a world standing still in opposition against Him. And that’s just it, it’s the cost of the cross which now defines our fear in regard to faith as felt in our well-proven inability to walk well this path paved by His will. It’s that He doesn’t deserve to see us continue to fail Him.

But as He knows the number of our failures, He knows perhaps of one that’s final rather than fatal.

And in this we should see that His patience is but a matter of our striving toward that finality with sin as opposed to forewarned promise of the fatality of sin. He’s patient with us my friends, and this proves there is indeed still hope. But as His Word teaches us, His patience is only there to inspire in us repentance in which we turn away from sin, away from death, and pursue instead the life He won in the death of Christ walking out of that tomb!

He knows we’ve fallen short. He knows we’ll do it again. Does this mean we should take it lightly when we do? Absolutely not! It means we should, inside our every failure ahead, see a new depth to His mercy. And that constant meeting of our mess with His mercy should instill in us a more audacious willingness to do as asked to and take up our crosses, daily, and to decimate upon them every single doubt, denial, blaspheme and betrayal that we find along His way home.

Friends, just as here, He didn’t deny Peter when Peter denied Him. He won’t turn us away either. But we cannot take that for granted but must take it rather as reason to fight toward He who finished the war we’ve waged within our sin against Him. Because, and for some reason, even though we’ve fallen away and even still fight against Him at times, still He invites us to share in His victory.

Proving then, again, that it was never about us deserving it but rather about our appreciating that we never will for in that, and in that alone, is where we find the courage to kill the flesh that desires what He opposes. Either way, we’re living against something. We are enemies of something, of someone. Maybe we should stop living in enmity against the One who knows we’ve failed, and that we’ll fail again.

Because for some reason, our failures, even those still coming, they’ve not been used as reason to reject us. We’d not still be here if they were. Because again, He doesn’t deserve to see us continue to deny Him, reject Him, refuse Him.

And so, since He’s given us another day today, perhaps we should use it ask Him how to stop failing Him so that we eventually find our way to His way and finally stop failing and falling apart into fear.

For as I said yesterday, if He wanted to erase up from His presence, He could have by now. We’ve given Him ever reason. But rather than do as He’d be so fully justified in doing, no, He remains patient. For while we’ve given Him every reason to refuse us, He continues to pour out His mercy upon us in His continuing to give us all these chances that even we know we shouldn’t have.

Not after all the ones we’ve gotten wrong so far.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold