Day 3529 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 22:32 NIV

To see that our faith is not a matter to be perfected in us by us is a rather remarkable miracle as we’re undeniably a people who seek to assume that all of life is all on us.

Alas, to see this gift of the fullness of faith not being a matter of our own making is sadly not something all that easy to realize anymore. Not that it ever really was. For I suppose that as faith is an utmost personal experience and too one that grows in waves of both known and unknown, it’s just bound to break us up and beat us into disbelief sometimes. Because this isn’t an easy road, and knowing the many times we’ve tried and failed with regard to those easy things we’ve been through, it’s almost expected, the struggle.

So much so that even Jesus remains our intermediary seeking to intercede on our behalf for those many moments in which even a half of faith seems a bit more than we can manage.

Because this life is one that’s both entirely demanding of something in the way of faith but also one that’s not at all conducive to anything even remotely resembling faith. For we’ve all come up against those moments in life in which we’ve absolutely nothing left but to take that next step in such an inability to help ourselves or determine the outcome that we have to rely upon someone else. We’ve all experienced things that forced us to trust another, to believe for better, to look at the storm rolling in and just accept that there’s not a thing we can do about it other than let it blow our lives apart and prepare to pick up the pieces.

And yet, even having experienced those moments and the miracles made manifest within each, still we seem to fall away whenever those easy days come shining back thanks to a cloudless sky that’s left us so unworried about the foreseeable that we may even for once stop and listen to the birds chirping a chorus of contentment and comfort and just a joy at the overall simplicity of an ordinary day without a worry in the world.

But then again, our worry is the world. We live within a world built on worry and always in this hurry to get back to it whenever a new day dawns. It’s almost as if we’re so content with this pretense of pretending that our plans are what matter, that our priorities aren’t at all problematic, our preferences are properly placed upon thrones from which we throw a line to those who we’ve convinced to come and see how great our lives are. Even despite the backstage and backdrops we don’t show.

Because we know the world doesn’t want to see them as to see another struggle is to remember that all of us are in one way or another. And well, to a world perfectly lost within pride’s cost, those kinds of reminders are about as welcome as the flu, or head lice, a flat tire, a traffic jam.

Yes, we live in a world so violently insistent upon this pageant in which all of us perform as if our lives are perfect, leaving us to always struggle alone as we know that nobody wants to see our tears or hear our fears or feel our worries. I mean, we don’t even want to feel them. And so we hide them. We deny them. We refuse to confess the sleep we lose and the days we waste and the nights that never end and the hours that never speed up. We lock it all inside assuming a safety within our smile.

But we’re only fooling ourselves, and perhaps even everyone else.

Save for One.

Because you see, as we discussed yesterday, He knows. He sees. He hears, even the things we don’t dare say out loud out of that common fear of looking weak or scared within a world never either. And it’s within that chaotic difference that we’re given the chance to do something different than our same-old. We’re granted this access to this recess from what feel a life of absence, of abscess, of all these struggles to which we did not desire to so acquiesce.

But alas, to see inside the outside ourselves is to demand the faith we fear for fear of our finding out whether or not He’s as able to forgive as we know we need Him to be.

It’s just that we’re not at all all that big on the finding out part of life. Because most days we don’t have to. Most days we can muddle through with that smile screen-printed upon our faces as if to show the world that we’re okay. Yes, always okay. Not a problem in the world. Not a worry at all. Nothing but sunshine and secrecy. Because while we hate the audacity of others burdening us with having to pretend we care about another for a moment, we hate even more the pity parties thrown on our part by those who likewise probably don’t want to hear about our world falling apart.

Especially in regard to faith.

For such is so clearly a matter so foolish to so many that we see no reason to invite the agony of trying to explain why we still believe even when we suck at it. It’s not even fun trying to share our perspectives when we’ve no problems hidden within them. How much worse it is trying to coax someone into not asking us to reconsider our stance when they see we’re not able to stand at all for sake of the squall of struggle storming over our souls.

And so we just lock it all inside, not realizing that, in some backwards way of helping ourselves by vehemently trying to convince ourselves we don’t need any help, that’s maybe one of the best things we can do. Because inside is where Jesus died to live. The world doesn’t think so, but that’s not too surprising considering the overall consensus in regard to the topics such as faith, trust, belief, humility, modesty, meekness. No, to most in this place, those things are all only weakness.

Which is right where He needs us.

For when we are weak is when He is strong. When we struggle, He shines through. When we tumble, He gets to tout how He’s the One who carries us best anyhow. Yes, when our life’s a mess, He’s writing a message. Each test is a testimony in trial giving way, in Him, to triumph. It’s all just a matter of time as it turns out. Indeed, this is something each of us know as we’ve all, again, had those hard days we thought would never end and the pains that we prayed would go away and the fears that felt they’d never leave us alone.

They did though.

Each one so far.

Even the ones we know we couldn’t have made it through on our own. Even the ones we know we didn’t make it through on our own. Even the ones we didn’t make it through as the person we were on the front end. And yet maybe it’s those worst ones that we should be most thankful for? Sounds strange doesn’t it, appreciating the fires that burned so hot that we lost a little bit of ourselves? Do we miss it? Do we even know what we lost or left behind?

Does it matter, did it ever, considering what we do know we found in the aftermath?

See, so much of life as we’ve come to only assume it lived within the commonalities and contentions of a world lost inside pretenses is one lived with this assurance that we can’t do anything differently, that we can’t welcome change, that we can’t imagine setting something aside for a second, let alone walking away forever. Because to us that’s failure. It’s a disappointment in regard to our dreams, our desires, our designs, our directions and directives as detected of being such vital importance that we believe in them the very vitality that makes life life.

But it isn’t. Because none of this is about our success!

When’s the last time you heard someone say that?

This all has nothing to do with what we can accomplish or achieve. It’s not about our imagining big enough to encompass enough to ensure enough that our lives end up having been enough. Enough! We’re not enough! We never were, not here, not now. It’s the world that convinced us otherwise. It’s the world that taught us to trust only in ourselves, our abilities, our accomplishments. It’s the world that wants to believe only in us.

Because most won’t allow themselves to believe in Christ.

But faith doesn’t work any other way!

There remains no other name. Not mine. Not yours. Not that of some celebrity, some politician, postman, doctor, deli lady, cashier, coach, teacher, trash collector, tax investor. None of us are enough, and until we get that through our thick but oddly empty heads, we’ll never have any idea the purpose of the struggles we should be thankful for getting to crawl through. We will never be able to see that the investment He made in us was to free us from us.

Because this was never about us, much less our doing this perfect, living some widely agreed upon ‘best life’, impressing anyone with our resiliency or intelligence or ability. All of those ask that we be the ones in whom we’ve faith. But friends, faith as placed in us is about as stupid an idea as any we’ve ever had before! Why? Because we’ve failed before! We’ve fallen before. We’ve struggle through things that weren’t even difficult. We’ve literally made problems out of nothing, ripped them out of thin air, literally breathed disbelief to life.

Ever bump into a doorway, table stand, TV tray only to say, almost immediately and entirely instinctively, “OW!”, even when you barely felt it? It’s because we’re all over actors trying to convince everyone, ourselves mostly, that we know more struggle and strife, so much pain in life that we’re rightly within our rights to whine about how we think it’s all going wrong.

But what if it isn’t? What if our lives are unfolding exactly as they should? What if our trials are part of some great big plan that we didn’t write? Terrifying, right? Indeed it is, because we’re entirely too accustomed to customizing our lives so that they always go just right so that we never look wrong for doing what we know someone might not agree with. Such as walking by faith. Not in a world that still thinks us foolish to even have faith.

Why then would we let on that we’re struggling to not fall apart despite this faith we say is holding us together and making us better? How can we prove that we’re being made better, being made new, when most days we’re still barely making it through? We can’t risk that headline making the news! That we’re not at all any good at anything from life to love, let alone this faith that demands we unlearn all these worldly versions of such things.

We can’t do it that way, even though we have to do it that way because that’s just how life goes!

You see, God knew all along that we’d mess this up. He knew right from the start, the second that Eve raised her hand to that tree, that even you and me would crumble under the weight of a way of life we were never meant to live. He knew we didn’t need to know the different between good and evil because He knew that when we did, we’d die because of our inability to get everything right.

That’s why He asked them to not eat of that fruit. And when they did, that’s when He said He’d another plan. Eve took down what Christ put back. And in His doing that, He became the best we could never be because of the doors that had been opened that we’ve all run through raging to get to whatever makes us feel better about not getting better. And when He said that it was finished, His work here and our sins in us, He cleared the way for us to open a new door to a new life without fear of all that we’ll fail.

Because, again, He knows that we’re going to fail. He knows we’re going to struggle. He knows we’ll mess this up more times than we can ever even agree we have already. Just as He knew that Peter would deny Him three times before the rooster reminded him that he knew better, so too does He know just how many more times you and I will make a complete disaster out of this life we’re living as if it our own and thus one too often worried about our success, our image, our imaginations imagining our versions of perfect and pain-free.

And while we’ve all learned to be so embarrassed about our flaws and failures thanks to a world that widely proclaims that they know neither, if we could just look past that worry of all that’s worldly, then we too could see that Jesus lives to intercede on behalf of those who are but fully incapable of measuring up to even our own expectations. How much less can we impress the God who made us to have never done all that we’ve already done wrong?

No, it’s been always known that we’d waver, wander, wonder after one another. He knew from the start that we’d all eventually fall apart, fall away, and then in that that we’d fail to find reason to start all over again. For He knows we’re a people of pride who thus hate failure for it makes us look the fool to a world so filled with those who already agree that we so definitely are because of this faith we hold that they know nothing about.

For it’s that very same foolishness that they accuse us of that everyone’s dissolved only into by all this pretending that they’re the only one who’s never messed up and thus never needed help, or healing, or forgiveness, or a new meaning.

Yes, we’re surrounded by a people who feign a figment of perfection that produces for us a pity perfected that leaves a then perfect unwillingness to try as we know that to try is to perhaps fail and to fail is to most certainly look a fool.

But again, He knew all this, and as those who are His He’s then promised to not fail to make the way still, yes even when we’ve fallen away from His Way again. Meaning then that perhaps our problems are a bigger part of His painting than we’ve ever been able to imagine. Not that we should have chosen them, but that He knew we would and still refused to let us destroy ourselves inside our struggles with doubt and fear and denial and debate as if all of life is somehow a negotiation. It isn’t!

And this passage proves that.

For just before this verse, Jesus is talking about how Satan has asked to sift all of His followers as if wheat. For the devil wants us to share in his denial of God’s rightful place upon the throne of our lives. And because we’ve all danced in his darkness, well, does that not give us a story to tell? A testimony to teach? A sermon to preach, one this time that we have lived?

And so what if it’s not about our falling apart but rather the faith that Christ has placed in us that leads us back to trying again? Indeed, what if that way back is one that offers us now even more to share, more to say, more substance to our personal story of salvation via the Son of glory. For we’ve now struggled more. We’ve stumbled more. We’ve fallen and failed all over again, and in that we’ve found sorrow that isn’t the worldly kind which provides only death. No, we’ve found in our shame Godly sorrow which produces repentance and leaves no shame to be seen.

And that for us is now a song to sing.

One that says that we are unashamed of the Gospel as it remains the glory of God that is bringing still salvation to everyone, even all of us who’ve still found ways to fail this faith that we know deserves far more than our falling away. And that gives us something truly powerful to say about He who took our place and still cares so much that He won’t let us lose this life He’s given His for us to have. And if there’s a message more needed in this world, I for one don’t have any idea what it could be.

Because all of us struggle. All of us worry. All of us doubt and dance with denial as the devil invites us to that dancefloor every morn. All of us have fallen away, but while the world says that our failures are the full story they want to hear so that against us they can boast, what if our struggles are only the preamble to His promise already being perfected in us who are growing, however slowly, in Him? For that’s what the world needs more than our pretending that we’re okay.

They need to see that no, we’re not okay. That no, we’re not great at this. That yes, honesty is truly the best policy as it’s the only one that allows us to step away from pretend and pretense and let His presence lead us to being what we can’t be on our own. This world needs to see that it’s not about us figuring out how to do this perfectly all by ourselves. People need to know that we can’t do this by ourselves, because the point is to not try this by ourselves.

But to lean fully upon the Lord Christ who gives us the strength to do all things, endure all things, smile in the face of everything that we know will be hard. Not because it’s fun, but because it’ll give us one incredible story to tell!

That’s why scars are cool. They’re evidence of things that could have killed us but that He denied the ability. And our scars aren’t only external, not only physical. In fact, I dare say we’ve far more scars of faith than anything. And it’s time that we let them show! Because we’re a city on a hill, and this world needs to see not that we’re up here on our own efforts or instincts or abilities.

No, we’ve made it this far only by the blood, and it’s only by the blood that we’ll make it home.

We can stop worrying about our failures and flaws as again, He’s known each and every one of them before we made any of them. So stop hiding them. Stop running from them. Stop lying to the world that needs to know that you’re not afraid of where you’ve been. Why live in fear of where we’ve been, of what we’ve done?

Has He not forgiven that part? And is not that forgiveness now evidence of our faith? Because all of us have problems, worries, uncertainties. All of us have a past painted over a million time with mistakes. Don’t allow this world to keep you ashamed. Don’t allow yourself to think you should be. Maybe we should, but maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe what matters most is not giving our past any more power over our present but rather using our present to present the world with a story that proves our failures and flaws didn’t destroy our faith, disrupt our faith, lead us to deny our faith, but rather are now just more reasons for our faith thanks to the lessons we learned from the struggles we’ve seen.

But only because we dared to see Christ in them rather than just the fear we’ve been told to look for.

No, we may fall, we may fail, but when He gets us back up, teach the others what you’ve learned the hard way so that maybe, just maybe, they won’t have to. For we are all in this together, and together in Him as well. Let us live like it, even if to do so means sharing our struggles and asking that others help us as they share theirs as well.

That’s the only way we grow. So learn to be thankful for the rain, because in Him we can know certain that it will help others who are staring down a storm all their own to face.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold