Day 3535 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

James 4:6 NIV

“If I have found favor in your eyes.”

That statement is made so many times in Scripture. And yet each and every occurrence is read from within what seems an almost palpable humility shown inside the one saying it an understanding that to whom they’re speaking it has the dually agreed upon power or ability to either give something or take something away. It’s a proclamation made in this sense of hope from the one hoping that they’ve not failed or otherwise offended this party from whom they’re falling upon mercy seeking a beneficial outcome to whatever request is being made.

And this why we read in Ephesians that most perfectly poignant and yet perhaps permanently problematic purpose as proven in that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Because it’s been made most evident throughout human existence that God hates our boasting. Because our every boasting is always about us and what we do, what we think, whatever we assume an ability somehow so much our own that any glory such a story might gain is all our own as well. And this idea is one so vastly spread amongst us because of this most vile pride which has lived inside us ever since those first of us took that fruit that opened our eyes to seeing all we do wrong.

Yet that never did much to help the heart not want more than the wrongs we’ve come to want more than life itself.

But yet, His being the all-knowing Almighty, He’s always known that we’d never know the little we need from the more we don’t. Because still we hear this not at all still small voice which screams at us that it’s on us to live for us in order to ensure us the only ones who are left able to tout our triumphs, alas too to deny our defeats. And as we’ve talked of late, our pride in which we abide has become unable to abide by this reality of our chosen depravity.

For we cannot comprehend, a matter also chosen, how we’re to understand that where we stand is both not as great as we’ve long tried pretend, but that it’s also all our fault rather than to our favor.

Because we live so much like this world in which there’s somehow amazingly never anything wrong done by each person, should you ask them that is, but instead all wrongs are done by all others. Yes, we’ve become a people of plank-plagued eyes unable to see the difficulty in either helping or healing all that’s broken and betraying in and of the lives of us all because we live as if we cannot recall any of our own faults but instead live to list those of those many around us who aren’t as able to boast as we’ve always been.

Indeed, to boast is to believe that we’ve become the one who’re otherwise able to have afforded ourselves every outcome and accomplishment in which we feel so obliged to brag. To boast is to toast ourselves as the triumphant despite these lives of lies from which we shout that we know nothing of struggle. Yes, we hide every hardship behind smiles that tell the whole world that we’ve got it all under control, our control that being.

And thus for us to become so braggadocios is not even a matter of debate anymore. No, the sad fact of we fallen and falling further is that all of us have known well this outlook of haughtiness which Scripture says precedes the fall, the very same high opinion of ourselves that Proverbs tells us plainly that God hates. Indeed, haughty eyes are among the six things He hates, the seven that are described as detestable to Him.

Which is a problem further proven within this point for this post here today.

Because still we brag as if we’ve not bought or brought about all our own blasphemes and other betrayals of the praise and appreciation that God alone is due, even before we speak of all He’s done to counter all we’ve become. No, He deserves all our attention and intention for the mere fact that we are here still today in what is another gift given despite the little we’ve given in the way of His will for our lives as lived inside all those past days in which we did nothing but only what we felt so inclined to brag about.

Against Him.

Yes, that’s the context from which this verse is plucked in James chapter 4. Just a few prior we read of that oft-quoted quandary in which to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy living in enmity against God. Against Him. Indeed, 4-5 reads, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?”

Adulterous because we were created to remain the bride of He who created us to be His alone, long before we walked away from who and where He made us to stay in exchange for something to say that says a story more to our glory than His. Yes, we’ve yoked ourselves to every star both in the sky and in the hills of hollyweird, assuming them all somehow able to account for this account of our account being so unaccountable in the way of His praise.

How is that possible? Not in regard to how we got here, that much is easy and thus without debate. No, how is it possible that we still seem to so assume that what we sow so as to please people, ourselves mostly, is to be proven someday a life well lived? Can we life ourselves give? Can we give life to anyone else? Can even parents claim themselves the cause of the children they have? Have not those come by means of a mystery no human invention or ingenuity has yet to replicate?

And not for lack of effort or intrigue. For man has long tried to play God, and not just in Easter plays or Christmas pageants. No, we’ve long thought ourselves upon the throne in our lives, throwing our lives to and through whatever we so wish assuming that within our way we’ll find that win of what allows us to boast about all we’ve done for ourselves, made of ourselves, achieved by ourselves.

Never once allowing ourselves to remember that we’re not of ourselves as to be here wasn’t an idea we had, as we know we didn’t have any say in making us made. Rather He formed us before the rest of world knew us, knit us together in that secret place even now under seditious attack by those so bent by a most blasphemous boasting about all that we now think we’ve the right to do just because we’ve saw fit to decide we do.

And while a matter very much stolen to the seats of congressional meetings and presidential debate stages, perhaps such is a rather summative example of this danger to be proven indeed deadly by all this boasting our lost souls seek to keep doing.

Because it proves that we’re to the point of imagining ourselves judge, jury, and yet now too, even executioner of life itself should it come by a way that we didn’t like and thus will not attempt to understand.

Defining then that where we stand, and therefore, perhaps, for what we stand is half our fault and yet still entirely His will. It’s just to be soon proven that our faults were never meant to take such outlandish stands as all these against His will. No, it’s to be proven that His will will be done, leaving us left to determine whether we’re found on the right side of life or the wrong side of right. And yet this dilemma is deepened within this pride we’ve been talking about.

For again, to quickly rehash the past couple of posts, pride keeps us blind to all we fail to find reason to forgo. Pride tells us that we’ve the right to do anything, and thus that anything we do is right to have been done. It binds us to bragging so much about all this little we’ve become that we in turn become unable to see the many mistakes we make, leaving in this our faults and flaws to fester unfoundedly. Simply because we can’t be the ones who admit we’ve found our reasons to stop all this bragging.

Might accidently cause others to bail out of their own sinking ships of selfishness and stupidity.

And to rock the boat in which so many boast is here considered unkind. Somehow a scene assumed even worse than leaving them to die inside what is an eternal opposition against the God of the living.

For Christ Himself recalls in the Gospels, Luke 20:38 for example, that He is the God the living rather than the God of the dead for “to Him all are alive”. Because He created us to live. Didn’t at first inspire for us to conspire into what is now a just judgement in that all here expire. For way back in Genesis, having seen the sin of man swell to such enormity that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time”, He decided that something drastic must be done.

And so He proclaimed that He’d not contend with us and our wickedness forever, but would patiently abide by our struggles with and in and toward depravity for 120 years. No more. For honestly, if we can’t figure out why we’re here and who we’re here to honor within 120 years, we ain’t gonna get it after that point either. Because humility isn’t a matter of such hesitancy as that needing more than 120 to understand the gravity of His grace.

We either get it or we reject it. Either way, He gives to all who agree that they do need to receive all that He gave.

Such as life. For this was never a matter of all we’ve long thought to matter more than Him. It’s not about us figuring out how to find what we believe best, some ideal in which we can then boast all about our being the ones who figured it out. No, life is as it always was, just a matter of us following the lone lane of life in one of the only two directions that both lead to the same finish line. We either live in accord with His will, or, well, we run the other way.

Right back to the One who issued His will to remain so alive that He promises a life everlasting for those who humble themselves to no longer living in opposition to life itself. For since His will was at first for us to live, a fact proven in Christ who tells us that He is the Life, thus if we live ours in a way other than the Way in which the Truth came to lead, then we’ve lived only against life. And the only outcome in life that isn’t life is death. And so if we continue to do as we have, boasting about our self-prescribed right to do as we please, a direction clearly not seen inside He who chose the cross in what is the epitome of humility, we will likely find that we’ve left nothing by which to please God.

And again, as He is the God of the living, if we live in opposition to Him, never once caring to honor Him, please Him, praise Him, then to live simply won’t be allowed.

Why should He?

Friends, He gave us this gift of life, and we’ve sadly stolen in it this theory that within it we’re allowed to look only to ourselves in regard to everything we say, do, want, wish to become, and in all this, eventually, wish whole-heartedly we hadn’t. Because that is truly inevitable within all of us, regret. We’ve all felt it, and within that emotion so contrary to boasting we’ve found evidence against ourselves in the court of common sense. For if everything we do is right, as our pride so lives to assume, well then how could we have found any mistakes that amounted to a regret of which we feel a guilt that goes against the idea that we were right?

No, such is why this has never been matter for us to alone figure. He didn’t need our help when breathing our bones to life, doesn’t need our help now in figuring out what our life is supposed to be about. Perhaps we should get that through our heads, for in that there is the humility that is able finally to find the gravity of His having given us His grace to save us from this place in which we live to believe only that our only point and purpose here is to please ourselves and tell everyone else all about it.

God opposes such pride, and thus those many who so live to please it that they’ve become it. And if you’re somehow unsure, those many are all of us. We’re all the proud, the prideful, the arrogant and boastful. We’ve all led a life living this lie that says we’ve done all this on our own, only because we want the praise of people who too pretend that they’re doing all they can to prove themselves to those doing the same. It’s not about us proving ourselves to a people who prefer death to life as found inside living opposed to Christ.

Again, living against the Life is only winning at death. Not all that much to brag about it, is it?

No, and that’s why it has to stop. All this boasting. All our bragging. All our gloating and going after all these gains and glories that add to our stories about all we wanted while never wanting the life God created us to live. For what is His for us? To rejoice in all things. To pray at all times. To act justly. To love mercy. To walk humbly with Him.

If we’re doing anything that doesn’t match any of those, well then we’re doing this wrong.

Thankfully He does indeed give more grace from within a patience so amazing that we should live in unending awe of just how kind He’s chosen to be, you know, considering how hateful we can seem. But we’re fools should we think that the fullness of His will might not be done. No, all of us will return to that from which we came. Dust to dust, bone to ground, breath to God. Yes, we’re all going to return to being found before Him again.

Will it be as His opposition or as those of His affection? There is no middle in between them. We are either for Him or against Him. And you don’t even have to take my word for it.

No, He said so Himself.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold