Day 3543 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 48:10 NIV

Affliction

To afflict is defined as an act meant to cause pain or suffering, to “distress so severely as to cause persistent suffering or anguish”, to agonize, trouble, injure, irritate, agitate, aggravate, humiliate, humble. Indeed, the now considered antiquated or obsolete meaning of what it is to afflict was to humble or overthrow. And thus affliction is the noun pronunciation of this effort given unto what is an overthrowing of what’s all but proven undermining within these lives we’ve lived as if mines of minds that we assume still might find for us something of some substance that affords us this arrogance that we’ve all but come to be exemplify.

And thus to cause us to coast counter to what we’ve become into what is a still raging furnace of affliction is to speak to our general dereliction of what’s always been our duty alone to discharge this life as if it weren’t our own.

You know, considering how it isn’t.

Alas, this fact has proven perfectly elusive amongst us all. For each day still we fall back into that fervent figment of our own imagination imagining these ideas into ideologies that we all but idolized for the simple sake of the sake of this pride by which we don’t even realize we’ve all already all but died. Indeed, for us to so assume that our lives are meant for us make up as we go, going always our way toward our gain, and too, perhaps even more so, away from our pain, it’s a perfect denial of God’s design.

A fact proven in the cross of Christ.

Unfortunately, though He be a Father of extraordinary love and impossible mercy, still it seems we find little reason to afford Him the appreciation for what all fathers do. In fact this thought brings to mind an entire passage in Hebrews 10 that deals with this very idea. The latter half of Hebrews 10:5 begins with what runs on ahead into verse six saying, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

Continuing on, verse 7 gets right to the crux of this all but alien consideration in that it asks what He asks and that is that we, “endure hardship as discipline,” for it says that “God is treating you as his children.” Because, going on, “for what children are not disciplined by their father?”

Indeed, verse 8 of Hebrews 10 carries this on to the point and purpose of such things as pain and punishment in that, “if you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.” For the simple fact is what verse 9 says in that, “moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it.” Yes, we respected them for it as we know now that we’re better for it, better able for it, better people because it.

And thus, “how much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!” For as verse 11 comes in to finish the point, “they disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.” Our fathers, our mothers, our teachers and brothers, our pastors and sisters and neighbors and friends at some times and in some ways and in some places all tried to lead us and guide and do right by us so that we might, as again Scripture says, not turn from the ways in which we were started as children.

And when we did veer or steer or steal a second to do contrary to what they’d taught us in trying to help us be the best that they knew how to help us become, yes, they chastised us. They punished us. They may have even whipped out the belt, or simply sat in a solemnity that hurt ever worse than the beating we would have honestly preferred to having our guts ripped out in hearing our loved ones say that they were disappointed in us. We all know how horrid that feeling was!

But yet it seems, in faith at least, something itself rather antiquated if not utterly obsolete.

I suppose that such is only because we don’t see God, or at least have become convinced we can’t even see evidence of God despite it being all around us. And thus seems to free us from that visible heartbreak we’ve all seen strewn upon the faces of our mothers and fathers who sat with us to tell us that what we’d done was a disappointment, a let-down, a failure to uphold the efforts they’d put in to making us better than even they had been. For that is something we all hear from folks quite frequently still, that parents want their kids to be better than they were.

Indeed, I heard this quote a while back that stuck in my gut and I hope never leaves. “Your lack of discipline is an offense to those who believe in you.”

Because though we may have come so far down pride’s path that we don’t know what it is to believe anymore, in anything, even ourselves, the fact is that there are those who do still believe in us. There are those who do still want better for us. There are still some who know we’re capable of more than we’ve so pridefully chosen to settle for. There are indeed a few who might do what is needed to help us see beyond ourselves and our chosen circumstances such as this incessant seeking of comfort or our penchant for taking everything personally.

And God is undoubtedly chief among those who do have such high hopes.

For His hopes for us aren’t hopes at all as He alone knows both who we were made to be and sadly thus who we’ve become instead, and better yet, who we can still become should we humble and learn to hope again in the better for which we once dreamed.

And there it is, at least in part. Humble. It’s, if you’ll recall, one of the now considered obsolete definitions of what it means to afflict. For as it turns out, to afflict is to affect with an effect that is effective at humbling. And while this is a fact most obvious, there’s, as always with us, a counter to now consider in that we’ve come to despise the disciplining and correcting and chastising that is meant to help with our humbling.

Because it hurts. It’s miserable. It’s embarrassing to be beaten or broken, left all but bleeding from the beating that’s just there to remind us of the better for which we’re here and thus capable through He who gives us strength to do all things, endure all things, understand at least some things. It’s just that we’ve convinced ourselves that there’s never any point or purpose to be proven in what’s painful. We don’t deserve it, but only because we think ourselves above such correctives as misery or misfortune.

For such is the lone validity of pride as it seeks always only to affirm itself in what is a circular confusion that designs a delusion in which we dance with what is a last chance to change before the chance has gone.

Yes, we so tip-toe all around what we know we need, trying to find any and everything that says it unneeded so that we can avoid it without feeling guilty for it. Because again, we just hate it. We’re good enough! Right? Fine as we are. We’re doing okay. We’re making it. We’re able on our own to own this life we’ve made to seem just right enough to be worth the lack of fight we find to find something better. Yes, we’re roundly convinced that we’re capable of nothing better than this stagnancy stuck inside status quos and cell phones.

This is the pinnacle of our personal potential! Just ask our pride!!

But that’s the problem personified for it’s always been our pride which needs to die if we’re to ever live for anything near to why we’re here. For we’re not here to formulate for ourselves what we think best. We’re not here to figure out what we’re here for at all. We are but hands and feet attached to limbs as if vines branching off from He who is the Head, a fact found in His Word telling us that He is the Vine and we are the branches, and thus apart from Him we can do nothing.

Been kind of glancing on and through this idea for a day or two. That nothing is done that He doesn’t decide. Nothing happens without His help. Nothing is that He didn’t say should be. He created all of this, and thus He remains the only voice that has any say as to how this all should work best. He designed it while we’ve destroyed it. And in this difference so vast and distinct, in this we should see that we do deserve to be corrected, to be inflicted, to be infected and afflicted with whatever might turn us away from our turning away from how He created all this go.

Alas that path back is paved in between the fire and flame. It’s a redemption story written of storms and struggle through which we starve and carve these scars that we find and feel as the wheel is ripped from our hands and handed back to Him who came to be the head and go ahead into that place where our lost is left and His best then found. And yet we see the scars and feel the fears only because we’ve become entirely too adamant to hold tight what simply isn’t right. And the harder we hold to doing other than we’re told, the hard this road is to hold.

Right up to the point in which we’re finally fractured and fallen into such a finding of our needing of His mercy that we meet our willingness to not settle short of it anymore.

Problem is that such a place is only found when face to face with something we can’t do, make it through, understand or run away from. It’s in the fires sent to refine us. It’s in the battles which come to break us. It’s met in the moments in which our very best is very broken and finally then realized to have never been all that much to begin with, let alone the more than enough we always assumed it would be.

Because that’s it, our assumptions are finally finished in that furnace of affliction.

The fire burns away our better judgement. It ruins our reputation that we’ve lived so long lying about and thus protecting. It’s destroys our desires as it sees them light more fires in those places we’ve always convinced ourselves to not feel for sake of the fear of finding in them more of why we’re here and too more of how short we’ve come of measuring up to it all. Yes, the flames of faith decimate our indifference and indecisiveness as it demands of us a humility that finally realizes that we cannot do this on our own, not if we’re going to do it as best as someone else believes we can.

That someone else in this case being the Christ who came to carry our cross and atone our cost of having gone only across that line between wrong and right so many times that we most days don’t try to find our way back anymore.

All because we’ve become more afraid of what we’ll lose than not finding what we could be instead. Because we think we’re good enough as it sits, and so we sits upon the sidelines of life watching betterment roll on by as if it’s not worth the risk of leaving our rust to find that we’re more than just dust waiting to die. We are children of the Father who loves us enough to correct us, to rebuke us, to improve us despite all we’ve done which says we want nothing of the sort.

Is that truly the sort we wish to remain? The kind who hate the rain and despise the pain and see in them nothing of reason or worth? The kind who complain when life’s anything but comfortable and whine when we don’t get our way? Are we truly to never be anything but spoiled brats who believe only in our version of what’s best, a version betrayed and bound inside these barricades of betterment that we’re all but terrified of trying to become? When did we so settle to stay so short of a life worth living that we hate what He does that reminds us we’re alive at all?

That’s what needs burned away, and that’s why He sends the fire, the flame, this furnace of affliction as mentioned here in Isaiah. It’s to refine us by removing from us the dross and demure that’s left us indifferent to all hint of betterment that we are still meant to become. And how do we know this, how can we trust this, how can we imagine any reason to agree to this? Would Christ have endured all He did for us to know nothing different on the other end?

No.

In fact He gave His life so that we could see the death we’ve been giving ours to all this time. And He did it knowing, not hoping, but knowing that our watching Him in such affliction would inspire inside of some of us a willingness to welcome whatever He might send our way knowing that He went first, and thus knows the way through whatever may come. Firstborn among the dead.

Yes, there’s a lot of talk in the Bible about struggle, suffering, wars, fears, famines and failures. The Scriptures are far heavier than any of us might have imagined going in from likely hearing only about Noah and all the animals painted upon our Sunday school walls or this newfound version of the Gospel, which is nothing of the true message, which says that it’s all supposed to be easy and safe and comfortable. And I don’t know where that idea came from as Christ himself told us that we’d have trouble in this world.

For to afflict is to trouble, and thus our fight through this plight of what is a journey toward the light that many here still live to deny, it will bring about a kind of friction that will in fact feel almost fatal at times. Because while we were built to be different, we’ve forgotten that it’s not only okay to be, but that it’s absolutely necessary when found amongst such vile doubt and vicious disbelief as what we hear and see within this world from which He came to free.

We just never imagined that His freedom would lead toward the fire, into the flame, head for the furnace and force us finally walk toward it all in faith not worrying anymore about how impossible our eyes says the road will be.

It doesn’t matter how hard it gets, for the point isn’t proven in the difficulty that we’ve come to consider from our perspectives of pride. No, the point is proven in that it’s all to harden us, to strengthen us, to forge us into a force not only able but finally willing to fight this good fight no matter the cost. For that’s something we simply cannot learn within easy days or a life seeking only safety.

No, we need the fire, to feel the flame, to face what we know we’ll fail. Because it’s in those moments that we both learn we can’t but that He can.

So welcome the trials my friends, for we need as much help to get through what’s coming as we can get before it comes. Otherwise we’ll only fall away when it gets here only to find us unrefined and unable to find any courage to try through the storm toward the shore on the other side.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold