Day 3630 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 13:23 NIV

I feel it best to preface this by being as upfront and honest as to the direction of this coming post as it is going to be one quite odd in consideration of our past several conversations.

For of late we’ve been talking a lot about change as manifest within the threefold experiencing of that passage of Ephesians 4:22-24. It’s a passage that peruses the purpose of faith on the forefront as found within the frameworks of a working that is won within the will of what God wants for us who are His who’ve elsewise been living otherwise. This concept of the changes that faith makes begins within our putting off of the old self as corrupted by sinful and selfish desires as hindsight proves was never in fact a matter of might, maybe, nor any other grounds for arguability.

It continues within the novel mindset sat upon the understandings as to both why and how this new direction has become so very dire in what is a renewed way of thinking found beyond all thought and theory as it’s placed rather within the realm of humility which helps us to see, finally, that we needed to leave the old because of the many corruptions we couldn’t confess and that we need the coming and continuing renewing of body, mind, spirit and soul to help realign us with God’s perfect for us.

And it finishes within the verse we discussed just yesterday in regard to the putting on of the new made to be like God in true righteousness and holiness, much like the image in which we were at first made before we set our sights upon making a way we’ve long called our own to the demise of the Son who came alone to atone for all who might, in Him, come to see both the price of our pasts but too then the blatant necessity of any and all change of mind, heart, life that He might determine to begin within those who are now bound to live again as if they are His.

Thus we see that the entirety of the Gospel and the work it began was both completed and began when upon that cross Christ condemned sin in the flesh to the tune of the truth spoken in His speaking that final victory over our failures as won within “It is finished.” What He finished was our sin and our tendency to continue in said sinfulness. But that is by no means the end of what He intends to continue on the other side of an empty grave left behind so as to prove the way that we are to take if we’re to join in His victory as won then clearly over the gravity of death as held by all here in a place that’s held all here for as long and within every way that our pasts and present have proven.

Yes, He came to call us into the tomb so as to help us see just how much we need to be doing differently if we’re to find that same something better that He died to offer us within forever.

But here’s the problem that I imagine might sound quite odd in light of all this talk of change we’ve discussed of late:

We can’t.

Yep, again, as I’ve said within I believe every single one of the past three, you read that right. We can’t. We cannot change. Because, whether we’re to the honesty of admitting it or not, as the Word says here, we who are accustomed to doing evil cannot then do good. No, in much the same way that neither an Ethiopian nor a leopard can change their skin, neither can we then change the fact that we know far more of this wasted way of life spent living in sin than we do of that not living in it. We in fact know so much of that sinful way of life that sin is no more merely what we do.

It’s become who we are.

Indeed, we are not merely accustomed to doing evil, we’re all but experts at it. We are so good at doing bad that we now have to invent new ways to do worse so as to keep the high we find within living low coming, bringing in tow the pleasure we prefer and the comfort we crave and the satisfaction we seek and the arrogance we adore and the dreams we desire and the ideals we idolize. Yes, we have become so accustomed to doing evil that it’s considered normal.

So much so that any who turn and cease doing wrong are considered weird, foolish, losers who lose out on the way of life that most have to come to love.

So much so that we cannot change.

And why I know this to be as probably odd or confusing as it might seem here after three spent talking about the change that comes in light of our faith is because often times in life we tend to assume such things as change as if they’re merely a choice. It’s like we consider change to be a matter of our own mind making a decision then to be followed directly with a difference of action when compared to whatever it is that we’ve finally agreed to alter.

But no. As we’ve been discussing throughout the past several posts, we have so misunderstood change that we both consider it as being merely a choice, and too, in that, we’ve come to embrace the companion confusion in that we have a choice. And when given a choice, let’s be honest, we’re always going to do what seems easiest. Meaning then we simply wouldn’t change even if we did have the personal ability to do so. Which we don’t. But if we did, still even then we wouldn’t.

So I guess it’s good that we don’t have a choice as to what, when and/or whether we change anything.

But perhaps this is why we hate the idea of change. Maybe it’s because we’ve always known we don’t have much of a choice, of a say, of a voice in regard to what needs to be altered in our lives. In fact, I personally believe that we’ve come to hate change so very much, that like a leopard, we are all but stuck inside all these attitudes of mind that have become for us every reason or excuse we could ever imagine to never do what we hate so very much that it’s considered completely unnecessary.

Yes, change, to us, is unnecessary. Simply because we can’t. And this reality as called to our attention within this verse for today, when combined with the ego that has long lived as if our lives are our own, it mixes into what is such a monstrous misunderstanding that we just ignore the whole idea altogether. Indeed, that’s why we hate the many things we do. It’s not because they’re all wrong or painful or difficult, even though many may be any or all of the above. But no, we hate what we can’t do because our arrogance doesn’t like being proven wrong.

And so such is why I believe we’ve all come to so violently hate the mere suggestion of changing anything. It’s because we like to think we can. We often sit inside a life in which we live only to imagine what might be better if we could. We dream about all the fixes we wish we could find to all the problems we’re quite tired of trying to deny. We wonder about what might be better about a life lived without that weight of denial hanging around our throats.

And what makes it even more confusing is that at times we do even happen to somehow find ourselves washed upon the other shore of what’s proven a sea of struggle having in fact been changed. Because we all have changed. We’ve all made changes, or rather experienced the process of changes made. But that’s where we seem to get confused. Because in truth, that’s all we can know of it. We know that it happens, but when found upon the other side of those changes made, we’ve no idea how they happened.

For such is the oddity of change. We don’t know how it happens, when it happens, why it happens. Again, all we know of change is to hate it. Because we know that we can’t do it. And simply put, we simply hate anything we can’t do, find, force, fake or figure out. And thus it’s become impossible for us to change. Both because we can’t, and because even if we could, we hate the idea so much that we wouldn’t. And thus we’ve become accustomed to staying put.

Because we know that such is simply all we’d ever care to do in light of both the realization that we ourselves cannot force change to happen and just how much our pride hates that being the case.

And so indeed, as I said above, anymore it seems that to sin isn’t just what we do but it’s defined within the Word of God as who we are. We are sinners, and holding to an old adage for a moment, we are in fact what we eat. And we eat daily more than our share of this deceptive idea of life that says we’re here only to do as we please. Thus pleasure has become our purpose and the sin it wins our very identity. It’s kind of like how you can tell someone is from someplace like Boston or Jamaica or Wisconsin. Folks from the places tend to have these very distinct dialects that just make them who they are.

Such can be said of sin!

Because we have, in fact, learned so much of it, been around so much of it, lived for so much of it that it’s just how we speak. We speak in sin. We act in sin. We think in sin. We all but breathe in sin, and in fact we’re pretty much at that point too. But the point is that, as sinners rather than merely people who accidentally sin every now and again, no, as sinners we know only to sin. And I mentioned how this is proven as spoken in other places within Scripture as well. Indeed, elsewhere the Bible talks about how God knew that the people’s thoughts were only wicked all the time.

So too it says that there is none good and also that nobody does right and too how we have all fallen short of the glory of God. FOR THAT’S JUST WHAT WE DO SO VERY MUCH THAT IT’S JUST WHO WE ARE!!

We are sin, and as such, we cannot change. Because we only know what we’ve always known, and thus do not know what we do not know. And thus, having become sinners, we do not know such things as righteous or justice or forgiveness or reason or responsibility. We despise all of the above, do we not? But do we not only because we have no say in what they are because we have no idea how they were made, nor then as sinners, for what they were made?

Because we cannot change. Cannot be what we’ve not been. Cannot choose for ourselves what we lose, because if left to our own devices, we’ll never deny any of our own vices nor any of the many voices saying that we should live it up and enjoy our lives and live them in fact as if they are our lives. Because we hate the truth which says that we are not our own but that rather we were created by another and that same other paid the debt that ransomed our souls from the slavery that has not merely described what we do but has in fact defined who we are.

We are slaves to sin and thus we cannot break free, cannot run away, cannot change anything!

We cannot change!!

But, and this may be one of my favorite buts ever, but we do change.

We can’t, but yet we do seem to sometimes don’t we? Yet how can this be? If we, like a leopard, cannot change our spots or thoughts or really much of anything if we’re being honest for once, if we cannot change then how have we? Speaking personally, I’m kind of starting to struggle to keep track of all the things that have changed in my life. And what’s incredible is that the vast majority of them were never things I’d ever imagined doing differently. Granted, a few were, but even they never managed to make it beyond a dream or an idea or longing so long as they were something I tried to undertake or understand.

But that’s because we don’t think about what we might need to do differently in order to live differently. Because we don’t want to do anything any differently. And yet at the same time, some of the things I really do want to change are the ones I still struggle with. It’s truly amazing when you stop and look at what all’s happenings your life! Indeed, if we’d do just that, we’d be able to notice a great many changes and improvements and seasons of growing that we could admit we had no idea were even taking place until we found ourselves in the place He was taking us to through them.

And that’s my point for today.

It’s that no, we can’t change, and so any time we do change or find ourselves doing something new, saying something in a new way, thinking about something in a better way, actually leaving something behind or, if you’d believe it, admitting we were wrong, it’s all God opening that door and lovingly and patiently and slowly leading us to change in the ways that we’d neither notice nor choose to embrace would we could. Because we know we can’t.

But friends, that we do is only proof that God is working in our lives revealing miracles through such things as the changes we can see we have undergone onto what we know now is the better side of a battle we’d have chosen to run from. Because that’s what we do. In fact, that’s pretty much all we know to. We run from what we don’t understand. We hate what we cannot find, force or figure out. We deny anything and anyone who asks that we even maybe consider that what we’re doing isn’t right. And we do it all that way because such lies have become safeguards that seem to help us cope with our inability to effect change by ourselves.

It’s truly all quite interesting to think about. For here we see the Word God which reads that we, like an Ethiopian or leopard, we cannot change. We who are so accustomed to doing evil that we excel at it, that in many ways we even anymore take pride in it, we who are used to living evil lives cannot then be the ones who turn around, figure out how to get everything right, and in that find the way to live a good life. We who are sinners cannot change and become the righteousness that God both demands and deserves.

But for the cross we do.

Friends, bottom line is that no, as sinners we can’t do what’s right as we simply don’t know how to even start in that direction of pretending to care about such a thing as righteousness. For righteousness is honored by the demand of justice should any fall short of it. And as those who’ve always only fallen short of righteousness, we’ve also always ran away from justice. But that any of us can turn and face them now, friends that right there is some of the best evidence of God’s existence that we could ever ask for!

Because He is helping us to change for the better, and we all know this because many things have changed in our lives for the better. And let’s be honest, it would have never mattered if change were possible or not, we know perfectly well that we’d never have welcomed any of the changes He’s helped us to make, let alone dared to see them through! Because that’s neither what we’ve been known to do nor what the world around us inspires us to.

No, the truth is that any and all improvement is nothing short of a gift from God because to improve is something that a sinner simply cannot do.

Without some help that is.

And thankfully, we’ve in Him all the help we could ever hope for. For not only does He allow us to change, but He takes us by the hand and leads the way to and through every change that we’d never choose to even consider let alone appreciate experiencing due to the loss of all the old that every single change comes at the cost of. Yes, every change costs us something, mostly the damaged ego that hates knowing we can’t do something.

But in end does it really matter? For the point of faith is to be made better. Maybe we just shouldn’t let our pride worry about how we get there.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold