Day 3631 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 15:5 NIV

Nothing

It’s quite the hard word to hear, perhaps in fact, in light of pride, the heaviest of all loads to hold, so heavy in fact that it brings us back to reality in which we come only to realize we cannot carry it within this life in which we tarry upon trying anyway. For I suppose that such is simply what we so selfishly and solemnly assume we’re supposed to do. To try. To attempt. To agitate and aggravate any and all opportunities seeking inside the lot of those many we’re given something that gives us the chance to prove what our pride knows we can only pretend.

Because, well, deep down I think we know we can do nothing.

At least nothing good, that is. And in fact that is what we discussed yesterday within a post considering the prose of Jeremiah 13:23 in which the Word says of you and me that we who are accustomed to doing evil cannot then do good. For the fact is that our foundation’s become a belief in far too many barricades and blasphemes which all combine to prevent us from doing or being what we know our pasts have proven we’ve never done or been before.

For we simply cannot know what we do not know, and thus nor can we be what we’ve not been as we’ve simply never been that way. And so it’s foreign to us. It’s alien. It’s awkward. It’s a matter measured in misunderstanding and the many missteps taken because of it. For that’s the gravity of every path and pursuit in life that we’ve not welcomed or wanted. It’s proven so heavy in that we know, completely, that we cannot do it properly as we’ve simply no way of doing perfectly what we’ve never done period.

Such as doing good. And now sure, this does, as I said up top, likely sound quite the controversy in light of our plight of pride pretending always that we’re always more than well-versed and even better equipped to handle any and all things which may come along this path that we’ve walked so continuously that we do in fact know it like the back of our hand. Problem is that, as our pasts prove, our hands have thus far found little to do in the way of anything good or right or true.

Rather we’ve put our hands to a great many plows of pride and preference and pretense in which and behind which we’ve learned only to pretend that we know what we’re doing simply because what we’re still doing is the very same as all that we’ve always done. Nothing new under the sun, nothing thus new in those of or those from those who live this life as if this life is forever to be lived under the sun underneath which there is nothing new.

Indeed, anymore we live as if we’re not expected to do anything new, or really any at all in fact, an expectation so societally exciting that it’s anymore all but socially expected for us all to do nothing besides what we’ve become known for doing. It’s just challenging to adjust to those around us to doing new things, speaking in new ways, chasing for new lives, leaving thus the old and known behind in order to free up some weight that thus would no longer hold us from the new.

But that’s the problem, or at least a part of it. It’s that we’ve become in many ways branches of the more vile and violent vines grown in and of and amongst a fallen mankind. We look so often to the world to lead us in the ways and wants for which they try each and every day to live for us if not through us. And thus we’ve become so much like the fallen that we too are the fallen, but into sin and thus away from the Son who is the Vine which connects us to the Root of all righteousness and reason as found only in the Father who created us to be what we’ve not really ever been.

And the difficulty, at least in our pride’s perspective, is found in that we cannot see it quite that way as we’ve rather always seen this façade which finds us plenty able to do or be or change whatever we may need in order to be or become what we believe to be the better we’re able to be. By ourselves. Which is the problem pretty much in perfect measure. It’s that we’ve managed to so mangle and manhandle this life inside so many misunderstandings and trips through ego’s basement that we haven’t really any more ability to be much of anything different.

Or to be much of anything really.

Because to be different enough to be something better would begin only by our doing something different altogether. But we don’t know how to do that because we’ve not done it before, and so our pride really sees no point because it knows that we’ll probably struggle mightily with all we’ve never done.

So we do nothing. And since we are what we do, we are nothing. And as nothing as lived apart from the Maker and Savior of everything, we can now do nothing. It’s quite the remarkable circuit when you stop and study it. We’ve become nothing inside our fear of doing anything but nothing and this doing of nothing which has caused us to become nothing has then further left us able to do nothing. Because we haven’t a root or connection or desperation to be connected or rooted into the One who did everything that we both needed but never could.

Because we can do nothing.

How’s that for humbling?

But you see, it’s only humbling because it’s true. In fact, His Word just has a way of doing that sort of thing! Saying something so honest that it humbles us. Like how we cannot change, or how, as here, even further we cannot do anything in fact. Apart from Him, that is. And why is that? Why can we do nothing apart from Him? Why, as branches, do we need a Vine such as Christ to connect us back to the root of righteousness and holiness as sought inside that upright reality as grown in God?

Why must we be pruned of our pride which says we can do all things through us who pretends us strong? Why do we have to embrace our said lack of strength, our lack of ability, our inability to change or grow or improve, or even live without Him?

Why? Because until we’re in Him, we’re not in God. And if we’re not in God, then we’re not alive. And if we’re not alive, well, then we must be dead. Yes, dead. We are dead in sin for sin is death. And yet, as we discussed yesterday, we are not merely people who slip up and sin every now and then. No, we have in fact come to love sin so much that we’ve sinned so much that we are sin. We are sinners in need of a Savior who is the Vine who grafts us back into the Life that is the Lord who is the Son who lives to intercede for us before Him from whom all life came and to whom the same shall return.

And it’s this new thing that He came to do and is in fact still doing that is doing for us every undoing of all we’ve been doing that we should have never done in the first place. That’s why the brutality of His unbridled honesty. It’s to open our eyes to where we can see that not only can we not change, not only can we, without Him, do nothing, but that without Him we are nothing! Because that’s what sin is unto the One we’ve sinned against.

Because sin is the opposite of life, the antithesis of life, the enemy of life, the choosing of the loss of life.

Sin is death!

And so, because He knows that, as sinners, we can’t change, He came to us to be the change that begins in us the change that we so desperately need but cannot be nor bring of nor unto ourselves. So He came to bring the change. He came to begin the change that brings us back to life by bringing us back to God through the blood of His sacrifice that washed us clean from all our hands have done, and thus made us welcome in His presence.

Yes, that is the present of this promise that apart from Him we can do nothing. It’s found and felt within the faith that believes that He is doing a new thing, a thing we cannot do, a thing we truly need Him to, a thing in fact so new that it is defined as change.

Something like streams showing up flowing within this desert of sin we've been living in. Waters watering the parched wastelands of every want and wish we've long chosen to exist in. A way through the wilderness of wickedness and wrath. A new so very new that as much as it was never heard of before He came, so too has nothing like it happened since He left. A new so new, a change so changed, a life so saved that nothing like it will ever happen again!

Because He’s “made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

Which is those of us, we few but happy few, who are indeed undergoing such radical changes as that found and felt within our humbly facing that we cannot change without Him leading the way, being the Way. Indeed, He is making changes in our lives, right down to what we do and even how we do it, even why it's done. And this is what’s so amazing about a brutal truth such as this from the Vine unto we branches who can do nothing without Him.

Yes, for while we cannot ourselves change, or help to change ourselves, He has begun so much of that much needed change by coming down to earth to live a life so entirely unlike our own that we, in that, see that we must welcome whatever change He might begin if we’re to begin the journey which will lead us to be one day where He is, which is right where our lives have long lived not worried about wanting to be. Because where He is is seated at the right hand of the Father. And well, as sinners who are so unable to change, and thus unable to assuage His wrath on our own, we’ve long lived only to hide from where He is.

And that’s the sadness that He came to change.

Because only He can do so. Only He can help us to the very tune of everything about us changing for the better. So much better in fact that we're called into forever to there experience even more of His kind of better as found in a life lived for all of forever within the presence of the loving Father who sent the Son to do what we couldn’t. For yes, while we cannot change on our own nor thus our own lives, He not only can but He in fact has.

Indeed, every single change that we experience or come to realize has taken place, friends, it's all perfect evidence of God working to set us free from what we cannot do but too from what the cross says we cannot stay. And what He refuses to let us stay is lost inside a life so entangled in sin and selfishness and this fallen society that marvels in such worthlessness and lifelessness. Yes, He sent Christ to come and pull us apart from the world so that we might be taken from the weeds and grafted back into the Vine that connects us back to the Father who is the very Author of life itself.

Which is why we must say that apart from Him we cannot only do nothing, but we are nothing. Because without a root sunken into the source of life, we have no life. And He’s seen that. Which is why He suffered as He did to change that.

Yes, for us He chose to lay down His life to set us free from where we’ve been so long that it’s become who we are. For we are not meant to be sinners living in a sinful land. We are not meant to be wasting a life spent apart from He who is the Maker and Savior of such. We’re not meant to be looking to a world that’s passing away to help us find a way to live a life that doesn’t pass away. We’re not meant to love what He hates nor to hate what He loves.

Rather we are called to be what He created us to be. And that’s children of the living God living a life that seeks both repentance from every mistake we’ve made within trying this life on our own, but also, in that, a way to better undertake His call for us to call other sinners to that same salvation found in the same repentance.

Which granted, we cannot do apart from Him as we cannot do anything apart from Him.

But that’s just it, we can do all things through Christ who not only gives us strength, but who is our strength. Yes, “blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

And there it is! The very reason for our entire existence in that we were created to bear fruit, good fruit. But friends, such is the problem which necessitates the change. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit, and nor then can a good tree bear bad fruit. We thus cannot be who He calls us to be, doing thus what He created us to do, living a life as bearers of the good fruit, the good news, servants of the good Lord if we remain bad trees.

Which is exactly what our pasts have proven us to be. But while such is what we’ve so undeniably been, such is why He prunes the branches in us that don’t bear fruit, and removes us from the weeds that want us not to bear any fruit whatsoever. It’s why He cuts out every part that bears bad fruit and throws it into the flame. Yes, He leads our whole body into the refiner’s fire so that all that doesn’t bear fruit or bears the wrong kind of fruit is done away with so that what is left good in us can grow unencumbered by the weeds of wickedness and want around us.

And as those who, like Ethiopians and leopards who cannot change their skin or spots, nor can we change the fruit we bear from the being the same kind as of that we’ve previously borne. Thus He prunes us, even to the very ripping out the roots we’ve so foolishly planted into a world in which we do not belong, so sinful as it’s become. And as one called out, pulled out, snatched out of the promised fire that is awaiting the many lost in a life in love with the wide, He then grafts us into the Vine by which we again revive into the kind of life that the Father created us to live.

A life sowing to please the Spirit and from the Spirit reaping a harvest of hope and joy and peace and purpose and confidence and the kind of contentment that comes only in Christ Jesus, the contentment of a life content with the content of this call to chase true holiness and righteousness as asked of us by He who brought this new life that we’re to, in the tomb, put on in place of the old and corrupt and thus unable to change.

And so apart from Him, we can never know, see, be any of this. For we can do nothing apart from Him. But friends, that’s the gift isn’t it? That when are a part of Him, and He our part, our lot, our love, our life, in Him there is nothing we can’t do. And despite however hard or painful the process may prove, nor how long it may take, going from a life defined by can’t to one defined by can is worth it all if you ask me. Which granted, nobody really did.

But He’s given me one more day to share one more post from what is a heart desperate to show Him that good fruit is all I care to bear for however long I’m to be here. And doing this, well, it sure seems like far more than the nothing I know my past was known for.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold