Day 3687 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 14:16 NIV

For while even the prudent may still walk a path with problem proven, to face the same without some help is what causes all to fall both apart and potentially such forever.

Alas, to be a hotheaded fool is sadly a way we all know for we've all known a certain sense of security sought within ourselves even though still vastly lost within our sinful ways found and followed within a great many days in which we worried ourselves for only what we saw to be a matter that mattered most in the moment. But the issue at hand is that to assume security without the Savior's salvation is to put all of our eggs inside the basket that is us. And while this may make us feel all warm and fuzzy, continuing to rely upon the blind to lead us anywhere will only leave us found somewhere that nobody wants to be.

Because while eternal promise promised upon the end of the wide and sinful is indeed said to be itself plenty warm, I’m just not so sure about the fuzziness of eternal flame.

And like it or not, such is what we’re told awaits any and all who favor the fall over the crawl. And this is precisely where our most personal problem is to be proven one day or another in one way or another. For we can all continue ahead as we have, doing as we’ve done and thinking none of it to be wrong with a life lived for fun, for sure, such hasn’t seemed quite such a fatal fall as a few say it will. Or we can face the fact that fun isn’t the purpose of life at all and, in this, fall shattered upon the Rock who came to save us from what we’ve come to find fun. Which, while not perhaps the outcome we’ve long assumed, it sure sounds better than the other.

For while to be broken to pieces, as promised in Matthew 21:44, does sound quite the breaking, is not to be crushed perpetually more precarious?

After all, as with Mr. Dumpty, where there are pieces remained there is the hope of them being put back together again. But as for any crushing situation or scenario, well, such a pulverization seems entirely more final as there’s not much to be done with what becomes mere powder. And, well, such is what’s basically promised to become of our feebly foolish attempts at a hotheaded power as preferred over the humility that is said to be both the seed of wisdom itself, and thus the way to life as well.

And thankfully, as far as our being broken to pieces is concerned, should we opt for that option we’re promised not just the intellect or ability of all the kings horses and all of his men trying to put us back together again once we welcome our fall from atop this wall we’ve built to keep us held high and Him thus out. No, we’re rather promised the help of the King Himself who is the Savior as well, and who is too as well-regarded a healer as any might know.

A carpenter too, and so He knows what to do to build up whatever may have fallen into such disrepair as doubt and fear.

Yes, we’ve been talking at length of late of the differing feelings of fear we’ve felt and face still within a life in which we’re all falling either for or toward something. For there is a fear that’s just afraid and thus seeks to hide, oddly enough from the mostly still unseen. But then there’s the fear toward which the wise are unworried to run as they’d rather wait upon the Lord than win more of the way from which He died to save. Indeed, that He died has now removed our fear of such an end. Unless we continue ahead in sin, that is.

Indeed, we read in Proverbs 22:3 that “the prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” Thus proving that yes, even the prudent will see danger and perhaps endure plenty of the same, as even promised us from He who is the Name. But to simply ignore the potential for a portentous outcome is to find us among the simple who are said to keep going and win only the wrath they could have easily avoided had they had the courage to consider the consequences that are promised within every single one of our many life’s choices.

Which is the problem at hand. It’s that we’re making choices more often than we may even realize. I don’t imagine that we can take much more than a breath without life being altered in some way or another due to our choices, considerations, confusions, delusions, decisions and denials. No, everything we do is said to be fruit that shows all with eyes to see who it is that we’re content to be. But maybe that’s the thing that either underlines or undermines who we really are and thus what or whom it is that we believe.

For if we refuse to leave what and who we’ve become, then we’re saying that we’re good with who and where we are. And if this is the case, well then we truly are deserving of every ounce of God’s just and jealous wrath!

And not because He’s just a vengeful monster bent toward destructive anger. No, but rather because He did not create us to become so bent toward the danger of living in denial of Him for whatever worn and worthless reason we may have chosen to believe and continue to choose every single time that we determine never to leave nor lose this wall upon which we’re sat in utter denial of the Law’s gravity bringing us back to reality as an eternal escape from our enslavement to selfish insanity.

And make no mistake, it is an insanity to be sure! For who in their right mind would deny eternal life in exchange for the meager chance to chase to waste what’s promised, and now proven, to waste more than any of us want to lose? Because, my friends, the fact is that the wages won by sin are still death. And He, in His immense kindness, told us this ahead of that time upon which the clock stops and forever begins. And He did this so as to help us see the danger of sin and take shelter in He who is our refuge and fortress, a strong tower with the power to at first save and then forever protect.

Can we do the same for ourselves?

Have we not lived a life trying anyway?

Have we any evidence that might even possibly help us win the case set perfectly against us?

Well, have we, as the sinners we all know we are, have we ever chosen not to sin? And again, make no mistake, we know we’re sinners no matter what we call our mistakes. Question then is to be answered in light of either the presence of repentance or rather the continued lack thereof. For again, here we read that the hotheaded are fools that feel secure despite their lack of any external safety, and too, as mentioned above, that the same are those who see danger and yet keep going full speed toward it.

So the question then becomes a matter of how fast we’re running and just where it is that we’re going in such a hurry. And again, does our chosen direction, as borne in the fruit we’re sowing and reaping already, does it seem to be offering us a harvest that leads to life or rather just more of that which hates to lose the life we’ve come to love? Problem then proven in that “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

And so, to boil this down into mere child’s play, the likes of which found already within the thus far fairly scattered references to that classic nursery rhyme, is there any evidence that we’ve found the prudence that’s begun to produce for us the understanding of the necessity of repentance thus seen inside a turning away from a wasteful way of life well-deserving of His wrath? Or rather do we merely continue to hear those few weirdos speak of His wrath, see perhaps some of the danger as won already within such things as guilt and shame, but determine to keep going despite the possible consequence?

Because, if we truly believe that sin wins only death, and if we truly wish to continue living life, then there should, with the cross forming the crossroads He meant for it to make, there should be seen something of change, and thus the humility willing to welcome it, within our lives lived within this land still so filled with so much sin.

Indeed, are we still as warped and wicked as our pasts prove we’ve been and the world around us so clearly remains? Or are we seeking desperately now something eternally different thanks to Him who came to lead us up and out of this crumbling place?

See, such a difference of outcome is the fruit of the fear of God, and to shun evil the only way for us to show Him that we understand that we don’t deserve such a kindness done in light of all we’ve done against Him.

Thus the dire necessity of our turning unto the shunning of the evil we’ve in many ways become.

For to shun is to stand up from wherever we’ve sat and say that something is unwelcome as we’ve no plans on staying where we’re at whereas to feel secure in pride is only to hope that something doesn’t break in where we don’t want it to be, or to otherwise sneak in and steal away something we can't bear to have taken like that. And alas, this is what it seems most of our thoughts go to anymore, this either thinking of things we don’t want in our life or rather thinking about all the things we have in our life that we’ve since become convinced that we cannot possibly live without.

And granted, I suppose that such is the inevitable outcome of all that is simply ego and vanity. It’s bound to leave us drown by fear of struggle or of having something stolen away. And yet we’ve become so afraid of such things in life that we lean even more heavily upon our pride to keep telling us these lies that have us believing that we’re both above such struggle and to too strong to have anything stolen from us. Yes, as we’ve talked about plenty, ego has a way of making us feel secure inside a life we've come to live as if our own.

But friends, truth is that pride is but an unlocked door. It may not want certain things to come in, but it never seems all that adamant that some things stay out.

And thus we go daily about without this ability to know certainly that our lives are secure, both through struggle and from being stolen. Indeed, it seems that at least somedays we still fear death, the greatest thief of life there is. And yet is that not then one of the greatest lies that prides abides? That we’ll live forever, and thus find at some point a way to life without failure, without fracture, without misery or misfortune or misunderstanding or misplacing something we like, losing sight of what we love and only finding more of what we hate?

Seems we’ve locked ourselves on the wrong side of the door after all!

For again, it’s a matter of the fruit we bear as borne within the kind of fear we feel, and too then of what we’re afraid. Sadly still we live often in fear of what He overcame and yet don’t fear that He asks us to appreciate what He’s done and continues to do. How is that even possible? To want the comfort as considered inside such things as not having to worry about dying, but also many days finding only ways to keep on denying that He did what needed to be done, a need designed by such vanity as greed and gluttony for more of what we can live just fine without?

See, the sad reality is that so many days in life we shun only God while fearing only not enjoying our favorite evils. And in this we’re living backwards. For the Word here reads that the wise fear the Lord and shun evil, evil then being unwelcome because we so revere God that we’re afraid only of letting Him down again as we have so often before.

And indeed, we most certainly have! For we’ve learned to live life behind pride’s open door, just us lost inside an empty room that we seek to fill with thrill thinking that it will do the job and leave us feeling full. And yet we never then do the one thing meant to do just that without all of our fear of failing to find whatever more of this wicked world we think we need to be both safe and thus feel freed. For He tells us that whomever drinks from His well will never thirst again, inspiring us to partake of His body and blood in remembrance of all He’s done giving Himself for us who continue to live as if only His enemies.

Can you imagine the liberty, the security, the safety and significance we’d feel if only we could find the courage to number our days rather than our possessions, be them dreams or delights?

Again, that’s sadly what seems to garner the most fear in our lives, the things we don’t want to miss or rather want only to miss. We want the fun without the failure, the success without any sickness, the freedom without the fear, the promise without the pain, the joy without any judgement, the hope without the hardship that make it shine only brighter, the yoke He offers that would make even then our own that we’ve carried so long seem entirely too heavy to continue to hold onto any longer.

That’s why He also invites all who are weary and heavy laden with burdens to come to Him. And so may we do just that! Indeed, come to Him, all of us who are weary and burdened, for His yoke is easy and His burden light. And if this seems a humiliating choice too heavy to consider, well, consider this: What is ours? Is it easy, this yoke we carry which keeps us connected to our confusions and fears? Is it light, this weight of want, always wanting more, never knowing enough?

What is enough? Where is enough? Have we not seen enough, felt enough, learned enough to know better than needing more of what only weighs us down and leaves us thinking again that still we’re needing more of what we apparently don’t have enough of to prove we’re as secure as our pride says we are? Friends, that’s not what this life is for. It’s not at all for us to so live as if a revolving door of wants and wishes, never wanting for what His will was commissioned.

For again within His Word we read that He wants none to perish, but friends this is done only when we come to repentance. And to repent is to turn, to change, to choose something new and thus betray everything old. Indeed, to repent is to shun evil at the express understanding of the reason and thus purpose of our fear of God. And yes, it does indeed mean that we’ve to now even betray ourselves, and that simply because we’ve become entirely too prideful for our own good!

We have to deny ourselves, to refuse ourselves, to even maybe learn to rebuke ourselves whenever we do wrong. Why? Because wrong shouldn’t merely be unwanted. It should be unwelcome. Every wrong, every evil, every ounce of ego and arrogance and vanity and vitriol and this vehement behemoth of our doubt and disbelief, it should be unwelcome as in not at all acceptable to our sight. Not welcome in our life. But is it?

Can we say we fear God? Can we say that we shun evil? Can we even say we’re working on either?

Or again do not most of our days find us only living in fear of our vanity, wanting only to not let ourselves down?

Friends, what if we instead fought to stop letting Him down? What might that way of life be like? Where might it lead? What might it mean? What might we leave, both forever and too behind as if a message meant to help others find the hope that only He is? Yes, what message are we sending to whomever may be listening? For we read in His Word that He does. So what are we saying with our lives? That we fear Him and thus seek to continually disinvite all darkness and depravity from our lives?

Or rather that we shun only His Son, sharing this world’s fear of His light out of our share of their appreciation for the darkness for their fear of their evil deeds being exposed?

Friends, fact is that we get but one chance to do this right. And considering that such things as regret prove we’ve already failed at it, are we then really going to lean on us to achieve that which our pasts say is already impossible? Or is it not then better to let Him take the lead as we learn to lean on Him rather than an ego that knows only to hope that some things never happen without any actual effort given unto ensuring they don’t?

Because our pride has insisted a great many things didn’t happen that ended up happening anyway. Safe to say then that our vanity doesn’t have quite as much authority as it likes to assume!

And in that too that perhaps we’d be far better off leaning upon the One who has just such authority, for in Him we’re also told that we can find mercy. And judging from my past personally, I know I need as much mercy as He can offer me. And if my finding it means locking out of my life all that keeps me needing it, so be it.

For I’d rather lose what I think I like than to never find the love that I know He is.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold