Day 3688 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 7:1 NIV

To downright disinvite that which never belonged.

Such is what to shun is. It’s to stand upon a solemn agreement that someone or something has arrived or remained that oughtn’t be wherever he/she/it has been so long allowed to stay. It’s something of a door closing whence upon the leaving of this entity or enemy that’s existed within an enmity against our energy, our effort, our excitement, our existence. In fact, it’s quite more than that. Indeed, to shun isn’t some mere asking that someone/thing leave with a door closed softly behind as they go. No, rather to shun is to insist they go and, once gone, to slam said door so very hard that it welds itself to the jam.

Yes, to shun is to settle upon the oath that whatever must go is to go through a door that, from there forward, doesn’t even exist anymore, that this then lost and left party may never even consider being reentered.

And such is what we’re called to do with all that perverts, diverts, divides, blinds, betrays, causes delays, dissents, circumvents or dares invite whatever other such events that may well hinder or halt a hope altogether. For to hope is such a violently undeserved gift that we cannot tarry upon this trying to make room for anything that only keeps us from moving nearer this gift that all of faith is. No, if it in any way holds us hostage within a hopeless home spent so far from the real then it is a matter not to be allowed a fear or feel as found and felt in all we’ve thus far let go and left behind.

For there are to be a great many of such losses as left in what’s a life in which we once were lost, but having now been found, is too one in which we find only this fervent fragility to a faith that asks we do all we might to so ensure it survive. Not that such a task is upon us to uphold, no. But simply because this faith should be such the freedom, the joy, the meaning and all in every possible impossibly majestic measure that we might ever hope to have or hold in regard to all the above and any more like them.

Yes, our faith as felt for both the hope it brings and the healing held along the way whilst still very much within what is this eternal in between, it should be of such worth to us that all things which hinder it, hamper it, cause us to pause upon the placing of our every single hope and happiness within it, all such matters or tatters should be shown to the door that then disappears when upon said enemy is lost unto the then passed away part of our eternity.

Because the rest of it is still to come!

And thus to allow anything which might cause death, be that ours or the version worse as won within our disregard of His, it all should be so very unwelcome within our walking toward freedom that it’s considered our enemy just as much as sin is His.

Alas, sin’s been a friend for so long now that we know not how to find such a completed disentanglement from its many deceptive delights. No, rather we, at least many days and too in many ways still to war against, we still seem to see our selfishness and its satisfaction as being of at least some fraction of importance or meaning as measured by the life we’ve come to live but sadly all but lost to what is a wage won that wags its finger at God and asks that He remain the party unwelcome in what’s become a party thrown by one, for one.

The one being so often alone that such is all we so often seek to remain.

But why do we want God to leave us alone? I mean, here we have this loving Father who’s offered unto all such prodigals as we the fattened calf and such a lavish celebratory scene that we should seem only unworthy, and that even unto ourselves for our having so lavishly squandered what was meant to be a lasting inheritance since traded upon what’s only brought about trials and trivialities. Is that all we want in, of, for or from this opportunity we didn’t give ourselves?

We really think God went to all that trouble of creating us alongside such wonderful sights as sunsets and beaches so sandy upon which to watch them melt into the sea simply to enjoy the little we’ve agreed to find exciting, often only at the inspiration of someone else who themselves seems more than lost and entirely unhappy and without hope more days than not?

Sure seems a right waste of everything from joy to purpose for us to propose that our present position so problemed and perverse is the perfect place for us to stay, and too for all we’ve as of here and now to stay more than welcome as well!

Why would Jesus have suffered as much as He did for that to be such the case that we watch daily the waste of so many chances at everything better as waiting to be found so easily as to expel the preventive presence of everything so undeniably lesser?

Indeed, we all seem to be of the perfect capability of looking at our lives and managing to thereupon recognize the many problems and imperfections that we wish weren’t so sometimes just warm enough to then remain welcome enough for our to once more open the doors that we’ve shut and thought sealed before. And again, I speak this truth as personally as I might possibly. For there are a great many things that I’ve determined to disinvite from my life that somehow managed to show back up at just the right time to inspire my idiocy to unlock the door and give them room and roam once more.

And indeed, as the Bible reads, once let back in, a wrong or wickedness that’s once been unwelcomed will in fact return with many others just like it and the condition of the house or haunt will prove worse than at first!

“For when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” How about a little Willie Shakespeare for this fine Saturday?

But it’s true, so long as we continue to welcome through the many doors we have as formed in ears and eyes and minds and hearts and hands that hope to hold as much sliver of gold as we might wish to know, we’re almost but utterly defenseless. And add to that the fact that we’ve thus far welcomed in every wrong we’ve since learned to be of such, and well, what we have here is a failure to excommunicate every such elation that’s in violent need of only eradication if we’re to ever hope for anything in the way of vindication from our having lived as if life’s but an extended stay vacation that we can leave in any shape we want having paid the insurance deposit and not caring if we get it back.

Indeed, we’re but rental cars approaching stiff-necked speed unworried as to the warning bells chiming in our hearts asking us to slow down, pull off and unload the road we’ve toed before all we’re left is but a head-on calamity with the impending outcome of our eternity.

For even our hearts, as deceptive and deceitful as they so truly are, even they know from time to time that some things just ain’t near as right as our pursuit of pleasure so wishes they were.

No, I am utterly convinced that we’re all so often sent to explore the disparaging depths of such dissolutions as fear, failure, foolishness and every measure of shame, guilt and regret that they might leave us met so as to remind us of the more for which we were made. Doing so the easiest and yet most miserable way possible. Which is showing us what we’ve become instead.

Yes, God allows for the sinking feelings of shame and sorrow so as to help us see that something either inside our eyes, our ears, our lives, their fears is there found that simply shouldn’t be seen at all. Or known. Or heard. Or had. Or a hope that has us only hoping to have this one more thing that we in no way need. Indeed, God, I believe, created such levelings as guilt and gravity to remind us of the dangers of trying to fly. For if He wanted us to so take to skies so as to soar into the store seeking more to have and hope within, well, we’d have wings.

Instead we have but wrongs, and a list of their checking in so often that they should be paying us rent at this point!

But that is the point, isn’t it? For, as we discussed yesterday, and too rementioned up top, to shun is to downright disinvite something from your presence, you preference, your pursuit, your priority, your purchasing, your path and even your feeble attempt at paving it (as we all do so often still all on our lonesome for whatever silly reason’s caught our fancy within the moment). And whilst this here call seems all a quite precarious change of plans as now made perfectly necessary within our long walk aimed always well away from both who and thus too where we were at first created to stay, it’s again been made necessary for a reason then.

That being that there are a great many things and theories that we have in our lives that simply shouldn’t be there. Alas there too seems something about the idea of staying that’s managed to, well, stay all but solidified within our minds as often again hung down within heads aimed the same so as to try and see through eyes blinded by lust and lies the best way to live this life. Yes, it’s even something that’s altogether used as what just feels an excuse to not do all that much for fear of somehow losing even more.

Sadly there is this ongoing lack of what should be an elated movement onward toward everything bettered in regard to His movement as done so as to both accomplish that chance and too inspire our share inside such change so as to flee then from the shame we’ve brought unto our name as we seek now instead, thanks to the freedom afforded us within His forgiveness, to rather glory in His Name as we come to understand this His really is the only by which the salvation our past proves we need is to prove us freed indeed.

And indeed, we hear this idea of staying inside such things as “come as you are.” For yes, granted, that’s pretty much all we can do as all we are is what we are within the moment in which we’re offered to come wherever we can literally only be as we are. Problem then, which proves this turning of directions as defined as repentance, a turning away from death back toward what life was meant to be, it’s proven then almost perfectly persnickety in that it asks of us a humility that we simply do not know “as we are.”

It even seems that Christ Himself had something other than our staying as we then were in mind when hung upon our place upon that cross when He said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Don’t think then that He wished only for our to continue doing things knowing not what we were doing! No, rather He calls us explicitly unto repentance for such is literally the only thing that we can do that shows Him any possible understanding as to the debt He paid and too the way in which it’s now been satisfied.

No, we cannot dare imagine that to stay is to somehow prove acceptable unto He who gave His life that we might to the same within what is a turning away from the ways in which we’ve won the wage of death that is what sin wins.

And such a fact in fact goes on from there to form then the logical basis for the better part of the entirety of the New Testament's askings as spoken by God through what is a continued speaking through people. Yes, such as He’s doing with Paul here in his now second letter to the Corinthian church. He’s reminding the people of the necessity of repenting for sin is already, and will always remain, the antithesis of all that Christ is and thus not what we’re to remain as He calls us to turn from it.

For let’s face it, the last time we were anywhere near innocent was back when we were but an idea in God’s creative undertakings.

Alas, once we hit the dirt from which we were drafted, well, seems we’ve been but dodging He who is our Father. And well, running away from God and living as if we just like it that way entirely too much to let it go, no my friends, that’s not much a show to help Him know that we are His from the many who live as if they simply don’t want to be. Which now such is indeed the question that begins this life-breaking betterment, or rather simply settles upon the continued refusing thereof.

It’s that both asked and ironically often answered within the wondering about who we want to be, or more specifically, whose we want to be? For indeed, the answer’s clearly been that we want only to be our own, a scene shown in our seeking to please ourselves alone. But is that it? All we want out of life? What about when this life ends? Does then our purpose and meaning pass away too?

Sure will if we don’t take Him up on His offer to make all things new!

Which is, if we do believe in His gift of salvation, something that we should see so much worth, wealth, happiness and healing and hope within that we wait not to wonder as to whether or not we should let go of anything. For there ought to be nothing that is considered of equal worth to His welcoming us unto the avoidance of His wrath. So what then are we still looking for that has us still so stuck living still as who we’ve always been?

No, time to bump that nonsense and get down to the business of believing in something far better than whatever it is that we’ve so sadly become.

And not just for us. No, for Him most of all and even then too all those around who might see or hear something from within our walking and talking that is allowed to become unto them a part of their path as aimed wherever they head after that. Hopefully to their own eternal better as such is the entire point and purpose of “mutual edification.”

Yes, we are surrounded by many witnesses, the very harvest that our King said is as plentiful as it remains. Just then that the reaping is best won within repenting so as to show that such is the only route that goes from the death we all know to the endless life that none have found elsewhere.

For such is the promise that Paul refers to here. It’s that found within the close of chapter 6 just before this opening of 7. That’s where he’s talking about all the promises that we’ve been given such as how God will live with us, and thus we with He, and we’ll again then be as if Father and offspring seeking only to revel in His majesty as opposed to seeking foolishly a continued failure to find or thus prove our own.

No, what fellowship has He with who we’ve been?

Such is what Paul asks, in different terms as written a few different ways. But the point’s all the same. It’s what does light have to do with darkness? The most poignant of the proposed ponderings being, “what agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?” Verse 18 finishing with, “for we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’”

But that’s not what we’ve been is it? We’ve rather made ourselves a home for every hollowed out hope and heavy burden won within our wanting them only. And this is why we’ve so much in us, of us that now needs to go. It’s because, as much as there is no “harmony between Christ and belial”, so too then we shouldn’t expect Him to share space in our minds, our hearts, our lives with anything that only pulls us away from seeking and serving Him alone.

No, every such thing must go! Store closing! Going out of business sale! As in the business of sinning, and so take it away while it’s hot because where it leads it’s only going to get hotter!

Friends, I know we’ve vastly settled upon this standard assumption that in life we’re never meant to lose. But we’re the point in which we absolutely refuse to lose not only every race we enter, but also to let go of every worthless prize we’ve won. But the simple fact is that there is nothing to win within a life already lost to sin! No, the only thing to do with salt that’s lost its saltiness is to throw it out and allow it be trampled underfoot.

Aren’t we tired of being walked on by everything from all we want to have to all we wish will never happen?

It was never meant to be so confusing or confounding or confining as it so often feels. He created us in the image of unbridled freedom! Why then are we building ourselves as if slop-houses set to serve the many sins and scoundrels that we don’t have the courage to kick out of our lives? No, while we may know a life lived supremely contaminated, such isn’t at all what we need to remain for Christ came to wash us clean and lead us through such a death in sin to the eternal life He came to win.

Why lose out on that?

Especially when all He asks is that we let go of all that’s left us lost and losing hope, losing ground, losing life!

Friends, I know it seems like His asking us to “shun evil” seems to mean all we’ve come to love and enjoy, but if those things are really only death, then what do we have to lose? Yes, it will feel like we’re dying as we’re asking the leaving of everything that He calls us to rid our lives of and from. But He’s shown us that laying down a life isn’t necessarily the death we’ve long assumed it to be.

It might just be the very beginning of a better life that’s spent forever free of fear and failure, hatred and hurting, loss and losing. And well, that sounds like a life worth finding.

Even if to find it means sending our lost life packing.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold