Day 3716 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 12:4 NIV

Far from of one.

For the One from whom the farthest furthering of our own faulty faith has managed to came is of He who has come and indeed gone again into the great unknown as told of all we’ve not been as bound to having been found forever always here as only what we already are. And it’s become this very defining that’s begun outlining the very outskirts of the outlooks that we might now have would we could wonder into a wander away from the ease of all that is unto the challenges meant to change all into what we could have always stayed.

Alas we strayed, and having gone now so vastly astray from the way of the Way that came to leave in order to lead, all we’ve learned to love is that which leaves us lost.

And it’s not even got anything to do with outer space.

No, rather it feels as if we’re all left lost in lust for the dust of this rust that is a rut so routine in rebelling that we know only the telling of a story spent yelling that we know what we’re doing despite having never done anything that’s asked anything of risk, and that no matter the reward. For while we’re a people who do indeed love a good promise of profit, power, prestige or platform, if any of the above bring the risk of our running below this best-life outlook of one lived without struggle, strife, suffering or something the like, well then we just run away again.

Something that we’re now so prone to do that we don’t even know what all we’ve lived to lose as was waiting to be won within the ways we didn’t take along paths we’ve never known because of fears we’ve always shared with those most around us who themselves live as if to meet misery is something of an undue monopoly of monotony spoken in what is a monotone refusal as to even the perusal of our offerings of so many plans, preferences, opinions and other ideals.

Yes, such is why so many deny that God might be.

For if He both was and thus was too all He’s said He would continue forever to be, well then the love we know would have Him show in what is the consist of a consistency unto at least the consideration of our understandings as to what our lives should look like, feel like, unwind like. And when they don’t, as they just simply always won’t, there’s waiting there this air of argument that’s seemingly justified as easily as our casting again our vote of confidence unto our plans for us as opposed to those of He whose plans are for us.

Both to be and then to become again what He created us to be as done by He who came to carry what He didn’t deserve in order for us to receive what we don’t either. And make no mistake, as much as the sinless Son of God didn’t deserve to suffer as He did, nor then have we ever deserved to get off as easy as we think we haven’t. And indeed, just ask us and we’ll readily tell you about all the miseries we’ve felt and the many monsters we’ve fought.

Each tale there told in what is a struggle so gallantly bold that when heard from our side of the work of a walk of unenviable war, sure, it would seem that we’re well overdue for all that none of us deserve.

Such as rest, ease, comfort, the assurance of a salvation’s safety as simply afforded us from whomever we know think now owes us for those many struggles through which we’ve stumbled unto what remains a shame so stained that so too are our eyes now fixed wide to what keeps us blind to a life lived beyond the stars we see in that place we can’t quite yet.

For none can see Heaven but through the struggle that is the trust and reliance of all faith’s compliance unto an obedience that a life lived in a hostility’s negligence can simply then know next to nothing about. And we can know this fact for the assurance it is as to the insurance of our procurement of a humility willing to suffer because of the scene shown and thus seen upon the hill that is both Calvary and Golgotha.

Yes, the “Place of the Skull” has too now become the throne of the Son who came to overcome the death always before won upon that height spent insisting upon the suffering of all deemed worthy of such a wrath as wielded by the wrongly stood minds of those who had been created to be of the same as He who charged up Calvary as if Himself the cavalry who’d came to take control back from what had so clearly become chaos.

Only question now is that asked of us as to which side of that fatal line we determine to define as our place in both time and line as both spent in the directions they are as defined then by the decisions we make in light of the loves we have and what those that are mostly only lust can either encourage of us or rather leave us seeking instead, for once, the courage to overcome all that we’ve long known only to entirely and thus eternally undermine.

Will we cross that line?

Well, as we discussed yesterday, yes. Yes we will, only then a matter of when. For the truth as read of the Word which was with God before all this began to become whatever we’ve come to remain, which is the same Word as is God as now known within the empty grave through which He came with such a radical salvation that our continued refusal thereof is now simply as ridiculous as any rebellion might ever prove to be, it offers a word that reads of the promise of all being changed.

Even if we’ve not all by then fallen into the sleep that is the death that, despite His life as lain down for us to share in His taking of the same back up there beyond, the fact remains that each of those alive owes a fine for that life as having been since lived in love with what is sin. And as our time grows then thin, so too does our ability at anything even remotely resembling a decision as asked of us in what is the matter of the Messiah and what we think He means, who we think He is as answered by the lives we live and just how different they become from the ones we’ve already known.

Yes, will we embrace the obedience of humility before the humbling is no longer an option? Or will we continue to refuse, rebel, retell the many tales of the many trials we’ve tried to avoid so that we could live to tell the tail that we’ve always chased away from anything and everyone that looked or asked that we love the grave as the place to save simply because He’s now both said and proven that it is as it was?

Because that the tomb remains so empty is now a continued evidencing of our place that’s since been waiting for us to become of the same mind as He who came to come through all we deserved so that we’d not have to go through what we alone couldn’t survive, it just proves that we’ve too to lay down a life as lived in the sin that the Son came to take away from we who’ve let it become what we’ve lived and loved and thus known and won within what was never a life to see as all our own.

No, this life is rather on loan and we then but the renters of what is a vineyard so filled with the fruit of His labor that our years spent both neglecting the harvesting and even then mocking, and eventually even killing, those who came to receive from us their share of us, they’ve all achieved a wrath aimed for us that none would argue fully justified.

Indeed, even those told this parable by Christ came to the same conclusion, which unbeknownst to them became a veritable testimony against themselves as they levied the judgement without the ability to realize that He was talking about them and both what they’d done already, and what He knew they would soon determine to do unto the fulfilling of both His Word and thus His will as won upon the love now waiting for us to decide if we’re willing to trust He who leads through those same kinds of sufferings as He’s already seen from our point of view.

Yes, He knows life lived our way. Will we then continue to run from the gift that is that He’s come to lead us into the life we’ve known not as lived by He who we’ve too not known through what is a past that proves all we’ve ever cared to consider is that our blessings be found only both upon this ground and somehow still without any of the misery we see so continually around here?

Guess only time will tell for it seems more often than not that the only presence of honesty in our lives is that time that just continues to be what it only is here. For time was made for this world, but not this world for time. No, rather time is running out for what is this ruin refusing to be rebuilt. Is the same to be said of us? Not in regard to time wearing worrisome in the lack of it remaining, no, will the same be said of us in that we too continue to refuse to let Him rebuild what our pasts prove we’ve learned only to break and betray?

That’s why He came. It’s why He tried. It’s why He died. It wasn’t because He knew He’d never live again but because He knows we won’t if we don’t come away from what is a life lived in the death of sin. And while I can believe that a love like that would endure it all again, the simple reality is that there isn’t any point really. For what more could He do? What more should He endure? What other parable or promise might He have spoken to make this of a greater clarity unto us who can make either a mockery or a confusion of just about anything anyway?

No, He made it clear that the path to Heaven’s hope is only found one way, and then walked but the same. One Way. For He is the Way that spoke the Truth as to the Life that He came that we might live both with Him and in Him as He lives in us both here and forever as well. Yes, that Jesus emptied Himself upon that cross shows us that the only way to find what He did is for us to do the same.

And we haven’t. Not yet.

Maybe we’ll never even have to, but friends, the point is that if Heaven means enough to us, then we should be willing to show it inside the kind of trust that lays down our lives into the hands of He who can lift us up from whatever dares bring us down. He should see in us, know in us a heart that is so humble unto the hope of His presence that we don’t live anymore, not ever again, by the pretense of preference. For we should know that life here doesn’t take our preferences into account anyway.

And having known that our preferences can lead us upon paths spent into such outcomes as shame and regret, well, we shouldn’t be as willing as we so often remain to avoid the pain that inspires us to let go and let God be the One who instead leads the way through whatever He knows needed to get us to those freedoms that we wouldn’t know, couldn’t know any other way.

Friends, within this very day He has indeed done it again. Not the dying part, for that needed done only the once as once defeated, well, death then has no further say over He who left the grave speechless as to its oddly found emptiness. No, today He’s given us once more the opportunity to swim for shore. And sure while there might be sharks and we might sink, what should always matter most is that hope of making it where we know we cannot go alone.

For if we do, by some undeniably miraculous outcome, manage to make it home, then by then we’ll have known so much of Christ that we’ll not be able to deny that we sought and fought and strived, even becoming willing to die, in order just to know Him more. And if He knows of that faith in us, the kind that’s willing to trust in spite of our inability to swim, let alone find the direction to start heading, He’s said that neither will He then deny that He knew us either.

But if we don’t try to know Him via whatever means He says we might, then we’ll have only failed the fight and found the fear that isn’t of God but rather of our finding out that we never were as proven in both our inability to avoid struggle and our then being those unable to survive it for lack of the training provided by it.

That’s the point of all this, it’s all a training in godliness. Are we finding contentment within this content of a continued considering of things from His perspective? Or are we still just focused on our own and thus trying in vain to make life go our way?

In the end it won’t matter because we’ll all feel pain one way or another. Only difference then is whether we learn from it how to love the One who sent it so as to inspire us closer or if we only denied it and thus never decided that His choosing to endure the bad news first was meant to inspire us to do the same in order to know the Good News forever.

Be careful as to when you pick your good. And never let how things may look or feel lead the way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold