Day 3724 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 10:23 NIV

Being given something doesn’t necessarily mean we have it.

Because while we may in fact have all these “rights” as given us by those of us who’ve taken it upon ourselves, themselves to determine and/or define what is right for all of mankind, such a jury of the jaded and jealous was never convened within the courts of Heaven. Rather we as humans have long had this bold arrogance to inspire to conspire to perspire to inspire one another to do all of whatever we alone decide we’d like. And thus it’s come that many of our “mere human rules” as having to do with “things destined to perish”, well, they’ve produced a great many “rights” that we’ve been given.

But that doesn’t technically mean that we have the right to do whatever we like.

In fact, with just as simple little study throughout the Scripture, another of Paul’s offers in particular, we’d learn that the entirety of the Law which was given us as God’s commands for us, it is what brought sin to life. Romans 7:8. “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.” Because, as noted in verse 7, we “would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.”

Because, as Christ himself had said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”

And thus too our own guilt as given only unto ourselves via these rules that we’ve created seeking to either give or protect these “rights” that we feel we have. And granted, we do have some basic human rights that are those which are God-given, and thus they irrevocable as God himself is unchanging, meaning then thus too His Word, will and Way.

Alas, within this day in which we walk all our way, we’ve sought to steal the strength to selfishly say that we have all of these other “rights” outside of such things as life, liberty and the then responsibility to uphold the God who gave the both to us so liberally as to still be breathing today. It’s something of an unfortunality that we’ve added what sometimes seems a dreadfully scary addendum unto the gifts of life and freedom that we’ve all been given from God.

And that is the “pursuit of happiness.”

Which is, as it’s turned out, not something quite so inherently harmless as we might have had in mind. And by we I mean they who came before us and gave us the Bill of Rights as written into the Constitution of these United States. Indeed, such has become yet another scripture from which we seek to glean, and thus selfishly sometimes as that’s simply all the flesh knows to be, to do, all of these “rights” to do as we please.

Problem then being, and it’s most certainly a “nail in the coffin” kind of problem, 1 Peter 2:16.

“Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.”

Because Galatians 5:17.

“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”

And thus find that within these two we come to read that whilst we have the ability, and thus the oft-chosen desire, to do as we please as given us within the freedom God has given us, we’re not to use that liberty as lived within a life without any apparent limit to then set out in sinful search for the then limit of God’s kindness, patience or mercy.

We just chose to anyway.

Because we have the right to.

Because freewill gives us that.

But that doesn’t mean we necessarily have it, or at least any logical reason to use it as foolishly as literally all of us have.

And dear friends, please do not allow for any mistake nor misunderstanding to remain standing in your way of understanding this simple reality: We can have the right to do anything we so determine to deem we’ve the right to do, as done nearly every day by the judiciary mentality that all of us seem to seek to show we’ve stole. But having the “right” to do as we’d like does not mean that doing as we like is the right thing to do. And this is both where and thus why we’re in so very much trouble.

So much that death comes for all of us now, leaving then only the bold of us to confess that we’ve asked for it and, in that, ask Him to save us from it who died that death for us.

Because He loves us more than we’ve ever shown Him within our ways of using our freedom as not only a cover for evil but, in some cases at least, a reason.

Yes, within our seeking to steal our “right” to do as we’d like, we’ve inspired ourselves unto a conspiring against God. “Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.’” Ah yes, in the beginning. In the beginning was the Word, and that Word was with God, that Word was God, and that Word came from God to find those who’d fled from God so as to lead the same lost back to their God who is himself Life and Love and thus the Liberty that we have but without having any real reason to have used it so sinfully as we have.

For within this one example we see that men seeking to do as they wanted, as they demanded the “right” to do only led to God agreeing that our hearts are hardened to His instruction as set forth in the beginning before we began to become whatever it is that you want to call of this.

But friends, ‘right’ most certainly isn’t the word.

No, rather we walk this weather of not really seeming to care whether or not we do what’s right. We only want to do whatever we’ve the “right” to do as if liberty is but a license to lust. As if freedom is but a gift best spent unto the following of a fealty to foolishness as found in fathoms by all of us. Yes, we are foolish to the core, and evil too. For despite knowing the right things to do, it’s often only our humanly agreed upon “rights” that we delight to do as designed to let us do as we please without feeling guilty about it.

Thus spinning into what Paul says in a very similar message to this one read here, only about four chapters earlier.

1 Corinthians 6:12. “’I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”

It’s that last part, the nail part.

Mastered.

Yes, such is what has itself now spun upon our head and cast us so adrift into arrogance and filth that we’ve not the courage to count our losses and admit we’d be best to no longer play at life as if our own bosses who are then of the ability and authority to determine what is right and wrong, and still yet neither worried about all that much as still we seek to do only always as we please anyway.

Because we’ve been told we have the right to do so.

Indeed, I have the right to do anything has seemingly become our battle cry as waged within what is a war in which we’re being paid every day the wage of death of itself from the many sins we serve as if soldiers so caught up, tangled up in the uncivilized affairs of civilians that we cannot see anymore that we’re literally but the very victims of a selfish depravity so very deep that death is now a necessity if we’re to ever shed this sinful skin and begin at life again.

Because, again, contrary to what’s so clearly a now culturally common consideration/contemplation/concession/confusion/delusion/dilution, well, our having some socially agreed upon and thus widely accepted “right” to do something doesn't actually make anything we choose to do the right thing to have then been done. Which always seems to prove the problem doesn’t it?

Indeed, it most certainly does as hindsight shows often only a horror show in what are scenes only then seen of those many things that we at once thought right to do as done because we thought we had the right to do them, say them, think them, only to ever so eventually wish we’d never done any at all. Isn’t that strange? How we can be so very assured of something that we determine to do it as if it truly the right thing to be doing only to have done it and someday, most often one well-removed from that day in which we did the thing in question, to only then realize that maybe it wasn’t quite so right after all.

Oh, how we live this life so very often within that after all!

And yet even after all we’ve done that we’ve come only to find as having not been right to have done after all, even after all of those such many after all’s, well, still we do what we only kind of hope to prove can be maybe as right as our pride tries to delight to think they might. Indeed, so often we let our pride blind our lives to the very point in which we do the very things that we eventually come only to try and hide our having done having only found within them the shame of having done them.

And so then my friends I have to ask: As those who’ve done so much so wrong, what then makes us think we know now always only the right things to do?

Or rather are we not just basically living as we want to without any care given to whether or not what we do is right? After all, we live amongst a very great and still growing many who do things simply because someone told them they had the right to do them. But I worry that the problem is that we’ve along the way, again to wherever and whatever we are this day, managed to mistake liberty for right.

And indeed, I get it, it’s an easy enough mistake to make.

For sure, they even sound alike. They look alike. They feel alike. So the issue may well be that we’ve somehow come to think that rights and right are the same thing. But again, just because we have the right to do whatever we want to do doesn’t then make it always the right thing to do. Simply because the freedom to do doesn’t always promise us the freedom from our then being the only ones who are left to bear the responsibility, and thus consequence too, of whatever we’ve done or might still delight to do. Indeed, liberty, whilst often indulged liberally, does not give us this mythical life lived without learning, lesson or loss.

For there is always a cost to our every choice made, even if it nothing other than the other option we could have chosen.

There’s always a cost, and thus there’s always too the responsibility to do what is right, not just what we may have the right to do. And yeah, it gets pretty confusing sometimes doesn’t it! For sometimes the right thing to do is the thing that nobody else does, or even seems willing to. Sometimes the thing we have the right to do doesn’t really seem the right thing to do. Sometimes we’ll do what some insist wrong, and sometimes we’ll get wrong what we could have, and thus should have gotten right. It’s all a quite challenging challenge indeed!

For such is what discernment is meant to be. It’s a learning, a growing, a giving away of what we want to think in exchange for only coming to trust in what He asks us to understand. Yes, even thinking and understanding often stand opposed in what’s become a life in which what we’re supposed to do is often the thing we do not delight to do. But friends, that’s just it! Life never hinged upon our delights. Rather life is won only within the doing of what God said is right.

And that’s the problem!

It’s one proven in that because having done, and spending still so much time doing so much so wrong, well we just don’t have any real reason to keep on thinking that we have the right to do always only whatever we want. For we’ve already seen such desires become only fires that fuel the flame of our fear of finding out that having the right to do something never meant it was always the right thing to do. Moses and divorce. God’s commands sent to commandeer a ship we’d steered toward only the shallows of sin itself.

And having all of us done just that very thing with these very vessels that are our bodies, minds, eyes, lives, we too have come to know more than we should having for so long sought to assume our having the right to do anything was the same then as our selfish hope that everything we wanted to do was just fine to do.

No, friends we’re rather here to learn the difference between right and wrong, and that without then any room nor worry given unto what are mere human “rights” as written in mere human rules as given to humans by humans. Because the difference is heard from the Word of God. And thus the more time we spend with Him, the more we’ll then finally come to understand in regard to the difference between having the right to do something and simply doing the right thing no matter what anyone else may say.

Because the finish line of this life will find us meeting that Truth that came to lay down His life for our having done what we long thought we’d had the right to do. And it’s that same Truth which told us within His Word that we’re not to use freedom as neither an excuse nor a cover for our doing wrong. Rather we’re to live as God’s slaves, doing then only as He pleases, and thus as pleases Him only.

It does not matter what humans may think, may like, may come to determine a right. For as much as we’ve had no say in the organization of existence, nor then have we any “right” to live like we know then best what to do with it, in it.

No, we’re better to leave the leading of this life in the hands of He who created it. After all, looking around at all people are doing thinking they have the right to do it, well, seems all we’ve done is about near destroy it.

So forget what people tell you you have the right to do. Rather just always delight to do what God said is right and you won’t then ever have to worry about what people think.

For all have lost their freedom for the forest. And only a scarce few ever choose to leave the forest for the freedom found only within a life lived without having to think we have to be the ones who find the "right" way to use it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold