Day 3739 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:21 NIV

Starved on shame.

For such is the same that every tongue shall say upon that day when they’re all found knelt upon humbled ground thanks to bended knees and a heart that’s begging please don’t let what I’ve done become what I knew all along it might deserve. Because though we try with all our might to imagine that He may, upon that day, not have seen all we’ve sown as reaped within regret, that we’ve felt the same is what will prove a testimony against ourselves. Our very actions becoming then our own enemies.

And yet still we live within this ever before as if there’s not that open door through which to rush so fast unto the fight of faith that we lose everything that’s always kept us away.

And that from all He is because of all we’ve been willing to stay.

Which now defines the discrepancy displayed as if so willfully designed within what’s been every single life’s time as given unto the sowing of such harvests as hatred, hardship, hassle, haughtiness and every other heavy burden we’ve delighted to carry so as to continue to tarry upon the trial of a lifetime. Almost as if we still somehow assume that we can perhaps get off easy despite a life lived seeking always only the same.

Indeed, I myself have lived a life in which I can now scarcely lift my head to face who I’ve been a result painted by what I alone chose to do. In fact I don’t even have it in me to blame anyone else anymore, and that no matter how much inspiration I allowed them to have as had inside of suggestion or expectation. And make no mistake, such peer pressurings do indeed get quite a lot of blame. But at the end of the day, it is still always only our decision to allow them to win.

And thus at the end of days, it will be still our ways as won and walked by us alone that define then what we deserve and whether or not we receive something as miraculously different as His achievement of life over death.

“For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.” 2 Corinthians 5:10

“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.” John 5:28-29

“If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.” 1 Corinthians 3:12-15

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:7-9

And thus, “by their fruit you will recognize them.”

So who are we?

I’m ashamed to say that as of this day, I don’t know me as fully as I may have once thought. Because, as I learn the importance of testing the spirits as to judge whether they are from the Lord (and thus to return unto the same) or rather opposed unto the same (and thus headed for unending flame), I look at myself and see half Heaven and half hell. I’m part servant, part scoundrel. Part believer, part denier. Part dreamer, part nightmare. Part hopeful of that perfect home elsewhere, and yet a part still inviting entirely too much of this rental to steal my focus away from the only Way there.

And I scarcely know what to do with that. For what sense can one make of such fruit? Does a good tree bear bad fruit? And thus the bad fruit I’ve borne, it does indeed define me as a bad seed. And yet something inside that mirror I see seems to show a different seed sown, one that didn’t come from my hopeless human hands but rather from He who came as Savior, Shepherd, Son, Friend. A friend of sinners, such is what Jesus is called sometimes.

And sometimes I live as if I’m perfectly blind to my dire need of such a companion who not only would follow me into the fire but died to meet me there so as to not leave me where I know I’ve been more than content to stay for longer than I conspire confess.

Which is just what we’ll do.

But what can we say when words either escape or elude? What answer can we give to the questions we’ve never thought to ask? What hope can we have if we don’t start asking such questions of ourselves as that asked of us here by He who inspired another sinner to share His will through the writing of words upon what was once a scroll as empty as has become our soul for however long we’ve lived sold to the selling of our salvation to the audacity to imagine we don’t need it?

What can inspire someone to chase after something they refuse to think they might really need?

For we live in a life of wants and wishes, always wanting only the winnings of a will all our own, and thus us owned by the things we’ve done, wanted or won as wished for through the choices we’ve chosen and the words we’ve spoken and the bed we’ve broken having made a life of not only quenching the Spirit but all but choking Him to death.

And having sown to so please the flesh, and having indeed begun to reap the death as done in such a choosing, how much more of this life will we live losing to the love and lust of death and dust?

That’s what we can’t stand to see, and thus why always we try to turn a self-blinded eye to the things we’ve become. We can’t face what we’ve done, and thus nor can we ever even begin to imagine what it will be like when we face He against whom we’ve done everything we’re now ashamed of. For that’s both what and why shame is. It’s but a realization of both our condemnation and the reason why it so fully deserved as to demand we die.

And yet He did instead.

Why?

Because He’s only slow in keeping one promise, and that being of the second death.

Yes, there is promised an ending that none will walk away from no matter how horrific it will prove to be unto the eyes that claimed they just couldn’t see it ending up that way. Because friends, it’s never mattered all that much what we think we can or cannot see. For life isn’t a matter of what we can or cannot perceive. No, life is a gift given us of God and thus one within which we have the express responsibility to honor, fear, revere Him as both loving Father and Justice itself.

And while we can find hope in the Father, and should find fear in the latter, we live a way of life in which we lose the first because we refuse the other.

We live this life as if we’re fully justified within the having done whatever of all we have that ended so badly that we now feel ashamed of having to even remember the mess we’ve made. And thus we live only to deny that we’ve done things we shouldn’t have. All because we think it’s up to us to either justify what we want or to deny we knew the worth of everything needed.

Such as salvation.

It’s long been a matter made into an afterthought at best as best thought about within the aftermath of a mistake so monumental that we simply couldn’t ignore it made. But having become so great at ignoring such things, so too can we now deny just about anything. It’s something done by pride, and thus it’s easy to see why we continue to reap such things as guilt and regret.

For when you’re living still to please the flesh at the denial of the Spirit, so too shall we then continue to reap from the flesh the very destruction that He promised we’d find.

The one promise toward which He’s so undeniably slow that we’re still here in what is a life in which we’re still alive for a reason!

Maybe it’s not then to keep doing what we’ve been doing but rather that, in His patience and because of the same, we should seek something different entirely. For such is the gift of eternity, is it not? It’s the fruit found within the faith that’s found that there’s a future ahead, but that one way goes on living whereas the other only stays dead. And yet that kind of promise as held out unto all in regard to the finding of something forever, friends, it’s meant to inspire us away from the unending death we deserve unto the everlasting life that we don’t.

And we don’t deserve it because we can’t even admit we don’t.

But He can’t forgive what we won’t confess. And we won’t confess what we don’t see as an issue. And anymore we have no issues within this life of tissues and trials as we seem to still somehow insist that they’re all just a part of a life set against us. And thus that we’ve had no hand in the horrors we’ve held inside the choices we’ve made due to the voices we’ve heard telling us what our itching ears wanted to hear.

Such as how it’s perfectly okay to live this life so broken away from reality and responsibility to actually continue putting our desires above His commands.

Friends, how can that end? How can a life lived only to contend against the expectations of He who gave us life prove to know anything other than the death designed in such a denying of Him? He is the Life! What then have we without Him?

The answer is nothing, which is the same scene I’ve seen inside every single mirror for longer than I can remember. Nothing. Just an empty canvas stained over with such scars as hatred and dishonesty, lust and immorality, laziness and every vile form of complacency that I could bear to continue craving within every depraving desire that I’ve come to all but demand to be only fruit I see as sown within a life in which all that ever seemed to matter was me.

And I’m anymore so sick of myself that I can only imagine what forgiveness might mean as it seems something that I can only find for others, just never myself.

No, I see very little of being worth such redemption as that designed at the very inception of my life as lived as if it were me who was meant to design it all. All I see is failure. All I feel is flaw. And it’s a fact so forlorn to face that I, like you, just don’t want to most days. Because I’ve already seen this movie. I’ve already read this story. I know so well every single mistake that I’ve made that I know I can’t remember half of them.

So I’m then less than half Heaven and far more of the other than I could have ever realized without His grace opening my eyes to the very seeing of all I’m sowing that only leaves me knowing still no way to answer the questions that will be asked.

Simply because I still live not asking them of myself.

Maybe it’s a good time to start. Because maybe today’s the only time we have left.

So what benefit did you reap from the doing, saying, thinking, assuming the things you have that you’ve since come to regret? What profit did your mistakes produce? Was it worth the shame you’ve learned to see along the way in what’s been a life still left to live after all the moments in which we made decisions based upon what we wanted and never what we needed?

Why do we still take our salvation for granted?

If not because we think that chance will always be there?

That’s what it is to take something for granted. It’s the selfish assumption that it won’t let us down or leave us without it found. It’s the belief that what we see today will be there for however many tomorrows within which we’ll still deny that it deserves our gratitude. But friends, when having begun to realize that we can’t number our days as we haven’t the slightest idea as to when we’ll run out of them, should we not then begin to run out of reasons to keep living as if we have plenty left?

Because what if we don’t? Will the fruit we’re sowing prove a harvest worth having if today proves the last day of planting?

Or might the hope of eternal life deserve a bit more planning than simply confining one more day to a life spent doing only whatever we please without any care then given, once again, to what may be displeasing to Him?

Friends, again, we will all receive from Him what our actions deserve. And yet the only action we truly have is that of belief. For every choice we make, every word we speak, they’re spoken or undertaken in light of our believing them worth doing or saying. Everything we do is done within belief. And so what do our lives say we believe in? Us? The world around us? The desires within us? Or rather is it now the distance designed inside that difference He died to make?

All things new?

Just how new are you? I know I’m not new enough for still I do things I only eventually realize I shouldn’t. And yet, knowing that such is all I know how to do, I also know that I can’t then be the one that I rely on to get me to the hope I scarcely have the courage to hold onto. And thus I know that I can no more continue sowing to the flesh than I can live as if I’ve not lived choosing death.

For I know I have because I know there’s no life in regret as regret knows only the past and the past is already over. Why then keep living only to keep having to look back and see things that we’re by then ashamed of? Of what benefit is that?

No, the only benefit that matters is that given us within the ability to believe that Christ came and died so as to inspire us to follow. Because those who die to sin will learn to live for the righteousness that God demands. Those who don’t, well, they won’t. But friends, those who continue to fall short of the glory of God will only find themselves short of the glory of God.

Because we can’t find what we won’t seek. And thus what we sow is the same as that from which we’ll reap.

So what are you planting, and can it ever possibly lead to a life everlasting?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold