Day 3741 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:12 NIV

Obliged

It’s a burden built upon an obligation as originated by the originator of a rather original ordination as ordained upon the object of this other’s affection or perspective as purposed upon the outcome they desire as demanded to be agreed to be of such importance that we ourselves fall into a share of the amount of care that went in to our having this air both by which to breathe, yes, but also then for us to believe that we’re here for more than just breathing air.

After all, for the purpose of a matter to never go any further than the matter in which it was made seems a rather shallow expectation, doesn’t it?

I mean, nothing is ever begun with the express purpose of it never being more, going further, doing better. Rather, all we do in life is done within the frame of mind that understands that there are such things as learning curves and training milestones met along them that provide us the providence of some provenance as to the progression of ourselves and our mettle unto the depth of the matter at hand. We don’t just wake up every day expecting to be perfect at everything.

Ok, well, some do I suppose. But friends, that’s the basis of today’s question posed, and that is what we gain by staying convinced that we’re obligated to only the flesh and what all it either desires or denies.

Which, granted, might seem something of a leap from the way in which today’s discussion began, but, is it? After all, our every such expectation as that all-too common vocation of a life lived mostly complacent, are they not done or demanded in light of our delusion which loves the illusion of our self-mastery in regard to whatever matter matters at the moment? That’s why we slow down, isn’t it? It’s why we stop. It’s because we think we’ve gone far enough to have reached a fairly acceptable finish line as expected in everything.

Which is the problem. We quit too easy. We give up. We get comfortable. We gain the consideration that we ourselves are given at least something of a say within the way in which our life goes, and thus too what goes on in our lives. And having done this very thing for quite some time, we’ve all but completely let down our guard and given ourselves over to the very control of the very flesh that cost Christ His very death.

And thus we see that our staying put is pretty much the worst place we could ever delight to go.

Because it doesn’t go anywhere. And a road that doesn’t go anywhere doesn’t help us grow anywhere. And a road that can’t help us grow is a road that brings us no ability to know more than we did about a life we’re still here to live. We do at least get that part, right? That He continues to give us these days not out of boredom or some twisted fascination in regard to the many misplaced and mischievous machinations that a mumbled and grumbled mankind can prove able to think may matter more than the miseries He’s already watched within this miniseries of such?

I mean, judging from my past alone, I’d say He’s seen enough to basically know that getting ourselves right ain’t gonna happen. Not by tonight. Not overnight. Not by this time tomorrow. Not ever, at least if we continue to live as if we have any say so. Why? Because we’ve been at this life deal for decades, and yet despite all the innumerable opportunities we’ve been so lovingly given to grow within the forgiveness needed to overcome the many mistakes we’ve made, still we make them.

Indeed, every single day still we say things we shouldn’t, believe things we shouldn’t, do things we truly couldn’t if we had grown to be even half as mature as He created us to be. And I believe that we can believe that He created us for such maturity because when He created those very first humans, He created them as adults. God created man, not boy. And from man He made woman, not girl. And thus we see that the overall expectation for His every creation was to be at their best from the very beginning.

Problem then proven within what’s called The Fall.

We fell. Which insinuates the idea of away from something higher/better. Which means that we once had a better existence, and thus too a better insistence thereof. But that’s just it, where did it go? When did this life we know become about what we think we know and how we’re all but concretely certain that it’s all we need? Are we truly as far, as good, as amazing as we paint ourselves to be? Is the world around us the masterpiece we had in mind?

Or rather are we struggling to find our minds whilst still walking alongside a world mostly losing their own?

And thus the question again. What is it that we can now expect to gain from continuing to live as if we’re obligated only to the flesh?

Friends, we’ve already done it that way, and for longer than we’ve ourselves been around to do it that way. That way has been the way of all mankind for as long as mankind has been born on this side of that Fall. We just keep falling for it within our varied generations, and still that to varying degrees due to varying interests and disagreements. Indeed, all of life as we know it is quite obviously lived within either an agreement with someone/something, or rather a disagreement with something/someone.

Thus leaving mostly the world to be that/they to whom we look looking for what our life is supposed to be. But friends, such is the issue at hand for never once did it enter His mind for our to have so enjoyed our depravity that we ourselves simply gave ourselves unto the very becoming of depraved.

Is that what we want to stay? Granted, it’s not that the world is itself staying in place as rather we’re witnessing the very fulfilling of the Word which says that they “will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” And who is this “they”? “Evildoers and imposters” who, as the NLT puts it, will “flourish”. And why will they flourish? Because “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Thus leaving all of us every reason needed to embrace our place within the continuation of the fall.

For around here it’s considered far better to join those we can’t seem to beat, embracing then our share of the beating they themselves have long since accepted at the hands of a life lived “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” A verse which refers to such being “infants”, which again hints at the desire for maturity among mankind.

Something really hammered home over in Hebrews chapter 5!

“In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

Thus we round the bend back to the whole training idea with which today’s discussion began. See, I said it seemed like a bit of a leap, but just give it some time and I’ll always find a way to help us get where we’re going. At least in regard to the verses and our discussions about them, and that with more than a lot of help from He who seeks our every such growth in such wisdom as we thus so clearly should.

Which is the point. Growth. Maturity. The very triage of what training so often feels like. It’s the overall design of all of mankind, that we, though beginning as babies who grow into infants who become little children who, being but the sponge-like absorbers of all sorts of advice and instruction thanks to brains forming and thus life being learned, grow to become adults who are, at least hopefully, somewhat functional within that capacity.

But are we?

Are we functional beings? Are we functioning at all? Or rather are we just human beings, which seems to have become something of a sad goal itself. Human beings. Just humans being. That seems, most days at least, all we care to experience in this life. Just being. Just breathing. Just sort of hanging out trying hard to avoid the finding out of any of our failures or flaws so as to not ever feel obligated to anything other than the flesh who has long since accepted our defeat at the hands of death.

Indeed, we live as if we’re just fine should this life truly turn out to be nothing but death and taxes. But friends, what is that of a life’s expectations?

Are we truly so obtuse as to refuse to peruse the possible purposes and paths by which something better, or in our case, everything better, might actually be found? Are we really content with the current content of a culture crumbling into what’s becoming a quite cancerous confusion? Are we good with continuing ahead still vastly lost within the delusion that all but demands we both design our every ideal and thus deny everything and everyone who dares speak then still of something forever better?

That’s literally the only reason that so many still hate Jesus so vividly. He still stands upon the Word He breathed before life began that spoke of a much better outcome than whatever this is that we’ve managed to find outside of that Garden and quite far from our right mind. Do we even know what a right mind is? And how can we when we’ve never really had one?

For a right mind would lead us to doing right, wouldn’t it? And yet, have we done everything right? Have we even done half of the things right? Have we gotten 25% right? 10%? 5%? 1%?

Or don’t we realize that since we cannot so calculate the amount of things we’ve gotten right proves us also unable to understand just how much we’ve gotten wrong? But still, as we’ve been talking about of late, that we’ve ever experienced such things as guilt or remorse prove us to have gotten things wrong. And if we’ve gotten things wrong, then we’ve not gotten them right. And to have not gotten something right means that our minds weren’t right. And this proves that we’ve not been in our right mind.

Which is something perhaps far easier to realize when you read that Word which says that “whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction.” Or, and maybe less eloquently as shared within our verse from yesterday, the verse just after this one, “if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” Because, well, “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.”

And from this we can rather simply deduce that the Spirit desires life, which was also perhaps found far easier within the reality that God created us to live, and then even came in Christ who gave His life for us to be found within His victory over our death.

It’s all been there literally forever. But that we’ve either missed it or misplaced it is pretty much all we need to know as far as a reason to not go any further leaning on ourselves to do or be much of anything.

Which is the problem. Because the fact is that all of us have lived this life, or at least our part of it, within what seems a quite adamant obligation unto the flesh. I mean, we seek every single day for any feasible way to please the flesh be it through food, fun, frivolity, foolishness, friendships, fornication, fortunes, fountains of youth and whatnot. We’ve long sought what we don’t need because the flesh tells us a different story in which needs and wants are used interchangeably, if not backward altogether.

But friends, that’s the point. It’s that our continuing to walk backward is pretty much the worst possible way to ever get anywhere other than wherever we’ve already been. And if we never get anywhere other than wherever we’ve already been, then we’ll never be anyone but who we’ve already been. And having been living to please the flesh for so long as we have, continuing to remain so unchanged and unchallenged as the world around us delights to be, then all we can continue to receive is the destruction that we’ve been told all flesh reaps.

Because all flesh knows is to sow unto the same. For the flesh simply doesn’t care about what’s best. The flesh just wants what’s easy, what’s normal, what seems safe and sound fun. That is literally all we’ve come to care about. And yet the Gospel of Christ doesn’t really have anything to do with any of those things being seen as being anywhere near of the sort of vital importance that we’ve long considered them to be. In fact, His story reads pretty much void of all the above!

Why then continue expecting to see them in our lives? And even worse, why feel comfortable when they’re actually found in our lives?

For the Word reads of a warning that never really leaves my mind. “They will have had their reward.” Insinuating that no further rewarding is seen as being due. Meaning then that the best will have already come, leaving then nothing to be found that’s in any way better. Leaving then all those who find their life within this world to lose it without then another life to find having in their worldly life not found reason to find the Life.

And that, my friends, is the saddest ending to any story ever possibly lived. Because all of us have been invited into a share of His victory over death.

Problem is that it comes only in our sharing of His sacrifice of the flesh.

And well, when living still looking to the world to tell us what to do, denying the flesh probably isn’t going to happen any time soon.

But time is running out.

So, do we stay? Do we go? Where do we look for what we haven’t found? To those still obviously looking themselves, but obviously still inside their clear obligation to pleasing flesh, pleasing people who do the same? Or to He who denied the flesh and found a life waiting on the other side of the one lain down?

Friends, as much as Jesus is the Life, so too is He thus the Way to it. And no matter what we’ve done because of what we’ve believed at the hands of humans who are all but insistent upon remaining obligated to the flesh, that He is the Way to the Life is just the Truth.

And that He felt obliged to lay down His life only gives us every reason to understand that we’re now obligated to do the same. For if we want the same outcome, well, logic tells us we have to offer the same input.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold