Day 3742 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 13:14 NIV

Foreigners and exiles.

Seems that so much would be squished or squashed should we come unto that point and place in which our daily desires are not driven by that common human demand to all but feel at home again. Which is what does indeed design so many of our depraved disasters and selfish tragedies. It’s this overall longing for a place of belonging, a deep-seeded understanding that we were made for more than where we’re standing and what we’ve stood for because of it having been what it’s become.

Yes, we know we need a home, but it feels as if the problem is just that we still allow our hopes to be housed within tenement triumphs and the tattered trophies won within them.

Because those things are what matter here. It’s all about what we have as hoisted high as if to try and tell the world that we’re both really alive and doing some pretty impressive things with our lives. And yet our understanding of impressive has been largely impressed upon us by those inspired by the desire of a heart still so woefully wandering that it’s really no wonder that we know neither who we are nor when we’re going. Well, I contend that we all do understand that last one.

We just don’t like to think about it.

And why? Because as much as everyone seems to love the summer for all the beach vacations and burnt hot dogs destroyed on the grill because the badminton got a little heated, the fact is that we’ve only so much ability to enjoy the higher temperatures. Sun burns aren’t much fun, dehydration can become an issue, the beaches fill up (both with people and their trash), and well, at some point the fun just sort of wears thin.

Sort of like the time we’ve left within which to realize that our ignoring a massive problem neither makes it smaller nor then can ever make it go away.

The problem in this case being eternal fire.

Not quite as enjoyable as fireworks and baseball.

Which is why we don’t talk about it. It’s why we don’t think about. In fact, it’s why we spend the vast majority of our lives looking for any possible way to become so very distracted to the entire dilemma that we needn’t even admit it there to worry about at all. But again, not worrying about a problem never proves it a problem not worrisome. Instead it just leaves us all but perpetually unable to do anything about it.

Rather we just awake each day to wrap another layer of the lost around our hearts as we set them once more unto the seeking to store inside ourselves treasures that we’re already widely convinced are there and thus easy to find. Indeed, what’s easier to find than pleasure for the flesh when the flesh knows well what’s most pleasing? It’s like this perfect little scenario in which we’ve become our very own source of our very own inspiration as to the investigation of every possible place or location in which we might feel pleasure, be pleased, please another perhaps.

Yes, all of life has basically devolved into the general devaluing of ourselves, and thus one another, into nothing more than pitiable pools of praise and popularity seeking always only the profit of that power that such prizes offer the pride which seeks them.

We are nothing but dogs chasing our own tails, or sniffing behind one another wondering both who they really are and where they’re going.

Not because we really care about where any of us will end up, but rather just because we crave the camaraderie. Guess you could say that we’re just trying really hard to hold tight to that Scripture that calls blessed those who’ve someone with which to walk as proven within the hope of thus having another to either lean upon when we’re weak or look toward when we’ve fallen within that weakness and need there a hand to help us back up.

Just seem then to have ironically missed the other passages which says that “one who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin.” Or that “friendship with the world means enmity with God.” Or how our “still trying to please people” basically puts the kibosh on our ability to “be a servant of Christ” because “the fear of man will prove to be a snare.”

Not that we consider our seeking of selfish satisfaction at the hands of the hopes of those around us to be a “fear”, but is not fear basically why we do much if not most of what we do? I mean, we go to work because we’re afraid of starving or losing our houses. We vote in political elections because we’re afraid of our ideals being considered unpopular for a few years. We watch sports and pay attention to the weather forecast because we’re afraid of not having something to add to the typical small-talk that anymore encompasses the vast majority of our daily interactions with other human beings.

We do all of these things out of some sort of fear. And so it’s not saying that we’re afraid of people, but friends, trying so hard to stay on the world’s good side that we end up doing and saying only what the world does and expects to hear, well, that’s pretty much the problem itself.

It’s that we’ve become quite impressively convinced that our lives are to be best lived only when we live them in regard to some sort of flesh and it being pleased. Might be ours, most likely, might be that of another, probably the case as well, may simply be the both as combined into an entire lifetime spent paying so much attention to culture’s clues and our own personal cravings that we may in fact all but completely forget that living to please what’s never proven to have lasted is quite the foolish undertaking to have yet been undertaken by all of us.

Indeed, we’re all fools because we all pay attention to flesh.

Be it the desires we allow inside, not that they’re always invited from outside of us, many of them start within and we just allow them to hang around until their well-rooted and daily-watered, or the demands of those around us, the fact is that the flesh is arguably our greatest source of both inspiration and thus too instigation. Yes, the fallen flesh has all but redefined what we now consider best. For anymore we live as if it’s best to be comfortable, to be wealthy, to be popular, to be loved in fact.

And don’t get me wrong, while love is a truly great gift that we can all give unto one another, the issue then becomes that love doesn’t lie but rather loves lays. As in down a life as opposed to holding tight to one lived within the many deceptions demanded to continue living as if the fallen desires of the flesh can ever produce fruit in keeping with life, and thus us alive.

Which should be the goal, albeit one that seems quite selfish on the surface.

But friends, is wanting to go on living something we should be ashamed of? Christ himself literally died for us to have the opportunity, and so no, I don’t see it as something silly or foolish or even selfish. Not at all. In fact, anyone who doesn’t want to live probably has some truly profound issues that need to be addressed as quickly as possible. Because that isn’t healthy. It isn’t normal. And yet it’s far more normal than any of us could ever bring ourselves to admit.

In fact, it’s anymore so very normal to not want to live that each of us daily do things, say things, think things or believe things that grow from or toward a place of death. For such is what sin is, and thus our doing or saying or thinking anything that doesn’t revolve around Christ who is the Life and thus calls us to do our share of what He died to prove is right, it’s death.

Knowing the right thing to do and failing to do it is sin and sin is death. And the issue then comes in that we’ve long equated right with good, and thus anymore it’s only whatever feels good that we think the right thing to do. It’s truly a quite slippery slope once you set foot on it! Because again, living to please the parts of us that will not live forever, well, that’s just stupid no matter when you come around to realizing it.

But as with most problems, especially those of the eternal size, it’s usually best to catch them quick.

Because problems as big as sin aren’t really those the likes of leaky faucets. Sure, given enough time, a small leak could flood a house. But time isn’t small and it’s leaking in ways that we can’t realize at the moment. And well, He’s promised that it’s not flooding that we have to worry about anyway.

It’s fire. And again, there’s only so much fun to be had in the sun before our skin is burnt and we’ve passed out from heat exhaustion.

Friends, all playful honestly aside, the fact is that for long enough we’ve lived that normal human way as lived everyday seeking only to always please the flesh as if we’re either our very own treasure or can readily, and thus easily, find our true worth within the desires we have inside what remain hearts deceptive beyond all things. And thus our continuing to live being so daily deceived into our continuing to believe that it’s perfectly acceptable to put the flesh first only continues to keep us from understanding the true gravity of what Jesus did for us.

In fact, I’m convinced that most still think that it was the actions and intentions of man that held Him to that cross.

Because we’ve come to consider ourselves just that powerful and important. We think of ourselves as kings and queens in charge of legions of fans, friends and followers who all amount to only a small fraction of how impressive we think we are. But that’s the problem. We’re not impressive because those still impressed with what caused His death are thus themselves only impressed with death. And we see this in basically every movie and tv show these days.

We love brutality, and if left that way long enough, make no mistake, we’ll end up with more than our fair share of it!

Which is why it’s not selfish to want to live, not foolish either. For none should so desire the demise that is desire. For what the flesh desires is contrary to what the Spirit does. And what the Spirit desires is what God desires because God is the Spirit, the Savior, the Father. He created us to desire what He desires, not what the world has become because of a fallen flesh that’s long been allowed to run wild.

Rather He created us, and now calls us to return, to live self-controlled and upright lives fully embracing the reality of our responsibility to be good stewards of the many gifts given us. And among the most priceless of all is the gift of life itself. And simply put, it makes absolutely no sense to spend a life living to die. No sense whatsoever.

So why then do we do it? Why do we choose it? Why do we approve it? Why don’t we understand that warning we’re given as to the possibility of our being condemned because of what we’ve approved? Friends, sin isn’t worth our time because it can’t give us more of it. No matter how good it may feel or however fun so many others will continue to say it is, it isn’t fun that we’re here to have. Rather we’re here to have life and it to the full.

What is there filling about all the things that leave us empty?

And believe me, there is no more hollow experience than continue to allow the flesh to house our every hope. Because no matter what we can find, how great it may feel or however long we might hope said hope to last, it doesn’t! I’ve never once done anything seeking to please the flesh that ended up feeling great. In fact, I’ve done things trying to please the flesh that keep me awake at night.

And nobody loves feeling exhausted from a night spent reliving past mistakes!

Which is why we need to rest from our lives spent running after the flesh seeking the ways in which we can satisfy all of its fallen desires. It just makes sense. Doesn’t it? That the longer we keep doing what doesn’t fulfill the longer we’ll feel unfulfilled?

Which is why Christ chose to fill the tomb. It was to empty it of its power, and to then inspire us to stop living the sort of life that gave it that power to begin with. All of mankind now must die because of the sins in which and for which we’ve all chosen to live. But thanks be to God who gave us His Son who died so as to send forth the Spirit whom all can now receive and thus be clothed in Christ himself, and thus too share in that victory He’s won over all of what we’ve become.

Friends, He died to both give us life and also to show us what to do with it. And His example isn’t one focused on feeling good, having fun, making friends, setting trends. For there will never be anything trendy about living responsibly. And thus we’ll not make many friends should we choose to live like Christ, or at least as close as He can get us. But friends, that’s the whole point. He is the Way that leads toward the Life. And He showed us that the way there is through surrender, sacrifice, suffering even.

What then makes us think that life should all about feeling good and having fun? I don’t think anyone would consider crucifixion much of either!

And yet that act gave life to all who turn and repent of their hell-bent ways and seek instead to store their treasures in Heaven rather than continuing to seek them among the heathen.

The point is that there are but two directions in life, and while there is a way that seems good to man, in the end it leads to death because it knows only to follow the desires designed within either deceptive hearts or blinded eyes. And friends, being both blind and deceived isn’t a good way to get us anywhere other than lost! And again, we’ve already been there long enough!

Which is why He came to do a new thing as done within His denying the flesh, even unto death, so as to both show us what life is and where we should seek to find it. And no, it’s not among a world that is passing away. No, life is found in laying it down as that is all we can do that can ever begin to show that we trust the Son who laid His down for us.

For if we’ll not take up our crosses and follow His way, then we’re not worthy of Him and thus will not win what He won for us to have.

Which is life. He came in the flesh to die to the same to show us that we too should do the same if we ever hope to truly live.

It’s simple folks. Let’s stop letting the flesh make it seem so impossible.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold