Day 3751 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 7:23 NIV

A tale of two tryings.

Each one overcoming the other in what often feels a never-ending tussle between the good I want to do, the good I know to do and the everything other that I do anyway. And try as I have, still it seems so often that nothing I do can make sense of the blue that’s gone so gray inside of this day in which the sun is shining but the mind is winding through so many questions that I never knew to ask in regard to a past now passed without any way to go back and unmake the mistakes that led me here to where I’ve left me here in what feels a fear of it all falling either fully apart or finally into place.

Trying to hold it all together whilst also excited to see what may be as can become only inside the fallout of letting it go.

And it’s a strange life to try to know, this one in which all we’ve known becomes all we can’t stand to know anymore. It’s something of a selfish rejection of self at the hands of a necessity so dire that dying to self becomes almost something of a delight, even though we don’t really know how to do it well. And perhaps we’re not meant to as, well, there is nothing natural, at least in our sinful nature, about letting go of the sins we sought to want and win within what’s been a life in which we’ve done just fine all this time.

No, there’s really no rational rationale to the rejection of the royally rewarding as found within the way of life we’ve lived underneath crowns of confusion and delusion that have designed inside a mind that now wages war against itself. Or at least needs to. And this battle becomes that dire necessity just discussed in light of that Word which said that none can serve two masters for they will be devoted to one whilst detesting the other, or will love one while only learning to despise the other.

Either way, we can’t walk in both directions of a definitely diverging path.

Life just don’t work like that. And yet, what I think we’ll find we’ve found, eventually perhaps, is that nor then can we work like that. Why? Because the more we come to know, the more we’ll come to realize we got wrong within all those days in which we either didn’t know what we’ve come to learn or simply didn’t live as if we knew what we likely did all along. And while this can be a fairly harmless experience in regard to many things in life, when it comes to such things as faith and reason and godliness, getting wrong what we could have gotten right is not really something all that conducive to feeling all that great about ourselves.

Which I contend was never actually the point of life. We’ve just made it the main priority in our lives, and thus, having become so widespread and common to see, it’s become what we all seem to assume as the meaning, reason, purpose for our path too. But then there’s that war still underway! For indeed, friendship with the world means still enmity against God as, well, bad company still vastly corrupts good character.

And thus, when found within a fealty to our many friendships with those who may well think our faith to be foolish, well, chances are we’re going to keep hearing or seeing enough of a life being lived as if faith is foolish that we may well hold to some of those ideas that we ourselves know we’ve known in the past.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, not because there’s any reason or reward waiting to be won within so doing. No, but simply because all of us have, as sinners who’ve sinned and thus fallen short of the glory of God, we’ve thus been slaves to sin and have thus become of the mind that minds not the way of life lived in love and thus lost within what is sin.

Which is knowing the right thing to do and still finding only a way or reason to not do it.

Which is the war that is to be waged within, no matter whether or not we think we need to or thus ever will. No, there is only a whenever and wherever in regard to this battle line being drawn. It will come for us all, but I contend that blessed are those to whom it comes within this life in which we’ve time to do our losing before there’s nothing left to gain.

Hence the rain.

It’s a matter made miserable amongst many of the most that live as if the sun is all that makes for a decent day. And yet it causes crops to grow, washes streets and sidewalks and cars clean, give water to the lakes and oceans from which we gather either food or fun, enhances the very life of everything as it causes the green of spring to spring to life from the cold dormancy of the winter that I myself have always quite preferred.

Just strange like that I suppose.

And yet I’ve always wondered why I was among the scarce few who preferred both the winter and the rain. Always wondered if it had something to do with an unrecognized depression that had set in to what’s long been a life in which smiling comes easy but the mind doesn’t always seem able to see why or how. No, seems for years that I’ve been in this battle waged against myself in what are ways that I’ve never sought to unpack, much the same as all the things still cluttering this new room in our new house.

Indeed, so much of life is never allowed to sink in because I think we’re afraid that we’ll sink in ourselves. Because I think all of us know that there are some things we’ve not unpacked. I think we all understand that there are a few questions that we’ve left unasked. I think we all realize that there is a lot of life we haven’t seen through what are eyes that we’ve yet to admit might be a bit more blind than that we’ve ever wanted to believe.

Yes, I think we all know well this war that is already well underway. It’s just that there’s something alive in us that has us still mostly convinced that there’s another way to the freedom we don’t have that doesn’t involve the loss of the things that are keeping from enjoying the freedom we don’t have. Things like doubt and denial, idea and idol, preference and opinion, pride always preferring only the easiest of option.

Because easy we can handle, and thus pride finds great reward in that because the things we can handle are also the things we can hold high in order to show the world how great we are at doing a good job of what was never hard enough to cause enough of a challenge to risk changing us for the better.

No, we hate the idea of better, and not because we wouldn’t like a few things to experience such improvement, no, but rather because we’ve spent the vast majority of our past lost in the opinion that we were already there. In fact, we’ve long thought that we were not only already better but in fact the very best we could be. Or at least I know I did. And that I can admit that now is seemingly what keeps this war waging inside my mind.

Yes, the rain has picked up inside of me, and every day is but a downpour. Just then a matter of the measuring I suppose.

Indeed, how deep does it go, this drowning of a self inside itself? How far must we go into the realizing of our many past mistakes? How many times must we walk by the mirror and see only a stranger scowling back at us? How many days do we have left of this war being waged with us in between? How do we still find so many ways in which to settle for staying put in the middle?

I don’t want the middle anymore. I don’t want to continue living a life in which I scuttle my true outlook for the sake of being found in agreement with someone over something so trivial as the weather. I don’t care if everyone loves summer and thinks that the rain is a monster of mundanity. I like it, and too, not a fan of summer.

But in the end, what does it matter what we like or may have learned to love? We’re leaving it all!

And this is the war!!

It’s that waged within our every day in which we walk within the realization that we’re living a life that’s ending, and thus that we’ve only so much time remaining in which to figure out what we need to find, face, force or feel before our faces can’t find any way out of what we’ll be then forced to feel. Which is humility. Yes, we’re told plainly that every knee will bow and tongue follow in confession of a life lived in regression either away from God or rather away from whatever we’d allowed to lead us away from Him.

Yes, this is the gravity of our life! It’s found within our finding within that realization as to the many missteps we’ve taken and the mistakes we’ve lived making in what’s long been a life lived as if all that mattered was only all we wanted. And having become of that mind in which all that matters is all we want to find, force, feel or experience, and therein lived for years if not decades, we’ve now a true fight on our hands and in our hearts and of our minds as they’ll find that who we’ve been isn’t who we were made to be.

Will we stay then becoming the obvious quandary.

Indeed, will we stay who we’ve become in a life that’s become so filled with fairly equal parts pride and problem? Will we continue to seek out some middle ground between His mercy and our complacency? Will we keep convincing ourselves to agree unto this self-perceived need to do as we please whilst finding within the aftermath only another meeting with hindsight asking us to sit down as we need to have a talk? Will we learn to listen more than we speak about all we’ve wanted to hear?

Will itching ears and blinded eyes remain allowed to lead the way to our being only where we already are?

Will we ever dare to ask the questions that we know we can’t answer in a way that’s both honest and safe?

I have a lot of those questions that I’ve been afraid to ask myself in light of how much damage to self I knew they’d do. So many memories to work through, regrets to wade through, shame to walk through and life to get to. But perhaps that really is the only way to the Life we haven’t lived. For to follow Christ is to walk in war as waged against the very sin that we’ve all been for longer than our minds want to remember.

But we will, for such is the promise ahead. We will remember all we’ve done when asked for a reason by the Father of the Son, the Christ then the only hope we’ll have there of any answer to give. Why? Because nobody wins in a war as someone hurts while the other gets hurt. One kills while the other dies. One wounds and the other is left to carry the scars. And oddly enough, we’ve been both in every such scenario within this war that is the outcome a life lived in love with sin.

We have been the ones hurting ourselves by doing the things we’ve known better than to do and pretending the shame didn’t hurt. We’ve been the ones inflicting the wounds as won within guilt and regret that we still carry from things we did years ago. And thus we’ve too been the ones holding the ability to keep killing the better we could have become by now, and thus too the ones who have to deal with the many deaths our better self has died over the years spent not caring.

And it sucks, all this honesty as found at the hands of who we’ve been having never been who we wanted to be. But friends, we’re gonna get there eventually. Why not here? Why not now? Why not take this day and face the fact that we’ve started this war and that we’ve thus no way out of it but through yet another being waged.

Indeed, we can either continue fighting to continue feeling as if all we’re doing is justifiable in its being done. Or we can start fighting to quit doing what we now know isn’t justifiable at all.

For sin has no welcome in God’s presence, and so if we truly hope to find the Life that is His presence, well then we’ve got a sin problem to figure out. And well, thankfully He’s already shown us the best way to handle sin. Unfortunately, the best way to handle sin is to die to the flesh that craves it.

Hence the call to take up our crosses and follow!

And sure, this, again, seems quite the unnatural thing to consider to a sinful nature. But, knowing the hope of where He’s gone as met with the hopelessness we often feel in regard to where we are, doesn’t really seem like we’ve much to lose.

Other than everything.

And while that is in fact the fight of our lives, this losing of everything we’ve come to live for, that He’s already won this war gives us more than enough reason to fight as if we can’t lose. Yes, that empty grave proves that we can literally lose everything and still walk away winners.

But friends, for there to be a winner there must be a competition, a struggle, a battle, a war. And thus we have to risk who we are if we’re to ever find out who He died for us to be. But to do that, we have to be willing to die to the life we’ve lived. And yes, that is a truly hard thing to consider as it seems like giving up all we’ve ever known. But that’s the thing about freedom.

It’s not free.

And so if we want to walk in freedom, we have to be willing to fight for it. And make no mistake, we fight this war not alone but with He who came with the express purpose of leading the way to the ultimate victory. Let us just never forget the misery He experienced along the way. For indeed, if we’re to share in His victory over death, well, so too should we understand that we’ll be expected to share in His dying to the flesh.

Very much a war indeed!

It’s not easy, this dying to self everyday. It’s not easy sitting inside a mind so filled with questions to be asked in regard to how we got so lost. It’s not fun to face the fact that we’ve fallen so far away from who and what we were made to be. But friends, better is worth whatever it asks. And His ask is clear. And so too is the better promised unto those who embrace this fight and learn to see it as very good indeed.

Not that it will feel good to face our failures or find our flaws. But that in facing them we too learn to confess them as the enemies they’ve always been. And friends, feeling that shame is one of the very best things to help inspire us to try harder to do better going forward along the way to where we, in Christ, have the chance to be. Just know that that chance won’t last forever.

So welcome the war, for it’s coming one way or another.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold