Day 3775 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:23 NIV

Won in warning

For such is what much of life truly is as it’s but a continuous contention both against what life isn’t and thus for what life is and thus a fight that we’ve proven so very bad at getting right that we do truly need as much help as the Light of life might be willing still to give. And the fact that He is still so willing is something of a feeling of hope that is so utterly unlike any other that I’ve left no other idea as to what my life might mean if it doesn’t mean to make Him seem the only life there is to live.

Even if that’s best or even perhaps only done in my laying bare for all to see what’s become of the me I used to be as met today with all I’m so often struggling to understand in regard to the working of His hand as is still somehow holding me together despite a past spent trying to rip myself apart.

And indeed, we’ve done just that for so long now that it’s like we don’t know what else to do in life, with life, to life. Indeed, all our lives we’ve lived as if life was nothing more than some experiment in which we could freely awake each and every day to merely do whatever we wanted to within the hopes of something finally managing to prove a fulfillment to the strange interpretations we’ve all but insisted hope should be.

Yeah, looking back I cannot now seem to believe the many confusions and delusions that I once lived all but convinced were the houses of hope itself. And sadly I know that this is a truth spoken perfectly well for all of us for all of us have done things and gone after things thinking hope held within them only get them and find nothing or even fail to catch them and find a hopeful outcome anyway. And it’s in this that I’ve found that we have no idea what we’re doing.

For we’ve all tried countless ideas seeking to find hope or feel as if our lives mean something only to have stumbled upon both hope and meaning in the places we never imagined them being while finding only shame and sorrow hiding in those places we assumed hope to be waiting.

And it’s all of this living as if life is best left to a series of tumultuous trial and error that we seem to have embraced this erroneous idea that we’re good enough at living life that we needn’t much help at all.

Or at least that’s what pride would have us think simply because arrogance knows no such ability to understand the concept of struggle as met with consequence as laid perfectly clear well before any action is undertaken. And indeed, whether or not we feel inclined to agree to such today, the fact is that we will all confess at some point that we’ve always understood the right things to do, or at the very least the potential consequences of the things that didn’t seem all that wrong to do.

And thus we’ve all known all along that life wasn’t meant to be either lived nor thus found within the doing of anything that carries either a cost we can’t pay or brings about an outcome we never even pretended to want.

Such as death and sin of which the wage it wins.

No, we have all known for as long as we can pretend we haven’t that we have in fact known the difference between right and wrong as met within promises and warnings as given us by either the Word of God or simply some other foundation as has been the basis of however we’ve come to live our lives. For the fact is that the living of life is only done upon the firmament of choices made. And regardless of whether or not we can know the specifics as to the outcome or not, we all know that every action has a cost attached.

Because all of us have felt shame, all of us have been embarrassed, all of us have experienced regret, and yes, likely far more common a realization to help us understand the point, we’ve also recognized the wrongs that others are doing.

Whether or not such judgement is right or worth all that much is a matter for another day. The point for today is that we’ve all learned quite a lot in regard to the difference between right and wrong and thus we’re all, whether we ever choose to live like it or not, we’re all responsible for said knowledge and the cost to be paid for our ever failing to uphold said gift in what should have always been a righteous manner.

No, rather than living lives that clearly sought to honor God alone, and that done always, we’ve instead always done something that was some measure of everything lesser. And it’s this continually failing to revere God that’s left us quite far from as near God as His will and Word were meant to inspire us to remain.

In fact, we’re so far gone from that hope that we don’t really even know what hope is anymore.

Again, we’ve all come to place hope in a great many things that only turned out to prove its opposite.

Which brings me to our question of the day: What if His many stern warnings, such as this one so clearly seems to begin with, are only there meant to stir inside of us and our long-slumbering souls the awakening of our understanding as to both what hope is and what hope does?

For again, as we talked about a few days ago, hope doesn't ever come by surprise. And so, despite our having lived to have been so often surprised by hope either not being where or in what we thought it would or thus it being found in or where we never imagined it could, why then continue to live our lives to be only at their end there surprised by the arrival of a hope that we'll by then have obviously never known having never known it when we could have had it in what was a life rather lived only to have all the hopes that, by then, will have instead passed away alongside the old way of life that's too then done the same?

Because this world and its way is passing away. And this is a problem because the way of this world is the one we’ve walked as well. And well, since the world has earned the passing away, and we’ve done so much of what the world has, then so too are we found as having earned the very same perishing. And thus we find the warning as written within this word that says that the wages of sin is death. Meaning then that as sinners who’ve sinned we’ve earned a wage of death.

This means that sinning is equal to dying as every sin is a choice made to forgo the leading of Christ for what is instead a continuation of the common way of life spent doing the same.

And as of today we’re all so wealthy in all that’s worldly that it’s all but impossible to tell the difference between us and here. Rather, and this I fear, we’ve come to become what seems but reflections of the many rebellions that are sparked inside this effort to prove that since we’ve the right to do wrong doing wrong is then what we shouldn’t have to worry about having done.

Proving quite obviously that we’ve so vastly confused promises and warnings that we’ve basically come to misunderstand most of everything else as well. Because, well, when the heart loses the ability to appreciate the division between that which is meant to inspire and that meant only to correct so as inspiration might have its affect, well, I don’t know that much else has much of a chance anymore either.

No, and sadly we can know this for sure because our world is anymore so confused that it seems all we know to do is fight and argue about who’s right and why we’re always the only ones who can be. But you see, what I don’t understand is how fighting to prove ourselves as knowing something is ever supposed to help when knowing something only brings upon us a furthered responsibility as is met within all knowledge.

For if we know something then we’re tasked with the use of that knowledge in what is the best possible way. Thus meaning that the more we know, or at least pretend we do, the more then we’ll have to possibly answer for should we happen to ever get anything wrong. You know, kind of like all those times that we looked for hope where we were just sure it was waiting only to end up finding it where we were all but certain it couldn’t be.

Yeah, not really looking good in terms of our knowing as much as we’ve long wanted to believe.

In fact a fact proven even further, and largely more fatally, in that we have known, at least far more often than we’ve now the courage to confess, the right things to do as only met in the moment that a choice regarding the matter showed itself with our doing the contrary. Yes, we’ve often known the right thing to do only to do otherwise for whatever of likely a billion reasons at this point.

But each of them though proving the point that we need as much help as we can possibly get from whomever has the best ability to offer us the help we need.

You know, kind of like the God who made us?

Seems like a pretty good place to look!

But, as we talked about a bit yesterday, the struggle there becomes that when we do look to Him for the help we all know we need, well, what all do we see? We see promises. We see truth. We see compassion and kindness and more than a lot of understanding as offered us constantly from He who somehow remains patient enough with all of us to give us these daily gifts called ‘today’ in which He watches us, mostly, continue only to waste them upon the doing of things that are largely the same as every day prior.

And well, what do we see when we look His way in light that? We see warnings. We see corrections. We see rebuking and pruning and the promise of even an outcome of, as was the verse for yesterday’s post, “shame and everlasting contempt.” Indeed, within His Word we read of the promise of unending death!

Probably not at all what any of us wanted to find having gone looking for hope.

Which is precisely why so many continue to live a life in which they continue to deny the Name that is Christ as was given from within our grave to from within there save we who are all destined to perish thanks to lives having been lived for things aimed unto the same.

Yes, as was our discussion yesterday, we love many if not most of the promises found and/or offered us from the Word of God but we equally despise the many warnings aimed at the very altering of our lives as is needed to change us from those wealthy in sin’s wage into those broken of the same. Yes, any who think themselves wise within the ways of this world should seek instead to become fools to the same so that they might finally because wise actually.

Even that has what feels the air of a warning as won within where wisdom is and how we’ve thus been looking for it in the wrong places as well.

Just like hope. Or healing. Or happiness. Or meaning. Indeed, I dare say that we’ve been looking for everything in only the places where nothing is waiting. At least nothing we ever wanted to find. Like ourselves wealthy but in the wrong way. For I’d say that there’s nothing much to brag about in our being rich in death!

No, doesn’t seem there’s much room for life in that.

Which is why God does all He tries. And He tries all He does because He both wants all to come unto repentance from a life lived sinning against Him but also knows that such must be a choice as otherwise it’s not the person’s voice speaking but rather only them repeating what they think another might want to hear.

And while we’re really good at that around here, there’s an express expectation of honesty in God’s vicinity.

And so our simply saying what we think He wants to hear isn’t going to accomplish all that much. In fact we read in His Word that He’s wise to the difference. For people honor Him with their lips whilst their hearts remain far apart. So no, we’re not fooling Him, only rather ourselves any time that we think we might.

Which is what we need to stop doing altogether. Fooling ourselves. Because the fact is that there’s simply no amount of denial or rejection or arrogance that will ever accomplish an ability to erase what we’ve done. No, only humility and surrender can do that. And in fact He’s shown this so beautifully that the cross still stands perpetually as if that banner hoisted by Moses for all who needed healing.

And friends, we all need healing!

And so God tries. He offers us the promise of new lives, and that should we accept this gift of spiritual renewal, so too shall we then find the hope and joy of the promise of eternal life. And He even goes further than that within what are warnings given to help complete the clarity of His calling all of us to turn from our sinful ways and seek His instead.

Yes, His Word is read in both promise and warning, both working in unison to do all that can be offered to get through these brick walls of betrayal and disbelief that we’ve all lived building as if our lives depended upon it.

No, our lives only depend upon them coming down.

Which is why He offers us every hammer we might possibly need to raze them in exchange for raised hands aimed at honoring Him rather than merely continuing to live pleasing ourselves.

For worldly pleasure can last but a moment more. Eternal life is instead promised to last forever.

And well, when the hope of never again dying or suffering or experiencing any of the many miseries we’ve made for ourselves and of ourselves within the sinful ways we’ve walked by ourselves, yeah, when the hope of freedom and forgiveness is on the table, I don’t see how it could matter how we get there.

Because let’s face it, they just ain’t where we are. For in this life we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God seeking instead to glorify the flesh that is, in light of this, now promised death as having won such a wage in the same. Thankfully He offers us His amazing promises to give us something better to aim for, hope toward.

But perhaps just as good if not even better, He also gives us warnings that help us see the many alternatives that lie in wait for those who live life in wait as if something better might come along.

Friends, there is nothing better than eternal life, and thus nothing worse than our continuing to live a way of life that has kept us from finding it.

Again, we should be thankful that He not only promises us the opportunity of something better but that He also gives us a clarity as to the outcome of everything lesser, which is sadly everything we’ve lived for.

Let us begin today living for something more. And let us, in that, welcome the brutality of the truth as won within every promise and every warning. For again, if hope is the offer, it can’t matter how we get there.

And there’s nothing more hopeful than our losing our wealth as won in the death that we’ve lived at the clear loss then of a wealth of life as was always walked only His Way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold