Day 3777 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 41:10 NIV

Problems implied

And they as met within what are promises given in the wake of implied warnings. For such is what seems of the many strange ways within which God works for what is the good of those who love Him and are living their lives thus as those called by Him unto the good works that He prepared for them to do in response to all that He’s done and continues to. Yes, He does work in many ways most mysterious, and while the parable as presented in what is a story of sorts is one of the most well-known, I find that it’s verses like this that speak to something of a riddle as wrapped within an inability for most to look deeper.

But alas, such is where the marrow of mercy always waits!

For indeed, just as much as there is much to faith unseen so too then should we always seek to wonder further and wander there deeper into what is the deepest depths of His design, at least as deep as we creeps might be invited to go. And indeed, He does call us in perpetually close in what is a growing of both repentance and its awareness then of a widening reliance upon He who is goodness and justice in person.

Yes, such is why He invites us in despite where we’ve been and the many things we’ve done without reason whilst there. For let us honest as always we should, there’ve been a great many moments in life in which we’ve lived for the moment without a care nor caution as to the cost or consequence to be met just beyond that moment leaving. And yet we’ve always known the brevity of our satiety as we’ve known many a moment to pass, all of them in fact.

And so as to why still we live as if some might not go by so fast, well, I both don’t know that it will matter much in the end at this point but also that it should probably matter more than ever before as the point comes closer and the curtain starts closing.

Because such is the promise of life in this world. It’s ending, and that for both everyone and everything. Yes, this world and all within it is passing away, and yes, this is most certainly a massive problem. Why? Because we’ve become of the mind that’s so vastly intent upon taking time for granted that we likely haven’t any real ability left to number our days as in so doing we were called for the express purpose of our realizing their number fading.

Indeed, we’re running out of both time and word and yet still live as if we’ve such an excess of both that we can just use them upon what either may not matter or might even prove a matter most monstrous before too much longer.

How much longer? Well, nobody knows. We just instead know that everybody goes where so many have already gone. Where have they went? Well, can’t really say for sure as none who are here have yet proven able to have been there and come back. Now, there are stories of comas and such in which lights are seen and Heaven better imagined, but beyond what it in and of itself a momentary break from consciousness, no, none of us have left here to see what’s left when we’ve left here.

All we know is what’s here, but that hopefully with the faith that offers to help guide through what here we’re still to go through.

A faith that speaks in riddles such as this one of implied problems.

We’ve been talking about this a lot of late, this idea of our blurring the necessity of both promise and warning as done in light of our not enjoying the wording of the latter nearly as much as the profit of the former. No, we all love promises because they make hope easy as they tell us where to aim. Warnings though, no, we hate those because they remind of the many through what’s that we’ll have to walk and war before we’ll have found that promised ground of a hope’s profit.

Mostly we just hate problems as they’re indeed quite troubling, and as I riffed a bit yesterday, that which causes trouble is indeed troubling and well, as a people already in plenty of trouble, we know we just don’t need any more of it.

And yet we invite it every single day within this way in which we lay what are traps under tarps of trial and our trying to avoid it despite our again inviting it within what is a way of life in which we lie and steal and cry about how we’re always the victims of all these unforeseen issues that just came out of nowhere in such a horrific surprise that they shifted our eyes, changed our minds, moved our feet and used our hands to take hold of a mistake made in a moment in which we failed to prove anything of ready.

And that despite the amazing clarity of the implied.

Yes, warnings. They’re literally littered all throughout His Word in what are these little lessons and thus learnings as left for our benefit. Which is oddly enough something He himself promised His Word was to be proven useful toward. Yes, all of Scripture is “God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Gotta love when He makes it so crystalline that only an idiot could miss it!

Issue then though is that we’ve all proven the idiot more than a time or twenty. In fact, it could be, and we’re told will be, argued that we’ve done so every day in what’ve been steps taken along the way to where all of us are going to what is there waiting a splitting of eternities into two violently different outcomes. Yes, some will find life at the end of their death whereas others will only find death at the end of their life.

Both of which are met as meted within what’s then a fulfillment of His every promise.

Yes, even those worded as warnings or found written alongside the same.

Such as this one. Which, granted, seems to be quite the joyful hope as it does indeed seem to read of His being always there to help us along what is this path both harrowing and horrific. At least on the surface. And, well, that’s sadly just about as deep as any of us ever really seem at all willing to go. Why? Well, it’s because I think we all know what all we’d find were we to venture any further. And well, it’s not really the adventure our slumber is seeking to see.

No, instead we like life as lived and left upon the surface as it shows us just enough of what we either want to see or can rather find a way to ignore that we’ve thus come to exist inside what seems a store from which we buy our beliefs at rock-bottom prices whilst selling our souls for basically the same. Yeah, it’s become something of a trade in that we daily give away what matters most for the making of the most of what doesn’t matter at all.

Hey, we’re just trying our best to live our best life, right?

Yeah, sadly such is the issue at hand, and also the very same that causes our inability to be a little more ready for what is both our coming end and the there finding of our own eternity to begin. But where? See, that’s the kind of question we should be asking instead of all this worrying about our walking through what are problems of which we were forewarned we’d have along the way.

I mean, did you read the post yesterday, or at least that well-known verse which inspired it? “In this world you will have trouble”? Could it be any clearer?

And again, that verse of John 16:33 does itself indeed seem another quite remarkably hopeful, even despite it speaking of our having of trouble along the way. Still, it, like this one, speaks to the outcome as is said to come in our having by then overcome thanks to our share in He who came to overcome all that’s still coming.

See, I think that’s where our track jumps the train a bit, and quite often at that.

We seem to think that bestowing upon ourselves the label of “Christian”, as is done by some who seem to lead their every conversation by letting someone know they’re a believer and then continually reminding verbally of their faith in nearly every sentence thereafter, we think that this moniker will somehow become what’s basically a shield around us that saves us from both the death we’ve deserved and the many of the same that we’ll still face.

Yes, many live as if the life of follower of Christ is one spent in perpetual rest and unending peace. And, granted, while there are both rest and peace in Christ, and even that in this life, there’s just nothing in His walk nor His Word which promises us that this life in this world will be easy, safe, successful, enjoyable, anything. I mean, just refer again to that verse in John 16. In this world we will have trouble.

Where then does this idea come from that tells us that we’re not going to face problems or experience struggles or have to endure hardship? Paul literally speaks otherwise within his second letter to Timothy. Verse 2:3. “Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Thus all but promising Timothy the presence of problems which will all but insist upon his suffering, in which he’s called, like Jesus chose, to not refuse it nor reject it but rather to embrace it and welcome it for what is the obvious fact that it comes either from God or from a world that has both refused and rejected God.

That’s in fact why we’ll have so much trouble in this world! This place in increasingly godless, and thus such things as righteousness and mercy and love, they’re all increasingly fading as well.

And well, God all but told us as much if we’d only had the guts to read between the lines!

Yes, problems implied! For in this very verse we read of His telling us not to fear, a calling which implies that there will be things that come our way in this life that could be scary and thus instill fear. His telling us to not be dismayed implies that we'll find ourselves in situations or circumstances that will shake our resolve and leave us there alarmed or disappointed or concerned. Indeed, the promise to strengthen us and help us implies that we'll at times be weak and there in need of just such assistance when our strength runs out and our ability runs short.

And the promise to be upheld seems to imply that life will try to beat us up and break us down. And again, we should know this already for that's what this world does. But again, John 16:33 tells us plainly to “take heart!” Why? How? Well, 1 John 5:4-5, which is itself another promise as met within a problem implied which issues a warning to be upheld in what is a continual seeking for the promise to be fulfilled in the end.

“For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

And thus again we see that within His Word there reads these many instances in which He insinuates the presence of problems by asking us to understand the meaning of what it is to overcome. For the reality is that we cannot overcome what doesn’t threaten to overcome us. We cannot claim victory in or over what doesn’t challenge us for it. We cannot win a competition unless there is competition trying to win it away from us. And we cannot hoist the crown unless we’ve lived a life in which life itself tried to keep us from holding it high.

No, we have to have problems, troubles, trials and challenges because there is no promise, no triumph, no change from death to life if we never in this life learn to fight. And well, what helps us find our fight, and then to seek His fighting for us when our ability to has run out?

Trouble. Trial. Turmoil and tempest.

Yes, we need to be pushed if we’re ever to be moved, because let’s face it, we’ve all lived a past in which we’ve perfectly proven our preference for staying put. Because that’s easier, and as a matter made easy, we’ll easily find always that ability to prefer it to the challenges of a life spent following Christ. But friends, that’s why the outcomes are so vastly different. It’s because those who seek to save their life will lose it whereas those who lose that care to save themselves from what they don’t want to feel or face, they alone will be the few who are ushered into unending life.

All because they lived this one all but ready to die if such was what His will for them was.

And we see this very humility in Christ Jesus in Gethsemane. “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Are we living the kind of life that can speak the same with any semblance of honesty? Does our walk read the same as His which led Him to that garden and those worries as yet overcome by a willingness to endure what seemed both terrifying and unfair? Or are we still trying mostly only to always either avoid or disprove the possibility of problems and struggles and the need for our suffering?

Do we still not understand the process of pruning?

If we don’t then we don’t understand the purpose of it either. For it’s to refine with fire those who are being made holy in what is a lifelong journey to and through that which sanctifies. Yes, in Christ we’ll be sanctified. What is it to be sanctified? It’s to be made right, to be purified so as to be made there useful for the many purposes and promises that God has both for and in and through our lives. Yes, it’s His creating for Himself a people who are finally able to live as if they’re His.

Titus 2:14. For it’s Jesus “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

Not what is easy. Not what is safe. Not what makes sense. No, to do what is good as defined by and of His will for our lives. Yes, His will is for our good as much as His Word reads of the same. And while that may not mean that our lives here will become the easy that we’d prefer they be, friends, it just shouldn’t matter anymore. Rather we should have the kind stubborn faith that all but demands those troubling opportunities that allow us to show Him that we do trust Him.

And well, what better way to do that than when and where we’re so broken down and unable that we have no other choice but to reach again for Him and His help? And well, what better can help us to do that than such things as those which bring fear or worry or disappointment or frustration or doubt or pain or suffering?

Yes, as much as we needed Jesus to endure such things for us to be made right, so too then should we endure such things to show Him that we’re willing to be made right.

But are we?

Friends, He gives us plenty of just such an opportunity in this life as is lived with plenty of problems and all sorts of fearful moments. But it’s those very moments that tell Him who we are and thus whether or not we’re His.

And so, what are we telling Him? That we don’t want to face or feel what He’s asking us to? Or are we saying something more like what Jesus did just hours before the cross?

“Not my will, but yours be done.”

Yes, this life will bring us things that could and perhaps even should cause us to fear or worry or doubt. But just because something can or should inspire us to go again in that same old direction we’ve always chosen to go, well, that doesn’t mean we can’t in Him learn to do something new next time.

And in fact, our doing a new thing is itself a share in what Jesus came to do. So again, just how much of Him are we sharing in?

Enough to not be afraid? Or so little that still we think that we don’t deserve to come against things that try to prove us otherwise?

Such as these problems implied.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold