Day 3780 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Revelation 22:12 NIV

Meeting misunderstandings

And perhaps two of the largest in the very history thereof. For at this intersection of His proclamation as to the impending reality of His coming back eventually as met with the then quite dire realization as to our now long-standing ability to stay always unready, well, such is where we’re all to find that life has either been lived as if slipping through our hands or we’ve rather thrown up our hands and surrendered our lives to He who gave His for us and did so for us so as to show us both that such can be done but too, that because He who knew no sin chose indeed to so do, so too then how such is what we’re to share in if we’re to share in Him who came to overcome everything.

For indeed, as we talked about a bit yesterday, it gets no better than our suffering with sin as such only proves that we're finally on the way to Him.

Problem then is met within this meeting of misunderstanding as to both the brevity of such the opportunity and that such a chance is all too often met with a willful inability to do something that shows that such is the direction we’ve delighted to go. And add on top of that a blatant disinterest as defined inside pretty much all such simple indifference, and well, what you walk away with is a life still spent walking away.

And with absolutely no idea as to how much time’s left on the clock that we apparently just don’t care to even acknowledge by looking at.

No, rather we look perpetually upon this most arrogant of assumption that has us all but welded to this presumption that we’ve both plenty of time still always left and, in light of this, plenty of moments in which we can still put ourselves first in the belief that, with all the time we think we’ve left, we can just clean up the mess before dad comes home from work.

Problem there is that His work has been finished and too that He isn’t our dad who, depending upon the particular person in your life with that title, may at worst speak as to their disappointment in us or even reach for that leather wrapped around his waist as set to waste us of this wasted way spent in a life watered down as to the weight of doing always what’s right. No, rather God is our Father, and since He came even further in the Son to lay down His life, thus He’s what’s basically a double portion of every right to destroy us as He who created us always had in the first place.

And that He is our Father, or at least should be seen and treated as such in light of His at first creating us and then, even in spite of our running so willfully away, had so much love left in the tank that He took our place and died our death to set us free from the well-earned fear of that coming day when every knee will bow and every tongue there confess unto the One who will, from there, separate the sheep who followed from the goats who wouldn’t.

And what a dire sifting such is said to be!

Why? Because it’ll be done once for eternity and thus, after it’s finished, so too then our every chance to do something, change something, say something as said in the losing of everything that was never the life He created us to live as if in love with Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.

And indeed, is this what we’re saying with the way we’re spending what are these singularly amazing gifts called ‘today’? I personally look back, and sadly too still around far too often, and have to admit that such isn’t much of what my life’s had to say No, rather I look at a life lived vastly asleep as thus done to the utter contempt of His request for all to both wake up from every such slumbering so that, with eyes unclosed, we can “be always on the watch”, wherein then we can too live again a way of life in which each can “pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

But friends, my question for you is how we can ever expect to take such a stance in His presence if we continue only to persist in this purchase of a pride telling us perpetually that we’ve left plenty of time with which to peruse all these apparent other options and therein choose what all we still delight to pursue before we prefer the path of repentance as plotted the only path which leads to salvation from our so doing the former for however long we have already?

Yes, how much longer can we truly afford to put off until tomorrow what may well, by then, prove something we cannot do any longer?

You know, should today be the last of our ‘today’s?

Because one of them will be, and yet you’d think that our having no idea as to which would inspire within us a far more dire directioning in life. But alas, no, rather we still run within the whether’s of who we’ve been and what we may or might never care to do in light of it.

Simply because we’ll always have tomorrow to worry about it.

Should something so loving as the gift of salvation be given such a halfhearted interest as our always only being interested in it later on? Friends, when is later on? Well, better yet, how soon is soon? And again, doesn’t the fact that we don’t know prove more than reason enough for us to sober up and stop drinking so deeply this blatant denial of the present direction we’re walking and the all the problems it’s wanting?

Granted, I don’t think any of us would readily confess that we want problems in life. After all, all of us go to some extraordinary lengths to both deny those already quite clearly present, and too, that we’ve been the ones who’ve caused the vast majority thereof. No, we want no such guilt sewn into this quilt of a life we’ve all but quit. Rather we want always this warmth as won within a death wrapped in delight which somehow allows us to sleep at night as if day is always just a few hours away.

And make no mistake, the Day is just a few hours from now, we just don’t know how many as Heaven doesn’t have clocks as time there doesn’t matter anymore. Much like our pasts and the sins we’ve lived them in, for, of, by. Yes, such is our every single way of life. It’s been one lived in such a flagrant refusal as to the gift of repentance as purchased for us with the very blood of Jesus. And thus we’ve, and yes, all of us, lived as if His blood meant next to nothing.

After all, every time that still we do what we all know well than better we’re better not to, all we’re really doing is asking Him to hop back up there and shed a few more drops to cover a few more times that we wanted to drop the ball as given in the call of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

All while clearly then living as if Heaven wasn’t nearer and nor then the reward that we should be aiming for, aching for as opposed to the reward that we don’t know to consider as such.

For let us be honest, we think of rewards as always good things given unto those good kids who’ve done the good things that their good elders were looking for them to do. Rewards are stickers on tests we’ve aced. They’re ice cream eaten in joy at the clearing of a plate. They’re candy handed to those who beg upon strangers to enjoy their costumes for the creativity thereof. They’re promotions at work. They’re trophies held high. They’re crowns worn whilst surrounded by bodyguards. They’re power, they’re preference, they’re profit.

No, rewards are just responses to whatever we’ve done.

We just live in a world that rewards bad behavior with good things such as applause and approval.

Problem then proven in that He is not of this world just as He, in that light, calls us to stop living as if we were because we all have.

Yes, we’ve long been entirely too accustomed to this assumption that every behavior can and will be rewarded within the rewards we think of when we think of the word reward, which are thus clearly always and only what we want and never then whatever we don’t. For again, to us a reward is something good we’re given in the wake of our doing something that someone was pleased with.

Friends, what about the rewards given in regard to things not found quite so pleasing? See, a reward is literally defined as “a thing given in recognition of one's service, effort, or achievement.” Or, as used in the verb form within this Word from the book of Revelation, the act that it is to “make a gift of something to (someone) in recognition of their services, efforts, or achievements.”

Doesn’t say anything about whether rewards are good or bad. Just says that they’re things given unto those who’ve earned them in “recognition of their services, efforts, or achievements.”

Which is a far bigger problem than we could have ever wanted to imagine. Which is probably why we haven’t.

No, we’ve never wanted to sit with the solemn reality of our being rewarded for what we’ve done. Why? Well, what have we done? For in truth, all we have done has been done on this now more aware side of what all has already been done before. And indeed, without even talking about Jesus and all that He did, he who came to prepare the way for the Way did so by saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

And yet, even as we just discussed not too long ago in regard to that verse of Romans 13:11, as was written even after John came with his dire request that we might all fall at the suggest of his behest to repent and be baptized that we might begin this very moment, this single breath to believe in both the Kingdom of God and thus too the deathly necessity of the offer to repent in light of His promise that He will come unto the rewarding of all according to what they have done.

And so indeed, again, what have we done? And, as such is a question we can only ever consider personally, just ask yourself honestly, what kind of reward does it deserve?

Does your past, even if it should look still like your present, does that lack of movement deserve the reward of a "Well done"? Or does your present perhaps looks different from your past as is proof then of a repentance of sorts already thus agreed to along the way to whoever you are now today as is, even if to you alone, different than you used to be? Does the present look better than the past? Was the past lived better? Can tomorrow be better still than both?

And does not the fact that every next step can and thus should be one taken ever-closer to Christ prove that we've both everything to lose in Him and yet then nothing to lose of this life we're already losing as has been lived without Him as the sole focus His death is owed?

Indeed, what have we to lose considering that the rewarding is coming? Will the coming rewarding to each in accordance with what they've done find us with life still to be lived? Or will we have instead willfully forfeited that gift by having lived only to give this trial to the trying to live as if the fire's refinement was unnecessary?

He refers to Himself as the consuming kind thereof, and thus makes evident the consumption of everything that doesn’t belong in His presence. After all, that’s literally what every fire exists to do. It burns to ash everything that it doesn’t want in its way anymore.

Will He who is the consuming, as is the same as He who is again coming, will His coming find us in a rewarding of life or rather just a burning to ashes thereof?

For in truth both outcomes are rewards as promised to be given to those who earn them. Only difference then is that the reward of everlasting life is given unto those few who do turn and start to live their lives as if they can’t earn that gift and thus grow in a continually humbled appreciation for He who did what He did for us to have that gift. For such are the sheep that will be sifted clean of the goats who go on ahead living as if their life is all about what they can earn as wanted by most here who themselves believe only that this life is all we have in which to find our preferred rewards.

And simply put, if we continue to prefer our rewards as wanted in this life in the forms of fun or success or comfort or popularity or wealth or whatever else this place so lusts after, we’re then just showing Him that our prizes are here where He’s coming to take all of us from. And if we want to live a way of life still in which we’ll have had our reward, so be it. We’ve all already done it, and that makes it entirely easy to keep doing.

Just know that still there comes that final rewarding of all according to what they’ve done. And as for me, I personally find no more terrifying promise than that Word which reads that warning as to that way of life in which many will have had their reward.

I don’t want to squander my good rewards in a place that I’m not meant to stay. No, I want the best of life to be where life itself doesn’t end.

And so I will fight every breath to store as much of my own personal hope, as is treasure indeed, in that one place that it can’t be stolen or taken or lost. No, I will place my life in the hands of He who asks me to then empty it of everything I’ve done and thus been that hasn’t been what He called me to do or be. For I want only to please He who came to overcome a way of life I’ve lived trying to hide what I didn’t want rewarded according to what it was.

For that’s why we hide things. We know that if anyone were to see them, well, we may well receive the kind of reward we don’t want.

Like judgement. Or rejection. Or punishment, damnation.

But friends, those things are all promises well on the table as is sat before Him in the presence of we who’ve lived as His enemies. Will we keep living that way of life that has earned us an enemy’s reward? Or will we lay our weapons down and ask Him to forgive us and thereafter continue to help us to stop doing the things that have earned us that reward of unending death?

That’s not the prize that any should seek in life. No, life inspires us to keep living it, and well, why not then agree unto the placing of it in the hands of He who overcame our penalty? Friends, He died so we’d not have to, so that we could thus find a better reward upon that coming day.

Because on that day He will give unto all the reward they’re due. But there are only two options to be then given: Life and death.

Which reward do we want to receive, and does the way we’re living our life line up with that choice?

We’re all going to be rewarded according to what we’ve done. And while what we’ve done so clearly deserves death, such should inspire us unto the doing of something new.

After all, that’s what He himself said He came to do. Are we doing His kind of something new too? Or are just still living the same kind of life we’ve always known?

Test yourselves in this, because we can be sure He will.

And soon.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold