Forged By Faith

Colossians 4:5 NIV “for which I am in chains” I wonder what our world would be like would that we could share in what Paul seemed to see even in his captivity. What might it be to feel that kind of urgency to continue doing something that meant so much that not even prison was allowed to alter our passion? What if we could see through the chains we wear unto the beauty of our being here able to share stories of our too having held them so as to help others see that we have a Savior who came to destroy them? What might we have to say if that was the story we felt we couldn’t help but share? What if the Gospel was the story we felt we simply had to share no matter when, no matter where? It’s these sorts of questions that I find my mind asking my heart in what’s been a now long-fought fight between my head and my hope as was for a long time held inside a heart that just wouldn’t listen to anything anyone else had to say. For in that way all I felt I had to say was this story about what ma...

Proverbs 12:18 NIV To help or harm Such is both the question we answer and often times the question we ask. Alas, we don’t usually see it as a question at all, that neither being asked nor thus in need of being answered. And that because we’ve become quite accustomed to this all but generalized reluctance to assume any responsibility in life. And by assume I mean as in assuming it upon ourselves, and that choice chosen to be ignored as we all seem to collectively assume that there is no real responsibility in life. And that made both already perfectly clear and yet somehow clearer almost every day. And that because we continue to watch the masses fade away into this waste of days in which we’ve all words we say but somehow they without anything much being said. It’s truly amazing how we can take something so freeing, so beautiful, so opportunistic as our uniquely human ability to be linguistic and use it for such superficiality as, again, always talking about nothing. Yes, we love talk...

Colossians 4:6 NIV Unasked questions Such are what we’re answering every single time we happen to find that we’re again found around anyone at all within this world with both so many walls being built and yet still the call to treat them all as if our own march about Jericho. Yes, we’re here to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” and to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” And we fight this fight that is this life with what “are not the weapons of the world” which are words spoken without meaning. Rather we have instead been asked into a faith granted to, grafted in to the wielding of weapons that have this “divine power to demolish strongholds.” And these weapons, or at least some of them, are the words with which we engage and interact and converse and yes, even contend with what is a further falling man. For that is the background of this battlefield. It’s set in the scene of a society that’s lost its sen...

James 3:10 NIV A word’s worth It seems that something so specialized as the state of mind which we allow to let fall or flow from lips our own should be of something resembling a value as it takes a measure of both time and effort for us to at first realize the necessity of something being said, a considering met with our contemplation as to what then needs to be said, a searching for the right words or ways in which to say what we feel worth the work within the way and then the actual physicality as is expressed within the movements of a mouth fighting to form these words so that they might finally get out. But should said worth be always both wonderful and worthless? A winning of a moment in meaning as won in the 50-50 of the same moment proving meritless? What is the meaning of a word’s merit? Is it not measured within the distance that it inspires those listening to become interested in either going or coming? Should we not seek always to say something worth hearing? What is worth ...

Isaiah 29:13 NIV The more we never really do. It’s the very same as what’s caused this distance now found between us and both who we were created to be, the better we were meant to remain, and He who created us in the image of the better we’ve both never been but also somehow manage to still believe is out there waiting somewhere for us to track down what’s then always impossible to find by feet that don’t move and souls that gave up believing they should. Indeed, we’ve all become but frozen in this place of a faith that allows for us to go on as unchanged as we delight to be. Each of us so retired from trying to improve our own lives that all we do anymore is seek to inspire those around us to give up working on or in theirs as well. And why? Because we've each now long been disciples of dishonesty, learning only the burning of one another to the ground via the flame of our making a name that's all our own, and yet this always done by just us living alone only a life all but o...