Day 3787 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 7:16 NIV

By their fruit

And thus our fruit is us and we’re our fruit as sown and shown inside of all we say and do as done in light of what we’ve let inside as has become that which we’ve left to share before we’ve left for good. For indeed, no man is an island as we’re all surrounded by a sea of faces each feeling the weighing of what is all a collective chaos of moments and mistakes as made in vain seeking to harvest the plain of a life without pain nor pay as preferred for the ease it offers.

Leaving us able to each realize the need for pruning what are likely only worries and wants anyway.

Alas we live as if we don’t and haven’t really any interest in so trying to this call unto dying to what all’s keeping us dead to life and living as if it’s just not worth it. Indeed, we all exist as if zombified zealots jealous for only those who’ve more of what none of us need than we’ve managed to find or afford. And it’s within all of this such measuring that we continue the mistaking of having and holding for keeping and meaning. Because in the end that which we have will be unhad by all as all will leave here all they’ve held dear.

Which is but one more reason as to the judging that we’re both called to do but alas see instead quite always content to leave rather to voicemail as we listen instead to the voices of the voiceless each screaming in unison that such is what none ought to be doing.

Yes, we live our lives in this land so lost as if there shouldn’t be any cost, any charge or consequences as brought or bought against us in light of whatever we’ve come to buy or believe in regard to the many betters that we’ve won only the wrong side of every whether. Yeah, we’ve sadly chosen so many times to judge not even ourselves that we’ve instead become all but unwilling to consider that any other may judge us either. Rather we’re all roundly convinced, and wholly so, that such things as holiness are not actually the bars for which we’re here to aim.

Instead we just continue to seek such things as fortune and fame as if they’re not part of the game that is a flame that the Name came from which to save.

But my daily wonder, as opposed to the many refusings of the right side of all those whethers, is now why we would continue to stave this Name that came to save. And again, as we’ve talked of late, it’s clearly not that we’re not interested, intrigued, inclined or intelligent enough to become so in regard to what He’s sewn, sown and shown. It’s just that we don’t like that He asks us to admit there was a bill paid for services rendered.

Doesn’t ask us to pay, just to confess that someone had to.

And yet we hate to, this admitting stuff. We hate having to sit inside even a self’s judgement as we’re again quite completely convinced that all judgement is mean and we want not such monsters to ourselves become.

So we just stay the monsters we’ve become.

Which we’ve come to become because of fruit left untasted, untested, untried and uninterested. Yes, all we know in life is to avoid, deny, refuse and detest any and all of every request as made at the suggest that our lives could be so much better at the hands of our believing that they’re not there yet. And, well, this is right about where the water boards the ship and begins then to sink its every strength as could have been given unto the wind as opposed to into the same.

Yeah, we know only to go with the flow, so long as we can see the flow goes where we want to be.

Which is again basically wherever we’ve already been before.

Because whether or not anything’s broken, well, we’ve not really any idea and even less interest in ever really finding out. For if we did then we might accidentally let slip inside this idea of mind that says we do have some things to do if either we’re or our lives are to improve. And well, this is just a really confusing considering as we’ve long considered both our lives and thus ourselves to be just about as good as can be.

A lie we can so easily believe because again we’ve all but wholly refused both the call to be holy and thus clearly any considering as to if we’re getting any closer.

After all, we can’t see how far the fall if we’ve no regard as to where or from whom we’ve fallen.

So we just don’t look. Up. We look down, and that despite our being told to stop doing so as where our eyes point our feet aim and thus our souls go and thus we end up. And for a people who walk around with heads always down, well, it’s easy to see why everything’s rolling downhill and picking up some impressive speed as it goes. And by impressive I mean depressing because such a sight is in fact so very heartbreaking that there was this time that God chose to watch His Son die as opposed to another moment go by in which we lived as if we weren’t His.

Yes, He chose to behold the crucifixion of Christ as charged against our soul’s account on account of our having chosen to live as if that was what He was worth.

Tell me again how we shouldn’t start testing the fruit that we’re sowing and growing.

For what we do tells everyone else who we are. Everything from every word we speak to even the ways in which those words are heard, it’s all on us. And sure, there are some parts of that which could be considered unfair, unwarranted, unavoidable on our part as we cannot control how others might misconstrue any of all we say or do. But friends, our every action should be of such holy traction that we elate at the opportunity to try and find that narrow way to do everything right.

We should appreciate the challenge of a life given unto the danger of a fallen public’s opinion. Not that we’re here to please men or then need them to think highly of us. No. Rather simply because we’re all called to live such good lives amongst even the paganistic at heart that they’ve left no argument to start as to whether or not we lived differently than they did.

A call which boils simply unto the fruit we’re bearing.

Which leaves me with, you guessed it, a question to be asking:

Why want bad fruit?

I mean, this seems something of a question so silly that it doesn’t even need to asked. It’s kind of like one of those rhetoricals in which the answer’s so obvious that the question itself becomes the point. Because nobody wants bad fruit. Like I mentioned the other day, none of us eat rotten apples or enjoy moldy grapes or let our bananas turn black and slimy before we eat them.

Why then do we continue to allow our words, actions, thoughts even to be any of the such above? Rotten. Moldy. Slimy and sickening. Why do we continue to allow for such things to be seen of the fruit we’re bearing in this life? And again, sure, it’s not really feasible for us to ensure that all we do is always received well by a world amazing known by the fruit of hatred and malcontent and misunderstanding and argument over and because of all of the above.

But again, we all at least know of the responsibility to try our best to put only our best out there for all to see. And so, again, why then don’t we?

And before we delve into such foolish debates and their drawing of lines trying to justify what we’ve chosen to do in and with life itself, the point is simply that there should be no mystery as to who we are and what we believe and what that means as shown inside everything we say and do. For any belief should matter enough that we’re willing to do whatever we can to never again feel as if we need to cover anything up.

So why then do we continue to bear the kind of fruit that seems only to tangle this path that is a life that was never meant to have become so overgrown and unkempt as it so clearly is?

I mean, like it or not, we’ve all had a hand in this thing crashing like it has. We may not think that our failures or mistakes were all that bad. Nobody ever does. We might not see how a slip of the tongue given unto some foul language could be equated to something of a similar measure to those who murder. We might not be able or willing to imagine that flipping someone off in traffic or calling them a name they can’t hear because of windows and engines and stuff could ever possibly measure up to being as bad as, say, following them home and burning their house to the ground.

But aren’t splitting hairs here?

After all, regardless of the particular degree of decay or disarray, it’s all coming from the same place. And, again like or not, that place is the heart which houses and holds all we’ve bought and believed worth being what we then have to share. And so we should see, not that we do, but we should see that everything that we do is some kind of fruit being given away unto those around us with then an express purpose of their seeing it and learning something about us and what we believe and thus who we are in light of it.

But that’s just it, what does it really matter the specific measure between murder and a foul word muttered? What does it matter whatever we might make of the difference between traffic-induced aggravation and full-on arson? Does it really matter when human anger is the foundation of all the above?

For again, thanks to the clarity of His Word, we’ve all the opportunity to read and see and thus then forever understand that human anger does not ever produce the righteousness that God so desires.

And why does He desire righteousness that’s not found in such things as human anger or the finger or foulness through which we often share it?

Because all He does and thus asks us to do is done to honor Him because He simply deserves every drop of glory that we might be still able to squeeze from this life and our time before we leave.

Which again brings us back to that all but rhetorical question that we honestly shouldn’t have to ask ourselves. Why want bad fruit? For if it doesn’t bear fruit that can accomplish the praise of He who saves, well then why would we want it to grow in our lives? If it doesn’t inspire another unto the hope of repentance, then of what worth is it? If it doesn’t bloom or blossom into a burgeoning belief, be that of our own or that of another to whom we’re called to love as if they are we, then why are we here?

For a city on a hill, such as we are upon this hope in Him we have, it cannot be hidden as much as light placed under a basket doesn’t stop shining but rather merely refuses to share that shine with anyone else. And yet the fact remains that we’re here to be neither selfish nor fruitless. Rather we are here with each a responsibility to use whatever gifts or abilities we’ve been given unto the gaining of all a furthered measure of hope as comes only in a faith placed in Christ alone.

And thus the fruit we bear ought to bring us each closer to the culmination of what He meant when He whispered that it was finished.

Indeed, our every action, every word, every passion should be aimed alone at the heart of Christ as in Him alone may we, any of us, ever find life. And this life as found in Him should be of such worth, of such value, of such a vicious perfection that we cannot ever again begin to even fathom giving Him anything less than everything that may even accidentally be considered a part of our best.

Yes, as I said yesterday or perhaps the day before, He who died for us deserves our best, not merely whatever may happen to be left after we’ve lived even another moment giving anything we are to anything that isn’t Him nor able to honor or glorify all He’s done and continues to do.

No, we should have no such priorities or pursuits anymore. For with the hope of eternal life on the line, I come daily to find a renewed desperation so almost animalistic that it simply refuses to refuse Him anything to which He asks access or my acknowledgement. Because indeed, I want to know everything I do, every word that I say that doesn’t bring Him praise. For again, if it doesn’t accomplish the praise of He who saves, then why allow it to continue growing in our lives?

For such fruit as all that’s never cared to glorify Him, it’s got to go. For though I know I’ve known well that way in which He was my last concern, I know now that continuing in that line is no way of life to live any longer. For continuing to bear fruit that brings death as the worthy wage that any and all sin wins, no, I can’t so abide anymore.

I can’t wrap my mind around living still a life in which the only hope at life I have is anything but the only focus I have in life.

It just makes no sense.

Simply because He came in the epitome of surrender and sacrifice in order to achieve for us an everlasting salvation. How then could any ever consider that He who died might be fine with our not doing something of the same? And no, I’m not saying that we should start some sort of sordid death-cult and unalive ourselves seeking for some way in which to show Him that we ache to share Him. I am saying that we should no longer refuse Him anything that He asks us to sacrifice or surrender.

I’m saying that we should appreciate His help in showing us all that we should stop doing in light of the rotten fruit it’s bearing. Why? Because everything we do that doesn’t glorify Him only increases the deaths we owe for having lived so long already not doing so. And so He simply asks that we stop doing all that’s bearing an image other than saved and sanctified. And no, again, I’m not saying that we should do anything extreme in order to help Him see that we mean what we say when we say He’s our Lord.

For He who died to achieve our life will not ask us to endure what would mean our demise.

Rather He only asks that we welcome the ridding of ourselves and our souls of anything and everything that has long taken His place in our lives. And friends, knowing just the faint glimpses and whispers of the hope and peace that He is and brings, I cannot imagine continuing to allow anything else to take room in us that He could have instead.

And so I daily appreciate deeper the depths to which He goes and asks I follow into what’s long been a life I’ve lived as if life weren’t worth living at all. For that’s what sin considers this journey to be. Just a time in which fun and frivolity are all that count for anything. Just that flipping someone the bird ain’t that big of a deal. Or talking about someone behind their back doesn’t speak to a heart torn in two. Or how using our words to inflict a little more hurt surely can’t be all that harmful.

It all is when we consider such verses as Ephesians 4:29.

And so no friends, such foolishness has forever meant nothing as it can bring nothing that can in any way rival the promise of life lived in peace forever as awarded only to those who willingly undertake that aforementioned call to ensure that no unwholesome talk comes out of our mouths, and just the same as no unholy action is undertaken by our frame. But rather only that which is useful for building one another up in the holiness and righteousness that God demands of those few who will be found welcome in His presence.

And if He who is the only Way there thus asks that we let go of what He must know cannot come along, then we should jump at the chance to show it the door or toss it into the fire ourselves.

Yes, I care not what He asks me to surrender. My only shame is that I fail to find it sooner. For I’ve long now held this idea in mind that has me content to live this life here holding on so very loosely to this life here and all held here that I will not, upon the cloud’s having parted, I will not then know when it’s finally gone. For I’ll have been by then far too excited about what’s coming and where I’m going to worry about my then losing whatever cannot go along.

And so I will daily welcome whatever the cost may be to for my eyes to see that coming of Heaven and hear Him say welcome home.

Thus let the pruning both commence and then forever continue. For everything here is but a cost as it all has the same. What He offers is both worth more but given free.

My only wonder now is what all I can still give in light of what He gave for me in light of the fruit I used to bear. Yeah, that He died for who I used to be continues only to inspire me to still not stay the same as who I am now. For there’s always better to be, and that hope should matter enough to all of us that we’re willing to lose whatever it takes to get it.

After all, we’re all here looking for hope. But why would any think they might find it in those both sinfully hollow and socially hateful?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold