Day 3802 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 3:8 NIV

But now

For indeed, in light of what was done then by He who’s done since all we’ve still needed Him to do, not that the doing has changed but only that its being done has become entirely more personal since we’ve ourselves arrived upon what is this still continuing cultural crime scene as seen inside such things as the presence of just as much doubt, denial and debauchery as ever in history, in light of the Christ and all He’s accomplished and called us to share, well, it seems that there is no finishing this faith nor then the growth away from the life spent running only away from it.

Because if who we once were in that way of life we once lived as those who have all lived as if Christ never did, yeah, we’ve all got plenty left we need to lose before we leave what we’ll all lose anyway.

And in fact what we’re all scheduled to lose now is that life we’ve all lived in love with all that is neither alive nor then in any way loving. For as it’ll turn out, you have to at least have the ability to breathe if you’re to ever be able to love, let alone that enough to lay down a life for they who may need such a helping hand.

Alas, as we’ve here lately discussed, our longstanding and still ongoing affair for the flair of idols we’ve held near and dear, well, it’s left us without a hand to reach for should we fall down (which we have), a breath to take should we run out (will soon), a life to live then that’s able to stay alive when He who came comes back again (hence the soon), and therefore so little hope that we likely have no idea what hope really even is.

(Because we’ve lived learning to hope in things both heartless and thus hopeless, the latter a matter made in light of the way that the former proves something without life, or at least without any semblance of care given unto where we are and how it’s not at all where we can either stay nor then should want to try so badly as it seems we always do.)

For that is what we do, both want to stay within this place in which we think that life is lived, and because of that, have no idea what hope can be because hope’s a thing that shouldn’t have an expiration date. Especially one we do not know. Sort of like that coming time in which we’ll just take both our last breath and then our first of something else, and that somewhere else.

But where? See, that’s the question we all need to start asking, and not even one another for, in simple terms, that doesn’t really matter as this isn’t a communal consideration but rather a personal relationship with the Savior, or rather a sharing of the vastly more common lack thereof.

Which is what has caused pretty much every mistake we’ve ever made.

Now, some will say that we’ve only made mistakes because someone somewhere at some point back there came up with a bunch of rules that we were supposed to follow, and thus we wouldn’t have done wrong if this someone hadn’t somewhere got it in their minds to point out for everyone else how they should live. And thus we wouldn’t even have to feel guilty were it not for this historical event which set this precedent for what is apparently good behavior.

Yes, we wouldn’t be wrong if it weren’t for someone telling us what was right.

Problem there is that this list of rules wasn’t just brainstormed by some random person just like you and I who happened to somehow convince all of humanity to agree upon a general understanding of the difference between right and wrong and then manage to instill that so deeply that we all just somehow know it without ever even thinking or being taught or even learning any of the rules. We just feel it in our bones whenever we do something wrong.

And no human being has that kind of influence!

I mean, just look at us now what with all our modern advancements and technological achievements. These days we even have folks whose entire job is that of an “influencer” and we still can’t manage to agree on much of anything. And so yeah, human influence, though powerful in very specific situations, and that always on a person-to-person basis, it’s just not able to instill inside of us all the basic understanding of right and wrong as defined by the distance between good and evil.

Must have come from somewhere else then.

And someone else too.

Thankfully we know both where, Who, why and even a basic ballpark as to when. Now, granted, we don’t have precise dates for such things as the Exodus nor then when Moses went up that mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, though researchers can get a pretty good idea based upon the surrounding histories and civilizations and such. But thankfully we do have a far more narrowed down comprehension as to when and where this so-called “Son of Heaven” showed up on the scene doing all sorts of things that seemed pretty much perfectly impossible for some normal guy.

And that one’s so precise that we even base our calendar on it.

Yes, this coming of Christ, which happened a little over 2,000 years ago, it’s what now marks the last time any of us had any real reason to live as if we didn’t know any better than to do most of what we’re probably still doing. And again, it’s not really that He had to go through all that just to show us how to do this thing called living far better than we have, for in truth God has made Himself known all throughout human habitation of this now habitual consternation.

We’ve just all chosen all along the way to basically just ignore Him so that we’d not have to feel guilty about our doing things we know we shouldn’t.

But friends, what have we gotten from it?

Sure, we anymore live in a world where basically nothing is off limits or considered out of bounds. I mean, there’s sex on TV, satanic rituals being performed at the grammys, cursing and foul language has long since become the widely accepted and thus most common vernacular what for the power it seems to add to the words we speak and the messages we’re trying get across, gluttony is called all-you-can-eat, laziness is a way of life, fear is something we all pretend we know nothing of (and that only because we’re all so afraid of so much that if we ever let on that we were then folks would know we were nothing else), and well, Christ is still just up there watching us all keep falling apart.

Yeah, He came to show us how to live a better life, left to give us a try, and now only sees us all but setting ourselves on fire for every idol and ideal that the world around us has settled for.

Such as sex on TV and cursing coursing through the veins of basically everything we say, do, think, watch, listen to or elsewise enjoy.

My how impressive we really are!

Which is only what we seem to think because we still seem to think that our lives are our lives and thus only to ever be lived however we see fit. And thus they still fit within the ways of this place that we’re both physically in and yet now all but spiritually, mentally, emotionally tied to. Yes, as we’ve been discussing here lately, there’s anymore very little that’s able to tell us apart from the world we’re in.

Which is a very big problem because this world is both falling apart and thus destined for destruction, you know, thanks to all the sin, evil and wickedness that’s still allowed to remain alive in us, thrive in us, lead us, guide us, provide for us a way of life that has us too living as if the world is where we hope to stay.

Thus proving yet again that we have no idea what hope even is!

Because if we did understand the gravity of hope and what all it’s taken for us to have it, we’d have nothing in the way of this common fealty to a fallen world still impressively failing to hold itself either together or that to anything of a higher standard. No, rather we continue to settle for rock bottom and just seek for ways to make that seem okay. Why? Because our biggest problem is that we don’t want to change. We hate having to change. Why? Because it’s basically our having to admit we were wrong.

And as a people of pride personified, admitting that is basically the same as committing suicide.

And well, that just seems like a really bad way to live a life.

And so we just refuse every opportunity to change and everyone who ever even dares to ever even hint that we kind of might really need to.

And we probably hate most those who somehow manage to prove that we need to change so badly, and that in so many ways.

And that by dying on a cross.

How rude!

And indeed, that is how some still seem to see this Savior who came to help us, heal us, lead us, guide us, give us the promise of everlasting life in exchange for our laying down the one we’ve been living that we know we’ve been living wrong. And again, we all do know the difference without anyone even having to tell us. I mean, even dogs know when they’ve done something wrong and I’ve never seen a dog read a book!

So what excuse do we actually think we have to continue to refuse the kind of change(s) that Jesus died to inspire us to make in order to help us show Him that we’re taking part in our lives being saved? Indeed, what are we showing Him at all within the way we’re living our lives? That what He did was worth about as much as an hour, hour thirty on Sunday morning? A piece of gold hanging from our necks or a sticker on our car? A verse tattooed on our arm or some shirt we wear?

What is He worth to you, and what are you doing to show Him it’s true?

For indeed, in light of the event of the centuries, that taking place there on Calvary by He who is the Christ who came to give His life and then here leave in such a truly life-altering way, a way which ought to find the lives of those who believe in what He did and why it was done a sharing of such a life-altering, well, what of our lives and how we live them has altered?

And is there anything in there that’s changed so much, and thus left us so willing to continue said changing, that we’ve even become of the eventually considering even our loosing unto our very losing of such things as those we considered a couple of days ago, those considered widely more egregious by many if not most? And even further, should we have indeed undertaken great strides in the removing of such things as lust, impurity, evil desires and greed from our lives, well then is that where we’ve stopped growing in His way?

Indeed, have we welcomed something of a finish line within our faith, following Jesus as if He’s either inclined or impressed by our doing always just a little less than our every very best in terms of the sort of surrender and sacrifice that we claim we believe He came to complete?

For the truth is that no matter what we’ve done in terms of changing who we’d become, it is itself not enough as there is no such thing as losing enough of what's always been evil and wrong, wicked and sadly common. No, there is no finish line in regard to this faith’s refinement as there was neither an end point within the pain He endured in our place nor therefore the promise such suffering purchased on our behalf.

Why?

Well, because for as long as forever is, such is the same as how long we should meet the hope of our living life with Him within it with our willingness to do whatever it takes to get us to it.

Sadly, our having no idea as to how long forever really is as met with our inability to likewise comprehend the misery He hung in up there, nor then have we any reason to continue believing that we can, at some point, have ourselves been perfected by faith. Rather as God calls us to be holy as He is such Himself, and well, holiness abides beside no such immorality as even the human anger and/or filthy language which have widely marked our every existence, there remains then always this process of our ever-continuing, at least whilst here, to be met face-to-face with all the ways in which we’ve failed Him and fallen short then of His call to be what He is.

Yes, there is no such thing as too much holiness, too much godliness, too much gain as given in the humility given unto He who is humility indeed.

And indeed, He who died for us is too the same as He who came to us and only there found Himself locked often in contradiction to the ways of they who thought themselves as holiness perfected. They called themselves Pharisees, and they still remain the same as was set, by Christ, as the example we ought not to aim for, a warning written within the Word which reads that all should beware of the leaven in which they were living as seen inside such mindsets which had become and can then still become misplaced upon man’s abilities to perfect anything.

Abilities that we just don’t have.

For so too His Word reads that all have sinned and fallen short, and that even though we’d all gone that way as spent walking if not running away from He who is the Way, still came the Way to walk a different way as aimed unto such an end as this which should now begin our own ongoing willingness, if not continually growing excitement, to share in our own surrender of anything and everything that He who loved us and gave Himself asks for us to see as the stains, spots, scars and stories of a life lived seeking for always only our own glory as is gained within the ways of man.

Yes, He calls us away from such ways, and that by showing us what they so fully deserve. And well, seeing what He endured in my place on that cross, it’s easy to see why such things as those we talked about a couple of days ago, such as sexual immortality and impurity, must then go. But friends, is that it? Couple boxes and we call it quits? Just rid our lives of the bigger issues and hope that’s good enough?

Did Jesus die just a little?

Or did not He go all the way to the grave so as to lose all of the life as lived by sinful man?

Of which are we!

And indeed, if we do agree that we are sinners indeed, well then why ever stop fighting against what He came to overcome? For are not even such things as laziness and the filthiness of human language often discussed as things that so too display for us who we are and thus what or in whom we believe? For indeed, if we are followers of Christ and thus believers in Him, well then even anger and foul language and all other such unholiness must go too.

Nothing of the old now allowed to remain.

Sure, the call to carry crosses our own is initially quite cumbersome as it encompasses the veritable loss of an entire life. But as we just discussed, it’s more than anything the spiritual loss of that way of life lived so lost as to have known of the cross and He who carried it and done nothing different, known nothing better because of it. Which is sadly a story our every past can tell.

And indeed, what if we've so set ourselves on so many fires that we've left no recourse but to just let our lives burn to ash so that we can finally then see what we have left with which we can, and that only with His help, begin to build again? For that is the goal, to raze what has been made of a life gone so wonderfully off the rails that the King of Heaven came amongst heathen so as to save the same via the only way that could be made.

And well, that is the grave.

For again, we’ve all simply done too much entirely too wrong for simply way too long. And having each of us arrived upon a life in which sin was so common that we fought against anyone who even suggested that we might be failing or falling short, well, we’ve simply plenty to lose of a life so lost if we’re to ever be found by anything, anyone, and that at any point. And that’s by no means trying to say that Christ cannot find us as find us He did before we even began to breathe this life that we’ve so betrayed despite His Word have been written long before our story began.

No, it’s rather only to say that His having gone through so much to find us should find us nothing but forever willing to surrender, sacrifice, sell off or simply burn away anything and everything that even dares pretend it may turn our attention again away from He who is the way, and thus the only hope we have.

Yes, He should see in us an undying willingness to continue offering Him the evidence that He is the only hope we need. But friends, if we withhold anything from the Refiner’s fire, are we not saying only that we have still a hope worth holding as held within this thing that we disdain to go away? He should be seen as so worthy of everything we can offer that we never again feel so inclined to offer any of us to anything we’ve been known to love in the past.

Even the foulness of our language or the common anger within which we’ve talked.

No, it all goes, because He too went all in. And so let us not then even live to meet Him in the middle but let us now rather strive to so empty our lives that He doesn’t have to come find us as we’re instead waiting at Heaven’s door seeking for only the Bread and Water He said is inside.

After all, if everything we’ve been is all we have to let go in order to come to know more of all He said He is, well then why not focus on our getting rid of anything that keeps us from the life He died for us to live?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold