Day 3896 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 66:4 NIV

The dread of delight

As is defined inside of what’s become of life in which we live looking only to what we like and never to what it must look like unto they who see from the outside in upon all we’ve been and what all it’s caused us to delight to do. Indeed, all throughout time we humans have delighted to do only whatever we wanted to simply because of this right to choose that still remains among the favorite of ways in which to waste what was never actually ours to so use and abuse.

But then I suppose it’s hard to see the abuse when the chains are just loose enough to allow in us a trust that they’re not there at all.

And indeed, such defines our fall both away from God and thus ever further from life itself as well. It’s because it’s become what we delight to do. And now we don’t likely see it that way as instead we see it as being our way as paved in the bricks of what we like and the mortar of a misunderstanding that continues standing up to just about any argument or debate that we’re only but half willing to wage or entertain.

And that simply because I think we know deep down that if we were to ever argue a bit too far we might see we’ve gone way too far in what’s always been the worst of all possible direction. For I contend that we only pretend that we like it like this. I believe that we perceive that what we’ve seen is known to us as what this life never should have been. In fact, I believe that we each fully understand the particular fullness of our own flaws, falls, failures and faults and thus realize the lack of real life to be found in the lives we’ve lived.

Because real life was designed by God who came in Christ to visibly and audibly show us and teach us how it’s to be done having watched us become so wayward in our wishes and wants that He quit with the stunts, stopped with the translators, skipped over the instigators and went straight for the throat in what remains, somehow, a hope that some of us might come to our senses, tear down our fences, stop playing the victims and accept Him via the only path that such is done.

Which is a sharing of what He did and thus all He said as He came as the Son.

Indeed, such is the life that we’re now called to lead. It’s that of servant followers who seek only a delight in the delight of our Father as opposed to the pleasing of people, whomever they may be. But the problem is that all throughout our already lost portion of what’s the rest of an endless eternity we’ve all already so mishandled that simple request that such is simply all we know to do anymore.

And ourselves mostly at that.

Yes, all of life has become this lie in which we live only to do as we like without really any thought ever given to what it must look like. And what makes this somewhat ironic is that in all of our people pleasing we actually spend a great deal of time worrying about what people think. It’s just part of the game. For in order to please those around us, so as to win whatever prizes we think they can give us, we have to put both them and their every preference, perspective, opinion and even delusion upon what become pedestals to which we look when we’re unsure as to what we should do.

Or say. Or look like. Or search for. Or beg for.

Indeed, much of life has come to be lived in what is a basic begging for everything from time to attention, yet oddly never more of our own but rather only that from those to whom we were actually sent as, again, servant followers of a Father who came to die so that we might come to realize that we really need to do the same if we’re ever to find the same outcome that He did. Which is life eternal, you know, thanks to His overcoming the death in which we’ve delighted to the tune of the leaving the tomb jilted.

As in a lover who is left suddenly in what is a rejection, a choice to abandon so quickly that none saw it coming.

Only the oddity here is that Christ jilted the love we had when He chose to leave the tomb so surprised like that. And indeed, can you imagine the scene seen by those shown the empty hole where pretty much most likely expected a stinking corpse to be found? Yeah, I bet that shook some ground, and in fact so much that some of us are still feeling the reverb in a life perturbed by what we’ve preferred as was pursued by this mind deluged with this idea that we’re here to do only what we like as is liked by those to whom we live seeking to please.

It’s a really slippery slope and this I know we all know for all of us have walked it well for, well, all our lives. But that’s why the Christ came to lay down His life. It wasn’t because He was bored in Heaven and looking for something to do. Wasn’t because He wanted to see what all He could accomplish in a weekend. Wasn’t just looking to get His kicks via getting kicked out of pretty much every town He went to whilst here. Definitely wasn’t because we deserved His coming so near as to physically take us by the hand and help us both up and thus through all of our chosen infirmities.

No, it was because His goal for us, His plan for us has forever been the forever of eternity. And we know this because, well, what’s the point in creating life just to watch it die? Seems kind of utterly pointless if not really messed up. And as I personally can’t wrap my mind around a God who’d die in the process of trying to prove that I both was destined to do the same but could then with Him live again, nor then can I imagine Him the kind to be so demented as to design a creation with the express intention of watching them just vanish one by one.

For He did come in the Son who did leave us with the Spirit by which we still, at least a few of us, hear it.

What are we hearing?

Both the distant cry of Heaven asking us to keep on walking as if every step we take means something more than the last and also the screaming of those laughing as they march with chests puffed out and pride held high toward what is their chosen demise as designed inside a life in which delight is deemed of more meaning than life itself.

Indeed, we’ve become a people so burning for all our chosen burdens that we scoff at the suggestion of freedom. Why? Because we’re convinced we already have it. We’re just certain that we’re already there. We are simply adamant that we are as free as freedom can get thanks to our living like we do in what are lives in which we continue through a laundry list of endless things we’ve learned to love so very much that we can’t bring ourselves unto the belief that we’ll here have to leave.

No, we’ve entirely too much life to live, and if the rest is anything like the first, then why look elsewhere? Why do anything any differently? Why allow for this solemn suggestion that we’ve chosen a deception that’s left us decrepit when our decisions and delights are for us these lights that lift up our lives to some really enjoyable heights? No, we don’t have time to listen to any who hint that we’ve been living a lie in which we all practice to deceive and then act like we’re not being deceived.

For surely we’re the only ones hiding behind all this makeup and make believe that we so insist others to see upon every screen within their reach. Surely nobody else is lying as much we pretend we never have. Surely there’s not even a single other person who’s practicing delusion inside a life that’s really nothing but an illusion performed for those who surely aren’t performing in the same circus that pretty much all of life’s somehow become.

And on that, how has life become so hassled and unhinged if we’re all so very good at living it that we don’t have to make it up as we go?

I mean, if we really are so in control as says our arrogance and ego, then this must be where we wanted to end up, who we wanted to become. Yes, we must indeed daily arrive at what is the very best of life seeing as how that’s literally been our stated pursuit for the better part of a couple decades or more. Indeed, we’re all here to live our best life, and seeing as how that’s exactly what we’re all experts at, I suppose that congratulations are in order!

So cheers to us my friends!

Welcome to a live of utter chaos and disorder!

A life that we’ve chosen to live. A choice we’ve chosen to love. A love we’ve chosen to lose. A loss we’ve chosen to win. A win we’ve chosen to hate. A hatred we’ve chosen to hold. A life held in hatred of love as is chosen because He won the victory over our loss of life as was chosen thanks to our holding this grudge against Him simply because He mentioned that we’ve been our very own victims within what’s been a life lived looking to die as many times as we might delight.

All because we delight in death and yet never dare to call it what it is.

Because what it is, almost our every single delight and thus decision is nothing but sin.

But rather we call it fun. We call it enjoyment. We call it entertainment. We call it prosperity. We call it power. We call it popularity. We call it normal. We call it common. We call it love. We call it hope. We deem it dreams. Indeed, we dream dreams for the things we can find in what is a place that we’re promised to leave, and we hate God for reminding us that there’s more we could hope for.

What kind of monster would do such a thing as ask us to forgo what demanded our death and reach instead for He who offers us unending life?

See, that’s the deception that’s befallen all of mankind. It’s this idea in mind that tells us that He’s unkind simply because He now promises to punish any and all who refused to heed any of His many warnings as waged against the things in our lives that He’s told us time after time earn only the wage of death. Yes, we walk amongst a world violently angry at God simply because He asks us to do better and to want more than the death in which He’s watched us learn to delight.

Can you imagine what all He’s seen?

I mean, we only see the fraction of the fall that they can fit into a newspaper headline or a nighttime news story. We only hear of the portion of our perversion that we happen to be told by those who themselves only know as little as they might. We have no idea as to the depths of human depravity. In fact, I dare say we don’t even remember some of our own. And that because, well, pride has long held us captive in this life spent convinced that we had none.

I know this because I’ve been there.

Just last night I was talking to God about all the things that I can look back and see clearly only now that I’m finally on this side of their dread. Indeed, I’ve done things that I honestly cannot believe. As I’ve said in prior posts, it’s sometimes as if looking back on my past is like looking at the ghost of another person who lived a different life. How could that have been me? For I know the me I am now, and he’s nothing like that person I see back behind me.

Am I supposed to still be as mad at God as I was back then when He placed in my head all these impossible improvements that I’m finally experiencing?

Am I supposed to now still question His calling to patience or repentance when the past has shown me the power both can have?

Am I supposed to look at what life’s become as is seen inside of all the common things people are doing and pretend that what we see is as good as we can be?

Are we supposed to seriously do so much quitting as we’ve always chosen to do? Are we truly supposed to hate the idea of how much better we can be? Are we supposed to just keep giving away our lives to whatever depraved delight we’ve come to like or hope to find? Are we supposed to continue assuming that this world is our home and thus we’d better hurry up and find of it all we can hope before we go and do what everyone else always has?

Are we supposed to keep on doing so very much that even displeases us and never once give any concern to what all might displease Him?

Are we to take Christ and that cross He bore as a punishment He didn’t have to take but somehow also one that we didn’t deserve? Can we honestly be so far gone as to actually believe that none of us deserve that which we dread having treated Him like we have?

Friends, we’re the ones who held the nails every single time we’ve chosen to do the things that He’s defined as sin. We’re the ones who swung the hammer and drove them deep every time we chose to sink a little bit deeper into our chosen delights. We’re the ones who laughed at Him as He hung in misery while we’ve spent our lives pretending that we’re not miserable. We’re those who chose to mock as we continue to walk away from His calling us to come and see what sin really deserves.

We’re those who continue to choose to reject His gift of eternal life each and every time we continue to think that we’re doing just fine without Him in this one.

Yes, we’re the ones who continue to contend that this life is all we need to become as good as we can get and hopefully find the same.

And thus we’re the ones so gone outside our brains that we live this life looking to the one place we’re leaving to provide for us something we can enjoy so very much that we can continue to ignore the fact that we are.

And why?

Because life here is all about delight. It’s become nothing but our time to enjoy ourselves, to pamper ourselves, to provide for ourselves all we can possibly hope to have or still wish to be. Indeed, life down here has become this really weird insistence to stay down here. Simply because there’s so much down here that we’ve come to delight in that we cannot seem to anymore imagine that one day we won’t be here to enjoy it anymore.

All because we’ve become entirely able to not only focus on that in which we delight, but also equally able to never once pay any attention to all that we dread.

Such as our only ending up dead and wishing only then that we’d have done things far differently back when we had the chance.

Friends, that’s the point of everything that He’s ever done! From the prophets to the cross, everything God does is done so as to help us see that we still have a chance to leave whatever this has been allowed to become and to choose for once to do something different, something new, something better. Indeed, He’s simply asking us to do better and He does so whilst offering us the best reward possible!

For what’s better than what’s promised to be a life lived forever without all of this pain and suffering and sorrow and sadness that we’ve all seen and felt so much of already?

And well, what’s worse than that most dreadful idea of all those things not only never ending but in fact becoming so constantly common that all we can do is weep and gnash our teeth for all of eternity?

See folks, that’s the point of it all. It’s that He makes it all so perfectly clear that it’s entirely easy to choose. I mean, what could be an easier choice than this we’re offered between Heaven and hell? And yet, well, why then do we continue to meander in the middle as if we’re not really sure and need some more time to think it over, all because we want more time to do as we please before we get to slumming through life like that always downtrodden donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh?

My point is that the promise is simple. It’s that all of this ends and once it does that the rest of forever then begins in what’s to be one of two places so entirely different that it shouldn’t be much of a decision. But the issue is that we’ve come to dread more the narrowness of the humility that leads to life than our elsewise losing the wide open raucousness of a sinful way of living of that demands our demise. Indeed, we’ve become convinced that the worst thing that could ever happen to us is to lose our chosen happiness in everything from arrogance to lust.

No, the worst thing that could happen to us is that we could all spend all of eternity apart from God and thus all He is and all that means.

Because all He is is kindness and mercy and goodness and gracious and so very giving that He gave His very own Son who gave His very own life so as to save us from what’s promised to end ours. And what that means is that if we continue to choose our delights over that which pleases Him, He will leave us with them for eternity. But friends, that should scare the death out of us because I know we’ve all known that way of life in which we once delighted in things that we now cannot tolerate.

So be careful what you convince yourself to continue to settle for. Because one day the dust will settle and we’ll then see only forever our chosen outcome of eternity.

Don’t risk having chosen only what you thought was best. For while what seems great to us seems, well, great to us, He’s the One who created life and so I’d say He knows better than we do what best really is.

For we’re the ones who’ve found all these ways to delight in death.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold