Day 3910 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 5:12 NIV

Distasteful

Such is what we’ve daily a mouth full thanks to a heart full of a world full of a people fooled by a sinful school teaching us all to pull into what remains the lane in which we lose our lives day and night because of our known delight in darkened sights seen and shown for all to see what we’ve been and who we’ll be. Simply because who we’ve been is who we’ll stay thanks to our agreement to stay unchanged by a world vastly resolved to do the same. Just be ever unchanged because entirely too many truly seem to like living this way.

What way?

Well it’s that defined in fairly decent detail in the verses leading up to that which we discussed yesterday. It’s that way of life in which we find the presence of such problems as those clearly mentioned in Ephesians 5:3-5 in which we’re all called to wage what is in every way a holy war for our souls against all here that we see and hear which so clearly wages war against them.

And considering how this life is a war and both our souls and thus our lives are so well then on the line then indeed, “among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”

No inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God seeing as He is the very same and came to call us to come back to that home that is that hope of that unbridled happiness and peace and rest and victory that is ours and waiting at the end of what for now remains a long road walked in the rain of a pain poured upon hearts shattered by both what we see but seeing that the same is what’s been seen of our very own past. And indeed, for every single one of us it should hurt like hell to look back.

Why?

Because all of us have known so much of the darkness that hoping the Light would know us is simply something we should have not even the ability to imagine. And yet some of us do. Some of us do cling to that hope of what sounds a better home. Some of us do find within us this determination planted to welcome the loss of whatever we’ve won so that we can instead win our wealth within the Son and all He came to overcome. Some of us are somehow willing to embrace even death if such is really what it costs to finally live life again.

Simply because some of us know well that we have been dead and still endure those days in which we only feel still the same. And as much as the world around us might still make misery look magnificent and have so many ways of making evil seem enjoyable, for some there’s just this daily realization that you just can’t unlearn what you’ve just been given the ability to understand.

And friends, coming to understand even the opening gambit of the Gospel is sometimes more than enough to open a mind to start asking its heart why it so loves so much of what’s so far gone that He had to go both through all that and then into the grave in order to get us back. Indeed, just how poorly have we lived these lives that Christ had to die in order to redeem us from what we’d made of them?

What have we made of them?

What have we made in them?

What have they made in us?

What will He make of us?

See, that last one is both the one least often considered in a world that really only wonders as to what new depths of distasteful depravity it can sink to next but also the one that’s to be asked in what are two different ways that are aimed at two eternally different things. For the first and most logical question that one question asks is what will He make of us when He sees us knelt before Him? Will He have seen us there before? Will He know we’ve tried to know Him? Will He admit He’s known us?

Why would He admit to knowing us, why would He even want to know us if all we choose to know is only more of the ways of a wicked world spiraling further out of control?

The second then being what will He make us should we ever become of the rare willingness to admit that the world is spiraling out of control and the humility to confess that we’ve lived lives that look all but the same?

Because you see, I personally don’t see much here inside whatever this is that we’ve collectively become that the Son should want anything to do with, let alone much to make friends with. Because we don’t know much about friendship with Christ having each lived so much of our lives making friends with the world that we know far more enmity with Him than just about anything else.

And granted, odds are we’re not to the point in humility’s hope in which we could readily confess that. For the fact is that we still live amongst a vast and growing number of those who never will. At least not here. And that’s because we’re at present not pressed to really make any decisions. Or so we think. And that’s because we like to think that all of life is nothing more than our one fleeting opportunity to taste and see all for ourselves what we ourselves can then determine to probably be the very best there is for us.

And yet in all of our sampling of this world’s wares and ways it seems that all we’ve won is again a vast and potentially still growing enmity with the Son against whom all sin is committed considering how He’s the One who came and died once for all to thus cleanse the all from the sins that had in them stored up the very wrath of God that we just discussed as being promised to come upon those who are disobedient.

For all manner and measure of disobedience is undertaken in what is a clear decision to opt not to uphold even the semblance of an awareness as to the existence of the other path we could have chosen as was paved in the obedience we thus opted to live not knowing, or at least not showing.

But the issue for each of us is that, again, having lived in sin for so long as we have, we know now only such a vast degree of disobedience that we’ve all gained quite the taste for it. We love it. We enjoy it. We in fact probably can’t really imagine our lives without it as our lives have been contained within it for so long and in so many ways that we’ve known not a day in which we didn’t in some way choose to disobey He who is the Way if not utterly enjoy every single second of our so doing.

And yet here we read that it is shameful to even mention what the disobedient do in secret.

How ashamed should we then be to have done our share of that so much that’s being done here that is so very disobedient that most laugh as they do it knowing thus full well both what they’re doing and against whom it’s being done?

For the current dilemma is that there’s a rapid unmaking taking place in which many in this place aren’t even hiding the skeletons they once tried so hard to shove so deep in their closets that not even those closest to them knew the real them. No, people aren’t hiding sin anymore. Rather we’re in fact watching a world work out every way possible to make a bunch of it perfectly legal.

According to man’s law, that is.

And that is because we live in a world that’s clearly chosen to vastly forsake if not hopefully just completely forget God’s Law. And sure, there’s that logical train that such a concept encourages to leave the station unto a conversation as to how since Christ came we’re now no longer under the Law but rather under His grace as He came to save us all from our share of the fall so short of upholding what was honestly such a simple set of logical requests that forgiveness shouldn’t exist for any who so wonderfully managed to fall so short of the glory sought within.

No, not a one of us should have any hope of His mercy having seen how fully we’ve accomplished letting Him down via forsaking His Law and thus failing to bring Him the glory that the whole thing was aimed toward.

But we do know that Christ came to atone for our every such mistake. And yet so many in this place, all of us in fact, have come only to take that gift in vain as if a ticket to just go on sinning in the estimation that such an endless mercy would clearly be more than happy to continue covering whatever we just so happen to refuse to start forsaking. And that because we know that something will have to be forsaken within our lives no matter what we do.

Problem is that, again having lived in sin for so long as we all have, we’ve all thus known to forsake the Father for much longer than we have to forsake that which we’d come to love instead.

And so we’re kind of caught between this realization as to what our sinful choices cost Christ and the reality as to what that gift should be given in our own lives. Which is a share in His laying down of a sinful flesh in the taking up of a cross upon which both all shame is lost but that only because all sin is finally seen for nothing of the fun and enjoyment and liberty that we’ve all so clearly lived thinking it was. Nor that we still see quite clearly so many here still thinking it is.

That’s the second hard part of this journey from the hell we’ve known in our sinful pasts to the promise of the hope we thus never knew seeing as how we lived like that. For if we had known of Heaven, and that it again is no inheritance of those who are disobedient, well then we probably wouldn’t have become so versed at disobeying. But then that something happened that opened our eyes and started changing our lives into these in which we fight to leave all the wickedness in which we’d walked.

But still we see so many still enjoying the wickedness we too once enjoyed. And this causes us to question why we’re doing this. Why are we following this Way that is in fact of a daily narrowing in which we only seem to see more that we get wrong than we do what’s right? Why are we enduring this learning of both how far short we’ve fallen and that alongside how we can never make up for it? Why are we embracing this meeting of shame as found in our sins?

Why don’t we just go back to living like them?

For all the world seems to always be having so much more fun than that known along the path that only strips us bare of all that we once all but lived to see and hear and feel and know.

But friends, we know now the shame. And if you’re like me and have tasted it so deeply thanks to the depth of our past’s depravity, then you know that as much as it may seem like it would just be easy to go back to doing as we’ve always done, our share in their partaking of the sins that killed the Son, we’re finally starting to learn what the next verse goes on to say.

And that is that nothing done in secret will stay there.

That nothing done in the darkness that is human delight can stay hidden now that Christ has sought out every human failure so as to carry them all in the cross. That His having died to all sin once for all leaves us all to seek out our every sin and endure the task of repenting from them. Why? Not because it’s fun because it’s not. No, but simply because once we come to see the depth of our depravity and just how deeply we enjoyed the taste of it, we’ll only begin to grow in our understanding that He is both our only hope and thus has every right to ask us to rid ourselves of any delight that we’ve ever had that was never found in Him.

All because that’s the goal:

To be found in Christ.

Why?

Because one day we’re all going to appear before the Judgement Seat of God and thereby receive from Him the justified outcome of our eternity. But the problem is that if we show up there as just us with thus all our sins still in tow, He who died to remove our sinful inclinations from us will have no reason to claim He knows us as we clearly never chose to even try to know Him. For if God sees no evidence of Christ in us then it will be obvious that we lived choosing to go on sinning rather than turning and repenting.

Thus not doing what the cross both demands and what He who endured it deserves.

But if we share in His death and in this put on His new life that He did all of that for us to have, then when we appear before God He will see the Son thanks to our having joined Him in His laying down of the sinful flesh and the taking up of a life lived forever in the pursuit of whatever it takes to glorify God. Even if such does eventually come to actually meaning the very losing of our own lives.

All because in Christ we come to understand that certain things matter more than not the mere enjoyment and pleasure we’ve come to see as treasure but even such things as comfort and peace. Indeed, His gift of forgiveness and salvation, both of which are ultimately given in order to bring glory back to He who so lovingly gives them to those who simply don’t deserve them, they should mean enough to us that we to grow in our share of His willingness to do whatever it takes to make sure they’re realized as fully as possible.

Right up to and including our own dying to every form of sin that we have all so clearly lived in.

And so then it again comes down to what seems a personal decision. Do we go on doing as we all always have, which is what most are making daily evident they’ve every intent of doing? Or do we ask Him who came to do a new thing to help us learn to do the same? Do we continue living as if we have no shame in a world that lost it a long time ago? Or do we admit that we do know shame and that we’re so tired of hearing it call our name that the only Name that begins to matter is that said to be the only given us unto our salvation anyway?

But again, my friends, we have to understand that this is a personal decision as we so clearly cannot count on the world around us helping us out. And why is that? Because the world around us just continues going from bad to worse in their ongoing practice of deceiving and being deceived into all but everyone now thinking that they never need be ashamed of basically anything having all but collectively lost the taste for such things as truth and dignity and have rather allowed them to be replaced by dishonesty and moral depravity.

Because indeed, it is shameful to even mention what the disobedient do in secret. And this is definitely no secret because all of us have ourselves done things that we’d be horrified if anyone ever came to know about. And well, that’s oddly enough the question then isn’t it? Because in Scripture we’re told of a God who sees, hears, knows everything that everyone has ever done, said, thought. And if that’s the case, then how is it possible for any of us to not be so ashamed of what all we’ve said and done that we beg Him to indeed make us new in the way we think so that we can live to test and approve only that which aligns with His will?

Friends, we should be so ashamed of who we’ve been and how we’ve lived that we never again dare imagine letting those old ways come back nor our going back to them. Because all should know so fully the misery that is shame that the last thing we want to stay is the same. No, we should all want nothing more than to leave our wicked ways behind, not only because they made us feel like death itself, but because such is what Christ endured to wash them away.

Look, I understand the ease of not changing. I gave the majority of my life to seeking only ways to do just that. To never change, not anything. But friends, I also know now the indefinable joy felt in having met the humility that allowed me to see the ways in which I needed to alongside He who came to help me change everything I needed to. And no, I’m by no means where nor who I ought to be. But there’s a sense of purpose in knowing that you’re pursuing something that is promised to end in everlasting life.

And when compared to the way of life I still remember having lived, no, they are in fact so very different that even things taste better now. I know that might sound weird, but trust me if you can. Even the food we eat somehow tastes better when you begin to lose your taste for the sin you once lived in.

I guess that’s just because even eating in secret isn’t as much fun as we once thought it was.

Imagine then how much better everything else might become if you stopped doing things that caused to hide them?

Friends, there is a better way. And while it may not be an easier way, our every encounter with such things as regret and shame should be more than enough to offer unto us a willingness to just keep trying to keep on dying to what we know well was never a life worth living anyway.

For why continue to live in shame when you know you don’t like how it tastes and that He who offers to save also promises to spit out those of even a lukewarmth that He’s told us He finds distasteful?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold