Day 3912 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 5:5 NIV

Disassociate

It’s something of a determined distancing as decided upon due to the general directioning as is typically quite easily denoted within the notations of the many nuances and noticings easily heard and more often seen within the scenes shown of a life grown into these basic repetitions that all human intentions eventually seem to come upon. For all of us, as we age, we get set in our ways thinking that such a continued lack of change will, for the most part, keep us safe.

But the issue soon becomes that there is no safety for those who are so dumb as to do never anything new because the lack of novelty begets the presence of complacency.

And while being complacent is not itself a damnable offense as there are always those potentials for peoples to become content in the content of a current climate that is, at least in theory, plausibly commendable, the issue is that as a fallen and still falling people, our growing to all but appreciate the crumble is what will lead us to fumble the forgiveness found in faith and thus forsake He who came to lead us unto it and into where it goes from there.

For forgiveness is something needed by all of us, but it’s in every way only the first step that’s in fact been already taken in what’s to then become an eternal journey spent growing both toward and in many respects in the respect of Him who did all that was needed to so achieve our personal freedom. That was indeed the entire reason Christ came. It was to give up His life that we might see we’d all basically but done the same.

And then from that point of a vastly humbled realization grow in the determination of an ever-growing relationship with He who would do such a thing for such a people as we, in the humility, come to see simply didn’t deserve it.

That is the gravity of the Gospel.

It’s that the innocent died in place of the guilty, a willful surrender to suffer under the punishment deserved whilst having done nothing to so deserve it Himself. It’s the message of a just and jealous God reconciling to Himself the people of His pasture who had gotten so lost and unsure that they had given years unto this search for such idols as pleasure and power. A feat so fully accomplished because God, in Christ, proved that it was His pleasure to both wield His power but to also embrace the punishment deserved by the many who’d lived so clearly so arrogantly that they had all but lost all fear of all the above.

And in that fearlessness become complacent enough to now live this life as if change is the enemy and life is meant then for ending.

That’s something that’s grown into a ripe misunderstanding that I see seemingly all the time anymore. It’s that these days I look around and watch what appears to be a world full of people who are basically just waiting to die. Now that’s not to say they’re not enjoying their lives as I’m sure they are and I hope they do. But the issue seems to have become that there’s a growing enjoyment in the very things that are hastening the day upon which Christ will return and once more prove that God’s limitless in everything but patience.

And that’s the problem that we’re all presently facing.

It’s that we walk a world in which there lives this now general consensus that has many if not most convinced that God’s patience is somehow evidence of His weakness. And indeed, this is a scene we’ve seen play out in a quite ironic place in our people’s past. It was something we could have and thus should have noticed as noted as having occurred at the sight of the cross on the hill of Calvary.

“If you are really the Son of God then save yourself!”

People then looked at Him as He hung on that hill and thought only of the suffering flesh dwindling down to a very last breath. They saw nothing more than another man paying the price for being guilty of sin. They saw a human meeting the end of what they either themselves believed or were elsewise convinced to simply agree was a way of life that wasn’t worth being lived anymore.

For, as He said within one of His final breaths, they truly had no idea what they were doing.

Much like the woman at the well had no idea who it was that was asking her for a drink of water.

Nor then what He could give them, give us, if they, we, would just give Him even a second of their, our, lives spent in something other than arrogance and pride.

All simply because such had become and still remain the main way in which we see everything from everything to everyone. It’s all through this lens of our having lived for what seems to us just long enough to have mostly figured out most of what we’re doing to have arrived upon this estimation that we’re doing it all well enough that we needn’t a drink of any other water from any other well.

And well, this leaves us then only to drink of what we’ve learned to think as has been so instilled in us by, at this point, what may well have been a thousand or more different ideals as sought by an equal if not larger number of others who are themselves now scattered to every wind of want and woe that a people like us can come to know as being worth what we’ve given in the hopes that they’ll go to where we want to be as is always measured by what we assume we’ll see once we arrive.

Problem is that all we’ve really known is a sinful way of life which has then left us more accustomed to the ways and wants of those yelling at Jesus to just come down off the cross and, in doing so, both save Himself the suffering and in the process prove He was God to those watching. Simply because a people who think that seeing is believing, and are also prone to complacency, well the same will then always demand something to see before they become willing to believe.

Leaving Jesus then to hang on the tree and salvation to drift further away as we continue to walk within the way of a people who remain as people have always been.

Further proving that we still know not what we’re doing.

Simply because we think we know what we’re doing as we’ve been doing the same things for all our lives and have so willfully chosen such stagnant repetition as it allows us that semblance of safety we all seem to still assume is needed.

Question is safety from what?

What are we seeking so sternly such a shiftless safety? Of what are we so worried that we’ve resolved to just dissolve into this way of life spent doing nothing new and thus finding nothing more? What more could we be, should we try, would we see if we did as He did when He came for you and me in what was then what it still remains: the doing of a new thing?

Indeed, does not our seeking the sort of safety we think we need only lead us to avoid the meeting place from which Jesus calls for us to come?

For make no mistake, of all we think we know we’re all quite sure that we’re not dumb! And that because we all know that the grave is the last place we want to go as, well, that’s long proven the one place that once you go you don’t come back! And so no, we’re not at all interested in that. Because we’ve here still plans to make and pleasure to feel and fun to have and friends to find and mistakes to deny and denials to mistake as being the right choices to make in what are opportunities to believe instead.

But no, we anymore seem to know so little of such hope as all belief really is that all we are is what we were simply because that’s all we seem to believe we can be or should become.

Just a people who seek for this settlement in life upon whatever middle ground we can find.

But friends, if God’s intention was for our invention of always some reason to stop where we are and make it seem good enough, then why would Christ come on this earth and endure all He did?

I mean, look around! We’re a people who prove every single day that we can find our way to a pace that’s easy enough to repeat on our own. We show Him all time, and one another too, that there is nothing we cannot do when all we hope to do is merely continue what’s already been done. We are a society of stagnancy and that in sinfulness if need be. Simply because we’ve made ourselves accepting of acceptance of anything necessary so long as nothing else is asked of us.

Because that’s exactly what we’re always most willing to offer.

Nothing else.

And while this is wrong on a personal level, the issue then has become that it’s something now considered commendable upon the corporate if not cultural level. We’ve become a people who actively seek out those who soothe itching ears and in this help justify our chosen, yes, chosen, fears of anything that we may elsewise have absolutely no reason to have become so afraid of.

Things such as humility or honesty or our actually seeking to grow in both. Or things like modesty and morality and, again, growing in both. Or perhaps those such as holiness and godliness as are both said to be evidence of the predestined.

But rather than seek for those things, grow in those things, even welcome a slight appreciation of those things, no, no rather we seem something of a society in which those things are still just as mocked as He who is the lot embodied was when a people thought they saw just come guy hanging on a cross needing to die and felt nothing inside.

Well, a few did and yet sadly that’s still the same as can be now said of those who are moved by the message even today:

Only few do.

And that’s because it remains a message entirely offensive and thus perpetually unpopular. And that because the things that are popular are still those which were common then.

Leaven of the Pharisees anyone?

It’s the idea in mind that tells someone, convinces them even, that everything they’re doing is being done so correctly, so wonderfully, so perfectly that they themselves are thus the same: Correct, wonderful and perfect. And while there’s likely quite a great deal of room to debate the appropriate evidence of humility and whether it’s best seen inside a people who think less of themselves or rather think of themselves less, the whole point is that once we reach that point in which we think we’re correct and perfect at that, we’ll stop.

For why keep going?

Why welcome any change when you’ve already gotten life so figured out that you’re living it perfectly? Why endure sound teaching aimed at your learning of something new, something more when what you already know has proven enough to measure up to a life wonderfully lived? Yes, why listen to anyone who in any way even hints at anything that you might could fix, change, lose or improve?

We don’t have time for that!

No, instead we’re busy lying flat on the floor of a faithless life found in our having faith in only ourselves and these many religions we’ve made seeking to always, ironically, make the rules so as to ensure we never fall short of their stellar expectations. Indeed, down here we do so love the image of self-abasement and the piety that comes from it! Everyone come and see how miserable we look as we endure this adherence to what are mere human rules made by other humans that themselves thought the path to perfection was one we could both pave and then walk all by ourselves!

Indeed, it’s just as we read of Paul of Colossians 2 starting in verse 20 going through 23.

“Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

We are very much those Paul talks to Timothy about in 2 Timothy 3:5 who have “a form of godliness” but sadly still live a kind of life that has them “denying its power.”

And what does Paul instruct Timothy to do regarding such people?

“Have nothing to do with such people.”

Why?

Because unto such people it’s all about making themselves look the part and, even further, taking part in and making partnerships with those who do the same. All because there’s this idea of validation in such social justification as we all seem to believe is so easily found in the praise and approval of others. We think that being around those who are adhering to the same religious doctrines as we’ve chosen to agree to will somehow ensure us an all but assured seat at the head of the table having walked alongside these shining examples of what humans can accomplish.

But friends, neither is faith about anything that any human can accomplish and that’s because, well, just look around at what we humans have accomplished!

We’re in every way as godless today as humanity has ever been before. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the Bible says that there will be those who come to do the things that will be determined by Him as so displeasing that, get this, it will have gone better for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them! Matthew 10:15. “Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

What town?

Any which will not welcome those whom Christ had sent to them with the express purpose of sharing the Good News.

Problem then is that rather than our living to shake the dust we’ve instead sought to become best friends with those who have no intention of ever listening to anything we have to say. Indeed, we’re a people apparently so starved for the hope of companionship that we’re willing to be partakers of just about anything that anyone else is doing just so that none of us have do anything alone.

And that all because it seems that we’re still seeking for our inheritance here in what is the world we know that we know to hold the lives we know we have still to live before we go to what many here still believe is the great nothingness of the grave and thus remains the place that nobody wants to venture toward.

A fear so common that any who do talk of it, as is made necessary in the sharing of the Good News that’s good because it talks about how Jesus overcame the grave, that still those who do talk of it are mocked and made fun of and mostly just ignored by the most here that still have no ability to see or hear despite having eyes and ears.

And that simply because we’ve learned to live this life giving our eyes to only looking for what we want to see and our ears to only listening to what we want to hear and thus our minds to only learning what we’re willing to learn and thus our hearts to only knowing what little we already know and thus our lives to never being anything more than whatever they’ve already been.

We are a people who would rather find a way to accept something or make something we’re doing seem acceptable than to endure the obvious necessity of change and thus risk offending those who, like us, really don’t want to change anything.

But friends, that’s the very part that makes the grave so terrifying!

It’s that we all know perfectly well that if we don’t change, we will die. And yet we still seek friendship with those many who live their lives as if it’s not worth knowing Christ? He is literally the only One who can lead the way from death to life! Why then have any part or partnership with those who live their lives just waiting to die and doing absolutely nothing in regard to even considering what may come next?

Look, my point is that we’re surrounded by people who are living as if this world is all they’ll ever know. That this life is the only one they’ll ever have. As if, in light of those common beliefs, they’re truly best to seek their best life in this world as can then only be filled with the things and ways of this world. Yes, we are bombarded by messages telling us daily that the best we can ever find, feel, see or be is but what this world has to offer or has chosen to settle for.

Why go along with that? Why share in such a settling so short of what remains the hope of Heaven? Why seek to carve out for ourselves some flimsy cardboard kingdom when we have the promise of streets of gold and unending peace waiting in that place that our Savior came to say He was leaving to make ready?

Yes, why not live to get ready ourselves? Ready for what? More.

Everything more.

Everything bigger. Everything brighter. Everything more alive that life lived forever!

Because the problem is that there are a many here who have so place in that place, and having apparently settled for that, live out their lives seeking to enjoy their time in this place in whatever way possible. And yet those enjoyments are so often manifest in such things as those easily defined as being immoral, impure, unrighteous, unholy, unhealthy, unhopeful, unhelpful and thus far from wholesome.

Why settle for that? Just because the world is? Why should we care as to what the world or those in it are willing to accept as being their life’s best?

Is our best here? Did we find our best or feel our best in those many days, weeks, years spent living as most still do down here? Or did we not find only shame and guilt and regret?

We can all easily continue to find what we all already have. But if all we want is only what we’ve already had, well then don’t be surprised when you wake up one day to find that Jesus is rejecting you because you lived rejecting Him in exchange for the same everything that almost everyone else will have themselves had but lost by then.

For if we live as if there’s still no room at our inn, why then should we expect Him to make room for us in His?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold