Day 3929 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 12:4 NIV

So go further

Try harder. Fight smarter. Lose bigger. Hurt more. Suffer. Struggle. Stumble. Embrace sorrow. Count losses as if wins. See the things in your life that do not belong in nor to Christ slowly ebb away as you hasten the day unto which we’ve all been called in which we’ll all be judged not by the petty judgements of this world as are rendered upon the color of skin and the number of digits a career might win but rather within the merit of our character as is to be measured by the words, deeds and actions undertaken in what is a life lived on loan.

And that from He whom we’re to love more than life itself.

An opportunity presented within the hatred of sin that offers within a stone-like resolve that revolves around living to please He who died in our place by, while in this place, our too dying to all that demanded His undue suffering. Yes, we are called to carry crosses our own, a veritable punishment in every way and that found and felt in many ways every day. Not because God wishes to see His people suffer but simply because He wishes to see His children grow.

As any good and decent father would.

And granted, I am not myself a father and find that that hope I’d once had grows only slimmer of being reality by the day. But I have One, and I’ve a dad too. And it’s from both of them, and my mother as well, that I have long understood this general desire to see children prosper, to strengthen, to experience joy, to feel happiness, to know patience, to realize mistakes, to embrace correction, to appreciate all the ways in which it comes.

Yes, even those which we wouldn’t have any reason to enjoy.

Because the underlying truth of life is that this sample of it was never meant for our enjoyment, at least not in the ways in which we’ve come to assume it. No, around here at what is this widely chosen and vastly denied rock bottom of what’s become a life lived amongst those elated to go nowhere and become nothing, so too have we all learned to seek for sadly the same.

To never advance. To never improve. To never welcome the feeling that it is to win via the experiencing of so much loss that it makes the victories, however many few they be, something of such mystery and majesty that we actually come to appreciate them not for the trophies they tout nor the bragging rights they bring but rather for the mere accomplishing of something that we truly had to endure hardship, experience struggle, undertake strict training and surrender such things as comfort and thus obviously complacency too in order for us to find.

Yes, such are the miseries that should always precede victory.

Miseries which must precede a victory if that victory is to ever be as sweet as so many claim them to be.

But you see, how then can we know? Truly, how can we fully understand the gravity of any victory without having at first tasted our share of defeat? How can any accomplishment at all feel like anything if we’ve not felt that cold sting of loss, of suffering, of the stumbling struggle of what’s a life spent in training, in straining, in trouble?

Yes, how can we ever expect to experience the fullness of what hope believes a promise if we’ll not become willing to wager something upon our finding of it?

Indeed, what does the victory, the success, the identity for which you’re aiming, what does it cost? What is it worth? What are you willing to pay, to endure, to welcome even though you’d obviously rather not, and agreeably so? What agreements are you seeking in your life spent struggling? Is your life one in which you do struggle at times? Do you struggle more often than not? Do you do as most here try and seek to avoid all struggling and other such strife in life?

And if so, as we all have, well then what can we know of victory, of accomplishment, of achievement? For if we’ve had to give nothing then of what can the gain measure?

And even should our selfish betterments and vain glories truly offer up some story of wonder and awe unto those so easily enthralled by any tale of even a tarnished triumph, what might it mean more had we endured more, gone further, fought harder, lost bigger?

What can we know of gain if we know nothing of loss?

How can we imagine everlasting life without Christ paying our cost?

How can we dare say that within Him we share if we’ll not share within what He did for us?

How can we even say that in Him we trust if we’ll neither do as He calls nor even attempt to understand why He does?

How can we honestly hope to grow in faith, grow in Him if we’ll not do as He did and actually, actively take up our crosses and carry them as if the only trophies that matter?

And yet how can we do that when still stuck like glue to this life in which we seek only to get fatter, live flatter and thus flatter those doing the same and both?

Sadly that is the way that all of us know. It’s that common approach in which we seek for the substances that give us something to show of that something that this world, and those many within it, and with each their own plans to stay, want to see, demand to hear, wish to marvel at and yet always complain about? Is it not a seriously strange existence, this one in which we marvel at the milestones of others whilst also neither seeking to reach our own and that while never truly being happy for anyone else?

Mostly because of our gross tendency toward jealousy and our now collective assumption as to how such an emotion must always be present within the present?

It’s honestly like we cannot comprehend that way of life in any way spent without our either being jealous of another or striving only to make the same the same of us. For that’s the life we know. It’s that spent seeking to hold only that which another might be impressed that we have or elsewise sad that they don’t. That’s why we seek for the things we do. Sure, at one time they may have been matters or materials that really did matter to us for what may have been even some plausibly decent reasons.

But friends, I fear that now long gone are the days in which we’d even do things selfishly. No, rather now days we seem to seek only our glory in the gain of public praise, a profit presented only unto those who live the idealized life idolized by most who’ve themselves thus fallen prey to the fallen way in which this world has chosen to exist, and for some reason delights to stay.

Yes, this world seems to have mostly adopted this approach in which the grandest of victory is merely a story to tell others, seeking then always a tale to tell that has something to sell that can gain for us the general lack of life there to find within the praise of people found only in our living to please the same. For indeed, in order for us to win the kinds of vanities this world has offered, we must thus put always first ahead of us those meager mundanities that so much of society has so sadly settled for seeking.

Trivialities such as material “wealth”, social media followings, bank accounts bursting at the seams, houses so big but doing the same, really fast cars, really hot wives, really cool wardrobes, really impressive titles, really shiny trophies and real plans for more.

All things which can be seen, and that as nothing of suffering.

And thus all things that we all think matter more than they do, more than they can considering how they’re all found both before the eye and thus for only a matter of time.

And time, that wayward foe, it remains largely the one thing we take for granted the most.

A fact proven in how we lose it to that which doesn’t make us better but rather only whatever offers to make us again fatter in lives lived flatter to the surface upon which most here seek to flatter those stuck unto the same seeking for themselves their own fame, their own fortune, their own continued fealty unto a life confined within their trying always find that path of even lesser resistance than the one we’ve all walked which led us here.

Which leads me to, as you guessed it, a question:

Where are we?

And that I ask not in terms of physical locality but rather in regard to both spiritual and emotional maturity, rationality, personal responsibility, hope’s originality, discipline’s determination, our soul’s investigation as to the purpose of Christ’s suffering, the embracement of our own measure thereof, our enjoyment thereof, our seeking therefor, our longing thus for our share of that home, that hope as found not here, not now, but rather by Him who carried that cross up that hill toward that tomb seeking for only all of us to follow Him through what for now does prove both the needle and its eye.

Yes, where are we in the narrowing down of a life in regard to focus and purpose and patience for both to be proven later, and that only after we have felt the struggles and endured the sufferings that make them mean what they should?

And how can we have any idea what any of His promises should mean, could mean, would mean would we have had before now that strange audacity to imagine the necessity of a life spent in suffering actually needing to precede that most divine experiencing of what is a peace so fully promised that we should withhold nothing from ensuring it be given every chance to be truly everything that this life we live now by then never was.

For honestly, what is His rest if we’ll have not done His work? What is His joy if we’ll have not shared in His sorrow? What might His peace feel like had we experienced no wars, no worries, no suffering, striving, struggle or pain?

Yes, what and how can Heaven mean anything if we’ll have not experienced our part of the hell He went through in order to come unto us and take from us the cross we couldn’t carry in exchange for the chance to carry the one we can?

And yes, we can carry these crosses of a life embracing losses of everything that nearly everyone else is living to gain and fighting to keep and planning on storing up for a day that isn’t coming.

And that because life here is ending and thus to our every treasure, our every pleasure, our every plan and selfish pursuit, they’re all ending too.

That’s why He calls us unto the storehouses of Heaven as the places that we seek, that we strive to store the treasures of our lives. Treasures such as hope, trust, discipline, determination, the very discipleship spent under His most expert tutelage and thus gained only in our going through what He has, whatever share into which we’re called, and that with only all the humbled belief that we can manage to offer unto He who we can neither see nor find ever any real way to please.

Yes, for He is not pleased with our sacrifices of such things as the lives of others, sheep and goats and such. No, rather the surrender He wishes to see is that of hearts rendered unto their own being rent, ripped, ruined and rewarded in having opted to undertake the understanding that here we stand only to lose everything, and thus will all experience a great misery no matter what.

He just wants to see us share in getting on with it while we’ve a chance to have a say in when and why it’s happening as opposed to finding out why only when we’ve not that chance to play our part in showing Him that we understand it.

Yet we do that by only embracing the loss of the life we’ve always known, and as complacent people seeking always only comfort, the life we vastly wish to keep.

For again, it is in every way quite perfectly logical for that which is living to desire only to continue doing so.

None in their right mind wishes to die to what is a perfectly good life.

Problem is that unless and until we’re living for Him, there is no good life. For without Him there is no good, not in life, not in us, not thus ahead of us as unless and until we change, and embrace the misery that such a thing always proves to be, all we can ever be is that which we’ve already been.

But friends, as sinners who’ve always found a way to fall short of His glory in exchange for the chance to seek only more of our own, we thus can only ever be known as depraved heathens who’ve thus within them such a depth of darkness that they have no promise of ever being welcomed into the presence of He who has none of the same but who rather came only to show us all that He is the Light into which all of us will fall, and there have all our words, deeds and actions shown for what they always were.

So what are they then?

What are words truly saying? What more do our actions have to say? What message are we sending via the deeds we’re doing as are done, and that always, by our making the choice to do them?

Yes friends, what are we doing and is there anything of Christ to be seen within it?

And if we’re not suffering, not struggling, not yet to the very point of bleeding in what’s become, as it always should have been, a fight so bloody against our very own sinfulness that we awake only weary from what was a day before in which we lost more of all that’s here than we had ever even striven gain before, well then what of Him who did the same is there to see?

Indeed, friends what is this faith costing us, and if we cannot come up with anything, what then makes us think it means anything?

And no, I’m not saying that we should take up the desperate acts of those lost in the world and finding themselves in only this desperate cry for help as is being yelled in violent acts aimed even against themselves. No, I am merely asking what it is that our faith is being given. Because sadly, the sad reality is that we are a people who seek to give nothing to just about everything. Especially those many things, however few they may actually prove to be, which ask of us suffering, struggling, hardship, hostility, persecution, loss, discomfort, disarray, disaster even.

For we want none of those things here inside what’s become a way of life in which we can all readily avoid them.

Why not then?

That’s the kind of question that we’ve both long been asked and become thus rather versed in answering. Why not avoid struggle? Why not deny discipline? Why not get all angry and upset whenever things don’t go our way and we thus don’t get whatever it was that we’d come to want? Indeed, why not live our lives, as all of us have and most here continue to, and seek only for those comforts we like, the profits they prove?

Why live this life to lose?

Well, because we’re gonna lose it anyway.

Why not then embrace the call that calls us unto that very outcome via what is, for now alone, the opportunity to show Him that our faith in Him means more than whatever we may have to give in order for it to grow?

Does not He deserve to see such a longing grow in us? He who took our cross for us? He who gave up His life for us? He who offers to intercede for us in behalf of whatever mistakes we will still make as we make the way home following behind He who is the Way home, and that proven only with crosses in tow?

Indeed, how can God tell us from the world if we’ll not agree to come apart from the same and that done best by carrying the crosses carrying the losses of every worldly worry we once had?

That’s all that He asks.

Just that we let go of that which we can’t hold. That we surrender what is destined to stay behind. That we do so in our living like we actually have somewhere else to be, some place better to go, a better promise waiting, one so much better that we can’t wait anymore to start on our way. And that, again, found only in our following of His. And that the one spent in suffering, in struggling, in loss and pain and misery and yet with a purpose and promise both so profound that He found a way to scorn the misery.

How can we scorn misery if we never come to learn what it looks like, feels like?

Moreover, how can we find Jesus if we’ll never look where He went nor what He went through to get there?

And how can we look toward Heaven with eyes still blinded by a world filled with things that keep most here believing that what’s here is all that matters?

There should be a resistance seen inside the call to deny ourselves. For denial is something of resistance. It’s a rejection of sorts. Denying ourselves is thus a rejection of what we selfishly want, personally prefer, obviously have plenty of reasons to wish to avoid. Yes, denying ourselves and taking up our crosses is only done when we agree that we’re not the ones who know the way to live this life, and much less then how to find that kind of life that doesn’t end like this one will.

Friends, what is your faith costing you? And if you don’t have anything with which to answer, then how can you be sure that your faith means anything at all?

We should be willing to lose whatever it takes to grow further in Christ. But if we’ve no loss in life, well then how can we say we’re truly following the Way that came to lose His life?

For He’s not even calling us unto the literal physicality He endured. He’s just asking we cut lose all the anchors that have kept us from being closer to Him all this time.

And so no, we’ve not yet resisted to the point of shedding our blood for this faith we claim we have. But if we don’t become of the willingness to do so, well how can we be sure we will should that time come?

And sure, it may not. But the end of this life will. Perhaps then we should live to be ready to lose all that we see. Because we will.

A promise maybe meaning then that whatever remaining days we have are given us only to start practicing.

So let us do so.

And once you have, once we have, go further.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold