Day 3974 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 1:26 NIV

A split-screen existence

Of what is for each of us to be seen as at least two different lives, and that hopefully finding the best truly saved for last in that hope that we’ve been saved and had our lives changed from what they were to what they are still in the eternal process of finally becoming in what’s a process called sanctification by which those sanctified are the same as were living lives that were in no such way as set apart for such special use as are these things we get to say, think, do, be, see here inside what is a life that’s been both thrown down from a gilded tower and yet one that found its power on the way down.

And that in coming to realize that what we were before we were called was a people not living anything of a life at all!

Rather what we find first in Christ is that there’s a hope of something so much greater than we could have ever imagined back when our ability to imagine was otherwise the victim of what’s long been the sort of life in which all that went right was only all that we didn’t yet know was wrong. And indeed, I think about that all the time! How, of all the many mistakes I know I’ve made having learned to see them as the mistakes they were back when I didn’t know they were mistakes at all, I must have still hundreds if not thousands of others that I’ve either yet to so realize or will perhaps never fully understand.

And this idea is murder to a person who, despite it being perfectly impossible at this point, seeks perfection in whatever way that I still happen to think I might have any sort of say in it coming about. I am indeed something of a perfectionist to the point in which I’ll spend entirely unnecessary time doing and redoing things until I get them to where or what I think is right. And yet, that’s the problem isn’t it? That we so often fall back upon what we think?

That we still so love to always assume that we know what we’re doing, and know it enough that we can make sure it will measure up to that gold standard that is the Son sent from Heaven?

How obtuse of us to actually contend that we can become something that can achieve anything of such perfection as the path paved by Christ or that unproven in our pasts?

In fact, why do we live like that? Why do we seem to love so this approach in which it all depends on us? Does it really? Could that honestly work out well would it did? Would we truly be so able to prove our personally held abilities were they actually what we had to rely upon to get us anywhere? In fact, on that, where have our abilities gotten us? What has our very best ever accomplished?

What did we manage to find along that selfish ride atop paths made of our understanding of what our best intentions might happen to be?

Where all did our best lead?

As for me, it led me to graduating high school with honors. It led to starting my own business. Led to my going to college and getting a degree. Led to learning how to exercise and eat right and losing a ton of weight along the way. Led to my doing this daily Bible post thing every day for nearly 11 years now.

Not bad I’d say!

Except that high school marked the last time that I had much fun in life. I just closed up shop a couple weeks ago after deciding to let my little business go as I was getting nowhere and losing money. That college degree now means only tens of thousands of dollars in debt while having never once managed to use it for anything in terms of the career that I thought I wanted in the sports world that I now detest. Exercise and eating right have done some truly wonderful things in my life, alongside designing a crippling fear of not doing enough and not trying hard enough and all these little aches and pains that I find I’m not quite so able to ignore as I get older.

And even this, this writing about the Bible every day, it’s most often met with this unshakable worry of my failing to “do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”

No, instead I’m pretty sure that more often than not I manage to only fail in correctly handling the Word of Truth as I find that here lately it almost always feels as though my efforts get lost in the numbers alongside a hope that maybe saying more will help me to convey all the thoughts He’s got me thinking about all these lessons that I’m still learning of a life that I’ve still often trying to just barely make sense of having been so often caught between laying down the old and taking up the new as is done within this worry that I’ll have left something undone, unseen, unlearned and thus miss the best that I could have been had I been better able to see what I still can’t.

Yeah, my best sucks!

My wisdom is worthless as it’s long been built upon this assumption that wisdom is but a collection of facts, which I have, rather than a growth in understanding, which I often feel as if I don’t. My strength is petty as my priority in all these years of exercise has proven quite vain in nature and, well, as it turns out what you see isn’t always what you get as while I might look better, I still feel as weak as ever. My effort is a laughing matter as no matter how hard I try or how long I do, seems there’s always still more to do and plenty that I could have done better.

Indeed, my life has often found me trying to find some way to take what I think, what I know, what I don’t, what I can do and what I don’t realize I can’t accomplish and smash it all into some sort of perfected pageant in which anyone who sees me sees that I’m as good at life as I’ve always tried to be.

But looking back, as we’re here so asked, I see only a kid who tried to please everybody, impress everybody. I’ve always tried to make those around me happy, often through laughter, so as to lighten the matter that life has always been. And yet it’s in this that I seem to have always understood that life is often heavy, but yet too failed to realize that pleasing people isn’t at all conducive to life!

Something I literally know personally having literally just yesterday celebrated what I very cautiously consider my first birthday spent free from what’s been a slavery in which I’d lived the past 25-30.

And I say very cautiously because, well, those last 25-30 have found me falling back into that same sin time and again and so I’m absolutely terrified that I’ll again manage only to find some reason or excuse to run back to that wretched refuse of a life I’ve prayed for His help to lose for so long that I all but basically gave up all hope of it being the way of life that I could someday not know.

Because, again, my best is worthless. No matter how hard I tried to overcome that filth all by myself, nothing. Sure, I could manage to slam together a few weeks of self-imposed isolation from what had grown to become basically my only experience with a loving relation. But then I’d just get all twisted up again and fall right back in.

Because that’s who I’ve always been.

Friends, that’s who all of us have been!

For again, do as this verse asks and look back. Who were you before? Before what? Doesn’t even matter. Before today. Before you got married. Before you graduated. Before you learned English as your second language. Doesn’t matter.

Take any spot of known improvement in your life and think about who, what, where you were before you found what you know now to be said improvement.

Was it hard? Did it hurt? Scary at times? Was trying to do something new sometimes so terrifying that you often thought of not trying anymore? Did you lose something to get the something that you now know as a growth measured in your now being better?

Was it worth it?

See, that’s the thing about all such growths as this promise of sanctification is. It’s something that’s often proven in our loss of something, our facing of something we’re scared to see, our grappling with the understanding that we don’t understand everything, maybe even our loss of something that we’d elsewise likely spent a great deal of life trying to find or fix or have or keep.

But you see, that’s the thing about doing new things.

Sometimes they can only be done at the expense of the old.

For indeed, nobody sews a new patch onto an old wineskin as they just don’t mix. In fact, doing so only tends to make matters worse as trying to merge the old, which is all it can ever be and has already met its best ability, with the new, which is likely better than the old presently, it just lends toward a kind of confusion that will so easily become excuse enough to just wash our hands and walk away.

Why?

Because you can’t grow if you won’t let go. You can’t improve if you’ll not seek out the areas that need to improve. You cannot do anything any better if you never agree that you can do anything any better. And, well, we all know this because, well, all of us have hopefully met with at least some measure of improvement in life. I truly hope that everyone has grown, changed, striven to bolster something in your life for what is then a purpose of which you’re at least passionate enough that you’re inspired to try despite the odds always proven against us in so doing.

Odds that this world, in its “wisdom”, will continue ahead using as reason to not try much of anything, growth in holiness and hope especially.

Why?

Because we’ve all again long been of this mind that’s had us convinced that we already knew all we needed to. All of us have this amazing ability to give way to comfort and complacency. Everyone can all but instantly spout off a stream of excuses to not do something that would make your head spin. Why? Because we’ve been doing it all our lives!

We are proven pros at doing those things that we don’t know are getting us nowhere.

Because that’s the easiest place to go!

But the question becomes is that where you really want to be? Is nowhere the outermost reach of your most deeply held hope? Can we really be so lost inside a world of lies that we can honestly imagine spending however many days, weeks, years we’ve left doing nothing? Truth be told, our past proves that we’ll seek for basically that if given the chance. We call it the path of least resistance and we seek it so incessant because, well, it’s easy. It’s simple to do as you’ve always done. Couldn’t be easier to repeat what you’ve already seen.

But again, is that really where, who, what you want to be?

Not me. No, and that’s because I do often look back and think on who I used to be. I sadly still carry the scars and rehearse the memories of that maniac. I lose sleep thinking about stupid things I said and did back when I thought I could say and do anything without anything of any cost or consequence. Sure didn’t see so much shame and guilt coming from so much of it!

And that’s the point.

It’s that the common way of life that’s lived in step with the “wisdom” of this world is that spent thinking that such things as nobility and popularity and vanity and pride are somehow able to accomplish for us what is to be deemed our best life. And that simply because the entire world looks to and leans on those very same things and so we’ll readily find millions who will agree that we’re doing right so long as we go along with their doing wrong.

And again, we’ve all been there. Like I said, high school often seems like the last time that I actually had fun and was able to enjoy life. Because high school was the last time that I had friends who did the things that I enjoyed doing back then. And I’ve in fact spent untold hours combing through all the possible causes that led up to all those friends now being strangers that I’ve not spoken to in 20 years.

All because I was worried that I’d done something wrong while, instead, it was all just God doing something new so that I could grow to be something better.

And indeed, with as little pride as a statement like this can seem to have, I believe that I am. I am better than I used to be. In fact, I might even be happier than I used to be. I may even like myself more than I have in decades (still something I’m getting used to and often struggling with). But it’s only possible for me to say this because I know who I have been. I know where I have been. I know what I have been and what I had been doing back when I was what I’m not anymore.

Because back then I was wise, sure, but only as the world estimates it. I was popular, but only because I catered to every craving of those around me. I was successful, but only because I did what others were readily willing to cheer for.

And yet, now that I’m tired, broke, lonely and terrified only of failing God and falling short of that most glorious hope of Heaven, I find that I love this life I’m living that’s made up of so many days of wonder and worry. Not that this is anything I ever hoped for as I instead planned mostly for only that whole marriage and a family thing.

Didn’t happen that way, at this point probably never will.

But I can say that that’s okay because, well, I don’t know that I’d change anything. Because, well, maybe if things would have gone differently I wouldn’t be writing this post. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost all that weight and learned to cook meals that I enjoy. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to be this excited over my family getting me an edger for my birthday to use for my new mowing business that I love every second of. Maybe I’d have never picked up the Bible. Maybe I’d have never learned who I am as is measured best by who I’ve been and my ongoing insistence that the old me not catch up.

Because God’s got me on the run heading home and I cannot wait to get there!

That’s something I don’t think I could have said back before I was called in this direction that I’m often feeling I’m only good at disappointing. Because who I used to be wouldn’t do anything that I could fail. I wouldn’t risk anything that might disappoint anyone. I would only say the words that folks wanted to hear. Would only do the things that everyone else was doing.

Indeed, I’m sad to say that I’ve gone alone with things that I wrestle with God saying He’s willing to forgive because I don’t believe they should be forgiven.

How’s that for turned around?

But friends, that’s the problem with living life according to this world’s wisdom and understanding and measures of success and importance. Anymore all you have to do to be loved by this world is speak in lies and live a life filled with the same. And yeah, we’ve all done it. Every single person who has ever lived has said or done something they shouldn’t. Well, save for One. I mean honestly, before he was called Moses killed a dude. After he was called Noah got sloshed. After he was called David committed adultery, and designed the murder of the man who was her husband.

And in all this we seem to see that it doesn’t really matter what we did before we were called as God can still use us for something good. And, well, nor does it matter how often we manage to completely screw up even after as He is truly as willing to forgive as we’re able to admit it needed.

But that’s the problem. It’s proven in that this world inspires us to live as if we do no wrongs, as if we need no help, as if we’re doing just fine simply because we’re rich and famous and thus able to be an “influencer” who anymore has to know absolutely nothing but what hashtags to use and what camera filter looks best.

That’s where we are.

Again, is that where you want to be? Is that who you want to be? Is the life you’re living now the life you want for all eternity?

Heavy questions, but friends, if we never start asking them then we’ll never get anywhere near figuring out the answers.

And if we never start seeking the answers, well then we’ll have none to give when He starts asking questions.

Thankfully He’s seen fit to give us all more time here today that can be used for just such a thing. And so yes, take this time and look back on who you’ve been, what you’ve done, and ask yourself if that’s your version of good enough. Ask yourself if you’ve improved in any way. Ask yourself if those improvements are good enough. Indeed, are you finished? Are you done? Is this as far as you hope to go?

Or might we all dare to believe bigger?

My worry is that we’ll all always find plenty of ways to settle, and plenty of applause from those doing the same should we do so. But friends, determining our lives based upon the misplaced ideals of a fallen world will only cause us to remain fallen short of the glory of a God who calls us to be holy and thus set apart. And indeed, such is the very message of the Gospel! It’s that, thanks to living to look like and live like and be loved by the world around us, we’ve all become the world around us.

But thanks to a love unlike any other, we’ve now the chance to make some changes and become something better. But friends, we have to learn to stop seeing things as this world sees them if we’re ever to get there. So stop focusing on what the world focuses on and instead turn your gaze unto Heaven because the very best way to get where you’re going is to start looking for it.

And granted, from where we are we can’t see it, but isn’t that only all the more reason to look just a little harder, fight a little further, try a little more?

And yeah, we’ll still prove we’re only prone to failure. But hey, isn’t it better to be able to one day say we tried and failed than to say we didn’t try and only failed still?

My point is that we’ll never be wise or important or special in the eyes of this world. But the Good News is that this world never actually got to decide what those things really mean. God did that, and, well, He’s not big on changing His mind. So maybe we should start living our lives to honor, please, praise, glorify He who holds the keys to life as opposed to worrying about only those who only know how to lose one.

And if you can’t look back and see in your life anything that speaks to an understanding of the difference then I highly suggest you get to moving because the clock’s ticking.

And Heaven ain’t moving.

So I guess we’d better.

Because often in life we measure who we are by where we are and what we're doing while we’re there. But friends, maybe the better measure is how far we've come from where we were as is aimed in our hope of who, what, where we still hope to be.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold