Day 3979 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:7 NIV

The defense of defiance

It’s something upon which we’ve all found a reliance in what’s been a life in which we’ve felt the need to water that seed that is an assumption of a self’s ability to prove capable of preserving itself. Indeed, all of us have known that path of which is paved such a personal protection as sought in our seeking to keep from feeling as if we’re failing to escape the common falling short of what we know is a better that of which we sadly know mostly that we’ve simply never been.

And, well, we know too now only to hate such honesties as they honestly all but effortlessly undermine this life underlined by what have been deeds done hoping the world will see so that they cannot see the disasters we don’t want anyone to know about.

Because if that word were to get out, that one which tells a story contrary to the lies we’ve been living, well then we’d end up being victims of our own arrogance having written for us such an obvious falsity that all of society would turn on us instantly when they come to see that we’re not who we claimed to be but rather something more the dude playing the wizard behind the curtain.

Indeed, all of life has found us all performing inside all of this smoke and shouting seeking to help with the general assuming that we’re of such pomp and power that we deserve all the praise and profit we’ve earned already. And, having ourselves become quite accustomed to always being the ones on whom the whole world looks in awe and wonder, we come to only fear their finding out that we’re nothing of what we’ve pretended to be as what we’ve pretended to be is what inspires them to hold us in such high regard.

And it’s just hard for a people of such perfected pride as we’ve come to be to ever see that coming of a day in which the truth stands up with something else to say.

Just might end our party.

A party that we’re so used to throwing that it’s become the only life we can ever remember knowing. All we know is to seek the praise and adoration of a nation that’s not of God and at this point clearly doesn’t want to be. No, it’s becoming clearer on the daily that most folks down here still hate the very mention of this Man of such intense intention that He came to do what He still calls us to so as to prove both once and that for all that it can be both done and even, contrary to our every fallen assumption, not only survived but in fact that so much that we begin only then to finally thrive.

Which is just an idea that makes absolutely no sense seeing as how it seems unto us that we’re already thriving quite well. For again, just look at how we’re doing with all we’re trying to do for the people in order to keep on earning our praise and applause from the same. Indeed, we’ve each all but gone insane trying to think up new ways in which to be found worthy of this worldly acclaim that we’ve grown quite fond of having attached to our name.

It’s something like a doctor who’s worked incredibly hard to earn the title. They might just so happen to feel the need to be recognized via said moniker as they feel fairly entitled to be recognized for the hard work it took to become what they then feel they deserve to be called.

Much the same as friend.

For indeed, all of us have worked quite hard to be seen as friends of basically everyone as is done in our attempt to both avoid their wrath and earn their warmth as the latter remains always the matter that obviously seems to measure as better in what would then be lives the same. After all, it’s not much fun at all to be hated, to be misunderstood, to be rejected then because of either one or both of the above.

It’s something we all do all we can to hopefully avoid for as long as we might.

But friends, that’s the unforeseen irony that’s now been promised to come:

That friendship with the world begets enmity against our God.

It’s that our living of lives trying to please people can and will only ever prevent our being servants of Christ. Why? Because the mind of the flesh, by which and for which the vast majority of those here live, it seeks that which is contrary to the Spirit. And too, the Spirit desires that which is contrary to the flesh. And indeed, as is seen every single day, the two are most certainly locked in a now long-standing war with one another as the law of flesh seeks still our continuing in sin’s death whereas the Law of the Spirit seeks rather our freedom from the same.

Which is why Christ came.

It was to show us, since He knows us as being those who refuse to move from this whole seeing is believing nonsense, to always ask for a sign. And indeed, He came to give us one that we couldn’t deny knowing that it would be denied by most anyway.

Why?

Because He knows that, “the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4

A fact proven in all those we walk still amongst who are living testimonies to the Word read in 1 Corinthians 2:14 which says that, “the person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

A reality thereby leading us to the entirely well-known outcome mentioned even before that one in which we learn that, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” a most worrisome outcome considering the struggle it’s sure to mean unto those who are then to be seen as fools for believing in something that most here consider foolishness, a struggle overcome in that verse concluding by saying that, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18

And it’s in this that we find this shift from life to death coming with the demand that we too do something that different so as to honor this gift we’ve been given of His having come to overcome our sinful dumb and set us free from the same. It’s that we henceforth and forevermore seek not to please or placate the sinful desires of a fallen flesh because we’ve rather learned to delight in its death upon what are crosses we ourselves now carry upon which we seek to kill and leave buried our every past worldly want, win, wish and worry.

Because those things don’t matter to us anymore.

Problem is that nothing matters more still to most.

And thus we find this all but deepening line which still seeks to society divide into what are again those same two sides of that very same war. It’s that one still being fought between the flesh and Spirit, both of which exist to seek the desires thereof as, well, that’s just logical. It’s logical that everything we do is done to soothe a craving, locate a longing, complete a planning or satisfy a yearning.

That’s why we do all we do.

Question is for what do we do what we do?

Sadly the answer to that has for so long been the pleasure of the flesh that we know now to all but crave our very own death because we’ve sought and fought to be friends to sin for so long now that we see sin as our friend and assume it sees us the same, and well, who then can be blamed for sticking up for a friend? I mean even the Bible tells us that there is no greater love than someone laying down their life for their friend. And so then, our living to die in order to save the sin that we assume our friend seems almost commendable.

If it weren’t promised, and now in fact proven so condemnable.

And why is that?

Because our sins have not only caused our impending death but they also have now led to the death of He who is our Savior, or at least did all He did to become such.

Yes, our sins have now led us to murder another, which, last time I checked, that still seems just about the most unloving thing anyone could ever do to anyone else. For if there’s no greater love than to lay down one’s life for their friend, then there must be no greater hate than to take the life of they who must then not be seen as a friend but rather nothing more than a mortal enemy who is then to be deemed as not worth living considering the enmity involved in every enemy.

Which is what spells trouble for all of us who’ve lived to be friends with the world as such is an undertaking which also causes our to then live in enmity against God, meaning then that we’ve all lived as enemies of God, meaning then that we’re at war against He who already died and came back to life proving that He literally cannot lose.

Where then does that leave us?

Well, for most here the answer is so stinking lost that they just continue to live as if the whole story is among the greatest of all lies as so long as it’s seen through those eyes, well, there’s nothing there to worry about. For honestly, there can be no trouble known in what is known as a blatant fallacy. Because we all know all fallacies to be utterly flimsy. Sure, they might look nice from just the right angle and in just the right light. But turn to the side and look from a different point of view and it all just falls through.

Lies have no life in themselves as they’re just deception designed to keep the truth from coming to light.

A choice we’ve all chosen because we’ve too become so much of such a darkened world that we too hated the light for fear that our flaws and failures would there be seen.

And again, that’s not a good thing when we’ve tried so hard for this long to convince everyone we could that we were really good at living life and getting everything right in the process.

And so, if for nothing else, we’ve each a whole lot of time invested in our suggestion that we’re as perfect as we’ve given the vast majority of our past to pretending we were. And so we can’t find it in us to welcome unto us this blatant disproval of everything we’ve tried so hard to design inside what is a life that’s earned us so much success in terms of worldly love and adoration.

Rather we stand with those who contend that the Gospel is foolishness because, well, they’re our friends, fans and followers and we anymore just don’t know what to do without all that apparent love.

And, as we discussed yesterday, what we don’t know is what we learn to hate because all such unknowns and uncertainties exist as what is but a leveling that we thus can’t see coming seeing as how we can’t allow ourselves to even consider that they could.

Much like Jesus.

This world can’t see Him and thus won’t believe in Him as still they ask for a sign that eyes so blind would refuse to see anyway, and yet because they thus won’t believe in Him they must then continue to contend that He’s not there and thus not coming. And, well, if He ain’t there and isn’t then coming back from wherever He isn’t, then we’ve nothing at all to worry about and then have every right to continue our doing of what feels right to the very flesh that we’ve given all our lives to learning how to please.

Again, it just makes sense.

Right up until that moment that you realize that just because we can’t see, know, comprehend or ever then plan for the coming of something that we then learn to be what we didn’t know it was before doesn’t actually give us the right to choose to live as if it was simply impossible. For a whole lot of things have seemed impossible before. 4-minute miles. 500kg deadlifts. Planes breaking the sound barrier. Flying period. Unsinkable ships. Missions to space.

There have been so many things that so many people have been all but convinced simply could not be possible, could not happen that have since happened and thus proven possible.

What then makes us continue to think that just because we can’t see something that that means it cannot exist, cannot happen, will never come to be? If not because the issue at hand is one measured in faith and faith is the substance of things hoped for and a confidence then in that which remains unseen? For friends, such is what all hope is! It has to be unseen as nobody needs to hope for what they know already. That would be like unlocking your door using a key, locking it back using the same and then still wondering if the key would unlock it again.

It’s stupid.

Alas, so are we!

And I say this because we still struggle so mightily with all things that exist by faith. We’re terrified of them. Why? Because we don’t understand them as fully as our ego would like. And, as we talked about yesterday, that which we don’t understand is the same as that which we grow to hate simply because it poses a risk to our being proven wrong. And, well, I think we all know that to be a very slippery slope to start down. For if we’re ever proven wrong in once matter, the odds are then torn wide-open to our being wrong about pretty much everything else.

And we can’t risk that.

Not when we’ve arrived at what are these lives in which we’re so loved that we think of only all we stand to lose should we be removed from this world’s welcome.

And we know that among the surest ways to be so rejected is found in our walking in adherence to a faith that most here still consider to be of utmost foolishness.

All because this world hates what it doesn’t understand. Which is why so many here remain so hostile at the very mention of God, of Scripture, of prayer, church, the cross, repentance, salvation. Most here despise all the above. Why? Because most here are living in accordance with minds affixed to the flesh. And the flesh will fight to the death to prove it’s right. And yet the flesh is what’s earned the death that is sin having chosen to sin against the warnings God’s given us against so doing.

But we, in pride, cannot allow ourselves to admit that we’ve done anything wrong, let alone things so wrong that we now deserve to die.

That just doesn’t make any sense to most.

And that which doesn’t make any sense is the same as we’ll eventually simply just learn to hate in our trying to protect ourselves from everything from being wrong to thus facing the consequences that being wrong brings.

That’s why so many here hate God. It’s because, should He truly exist, well then we’re screwed!

Because if there is this being that is all seeing, all knowing, then He has seen all we have done and too knows why we did it and thus that we did it for what are likely some pretty nefarious reasons.

And if He does know that we have sought to please our flesh at the expense of His command to not do that, then we too know that He is then justified in punishing us for our having done what He told us not to do. And, well, what more could we lose than the love and mercy of the God who created us to be everything we’ve chosen not to be, died to save us from what we’d become anyway, and left here asking us to not fall back into doing what He died to save us from?

We know that if God is there then He must be pretty upset with how we’ve chosen to live.

But what we do?

We can’t undo anything we have done. We can’t make up for all the mistakes we’ve made. We can’t turn back the hands of time and prevent our hands from crime. It’s impossible. And, well, as soon as we realize something to be impossible, it’s a short ride to our hating the same because we just refuse to lose any time to doing anything that we can’t accomplish.

And so then I guess we’ve all just arrived at this reality in which we know that we can’t please God and so we’re left there with a choice to choose: Continue living as if we’re doing nothing wrong alongside the then demanded belief that God’s not there to see any of the wrongs we’re doing or accept the Gospel of Christ Jesus, which this world considers to be foolish, and in this lose both our friendships with this world and embrace the disgrace that comes from being hated then by the world and the confessing of our every failure at the foot of the cross.

Either way, we do have an entire life to lose.

Only question is when.

Do we do it now in laying it down in humility amongst those most who will never know the slightest meaning of the word, at least here? Or do we put it off for later as we remain all but conjoined to a world still living as if God’s not there and thus not waiting to prove He really always ways?

Friends, my point is that we’ve all learned to take this world’s approach to, well, basically everything. But the issue now is that this world is filled with those who are living to please the flesh thanks to minds that are thus hostile to God and there unable, unwilling, entirely disinterested in submitting unto Him. And having learned to do as the world does, we can all quite easily continue doing as the world will continue doing in their ongoing denying of Him.

But what can be the outcome of that?

Sure, it allows us to continue increasing in our lawlessness. But even then, how is that helping us? Folks, society is collapsing all around us. Do we really want to fall apart with them? Don’t we want something better? Yeah, I get it, it’s scary to seek for something better as it demands we both walk away from whatever it is that we already have and do so at the mockery and persecution of those who would never risk what they have for the hope of what more they can be.

But what other choice do we have?

We either stay where we are living as who we’ve become or we do something different trying to become something better. Point is that this world refuses to believe it can improve, proven in how little and how seldom most try anything that in any way says they believe they can do better. That will remain this world’s standard.

Will it remain ours?

Bottom line is there are two directions through this life. Sad reality is that everyone here has become lost looking in one of them. And damnation is a promise because that one direction that most here are looking simply isn’t His. This world refuses to believe in God because they don’t want to submit His Law. And that which we don’t want to do will eventually become the same that we become convinced we can’t do.

Problem is that everyone will submit to His will. Will it be as friend or foe?

That one determines where from here we go.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold