Day 3981 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:20 NIV

Slippery

There’s bound to be this slickened consistency unto anyone, anything that has undergone the anointing process as it’s a progress proven in the pouring on of oil in what is then a visual showing that the person/item is from then on going to be used as something different than what it may have been used for, known for back before this new began. And as oil is used it will lead those anointed to lose their perhaps longstanding ability to be seen as something that blends with what is a world entirely watered down and seeking everything always the same.

Just waterlogged.

It’s something we do as to help things lose their gravity, their majesty, their overall travesty of their demanded tragedy of our lives as lived before lost being because of what they mean and how deep that meaning measures. For unto those of such a shallowness as all human vanity and arrogance must always remain, the same are in constant need of some way to restrain the meaning, merit, purpose or profit of anything that may in any way cause them to reconsider as to whether there might be something beneath the surface upon which they’ve settled.

In other words, in what is a world so drown by both delight and its deceit what we’ll see is a society in ongoing need of ensuring that nothing is ever noticed as being different enough to inspire in us a curiosity as to the potential need for our to be doing something different or differently too.

We’ve simply too much to lose.

And so we’ve become used to this general ideal in which every idea is at first ignored as best we can by even ourselves who no longer have even the courage to consider our own thoughts, words, actions before we undertake them in the then following toward wherever every such selectively unknown effort might lead. And as we’ve not thought things out, we then just spew them out unto the crowd that has for some reason remained gathered around just waiting still in some weird eager anticipation of our next interesting confusion to come pouring out from our words or walk.

And then, once heard by whomever is actually willing/able to listen and actually chooses to daringly do so, which most don’t because they wither between can’t and won’t, we then find ourselves just sort of standing there in the midst of this crowd that suddenly knows more about us than they did before, or so they think, and that because we’ve both shared something that we think is worth their knowing but we’re still not able to prove entirely certain that we even meant it.

Because we rather retain this endless desire for plausible deniably in regard to anything we do, everything we say, everything we are and whatever we may happen to become.

For such is the outcome of that which is waterlogged. It just sort of eventually sinks into the place in which it once floated as it took on the water that was to inevitably pull it under.

Anymore this is what it means to be a friend, a sister, a brother to just about everyone in this world. For this world is of the understanding that one should only ever be found standing amongst those who look like they do, who sound like they do, who do what they do as all of this prevents their having to lose this rather profound sense of self-assurance found and felt within our feeling as if what we’re saying, thinking, seeing, believing makes sense to others too.

For if it makes sense to them then we can lean on them to help it make senses to us again when our tendencies toward the natural foolishness of a fallen man causes us to careen again into doubt.

This is why we seek so incessantly for friendships and such.

It’s because we know that whoever goes it alone is then on their own to uphold the task of living this life getting as much right as humanly possible. And, deep down, we all know that it’s not actually within the scope of human capability to get as much right as we’d like, let alone enough to measure up to what’s an entire life that’s gone as right as our pasts now stand proving ours already haven’t. And it’s the knowing of our ongoing inability to be the perfection that we know the world wants to see that causes us to welcome in whatever help they might be willing to offer.

Who’s they?

Whomever we happen to look to trying to live like so as to be liked by our looking like those we look to for help as to how to live this life right.

A choice chosen likely based on lies as, well, that’s really the only life any of us know how to live thanks to sin as becomes the friend of all who all but end their humbled hope of another home in which to belong and thus to return once this stay is out the way and we’ve gone away to where we were always meant to be. Alas, this hope is indeed too hard to hold as it asks that we forgo the largely easy to find welcome of the world we’re in as is wanted by all our friends simply for the ease of finding it.

Indeed, none of us like having to look for things we actually have to look for as that would mean movement and that would risk comfort and, well, we’re not really into that having become so complacent as to have basically all but sunk into society seeking their agreeing that so doing is what we should have been doing anyway.

I mean, the world does all it can to convince us that everything they’re doing is so right to do that we’ve nothing to lose should we give up being different and just slide into doing whatever they refuse to change. The feeling as if change is unnecessary becoming one of the chief reasons that we’ve all succumbed to a life numbed to the better we could have been and would then now be.

Better itself becoming something that we these days don’t have to worry about if we don’t want to as there are in this world an untold number of those who are willing to go to some pretty impressive extremes to say the things that people want to hear in what are ears that wish not for the truth but rather for the delight of the lies that tell us our lives are going just right.

That’s just far easier as it again requires far less movement as, well, who would move on from what’s already going just about perfectly?

That would be like finding a rich vein of gold in the ground and walking away from it.

Who would do that?

Well, not many. And that’s because around here the many seek constantly for such riches as those found in the ditches of a world that ditched God long ago. For what? Well, it’s actually kind of hard to know as it’s apparently meant to be something different to everyone. And indeed, this is what’s become the general insanity of society. It’s this approach to life in which so many around us cheer us on for doing nothing at all. We’re inspired all the time to not change a thing as it’s anymore considered brave to remain whatever you already are.

Even though that poses absolutely no risk and therefore offers no reward.

But even that doesn’t seem to matter to man as, well, we are truly living in a place in which many if not most seem to be enjoying their reward already.

Just as God said they would.

Indeed, in His Word we read that “they have received their reward in full.” And again, who’s they? Those who do things to be seen by those around them such as announcing their generosity to others so as be counted as charitable, not by those to whom something is given, but rather by those who we’re trying to please by making them think we’re wealthy enough to be able to afford to just give stuff away.

Because the world is full of folks who are impressed with that.

Not the generosity part, but the jealousy part.

That’s truly one of if not the only things that most here live for anymore. This culture as a whole has all but caved into this existence in which we just feel this all but endless need to compare our lives to those living around us. It’s why social media has become the cesspool it is. It’s because we use it not as a tool for sharing those words or thoughts that could lead to mutual edification but rather for the general education of what’s basically an indoctrination aimed for by those who control the algorithms and use them to feed us an endless stream of all we like, which is usually nothing more than looking at those living the lives that we’re not able to.

It’s lifestyles of the rich and famous but without commercials or credits.

It never ends.

This fascination with those flooded with worldly acclaim and accolade just keeps flowing into our faces these days. And I guess then that it’s to be expected that at some point we’ll have just ingested so much of what this world is doing that we’ll finally break down and start doing the same. For after all, if doing what most are doing is what has them winning the way of life we see them living in the posts they post and the likes they get and the fame they have and the fortune that probably means, well then we’d be stupid to doing anything any different.

So we don’t. Rather we just resolve our lives to letting our lives revolve around doing as the world does as that sure seems to be the surest, quickest way to all the love and adoration we could ever hope to have.

Just that nobody ever mentions that welcoming the flood can only ever leave us the same.

And it’s probably never mentioned because everyone else is a victim too. For all of us have lived to lose our guards, let down our better judgements and cast open the floodgates that our consciences were meant to be, and honestly will always be, all so that we can do our best to become whatever this world says we should be, need to be if we’re to be as loved and welcome and all but worshipped as quite a great many really are anymore.

And to a people of such selfishness and arrogance and the ego which drives the both, our being loved by the world if not worshipped by the same, well, that just sounds too good a thing to pass up.

And so we cast off all restraints and just choose to a live a life in which we lose any barrier or barricade that should have remained so as to keep us from becoming so much like the world that we eventually even forget ourselves.

Just like those logs that get waterlogged.

They forget that they’re wood that has such a capacity to float that it’s been used as the frameworks for boats for centuries meant to keep people out of the water they’re trying to travel atop. No, when those logs give up and stop trying to keep the water out, eventually so much water gets in that the logs become more water than wood and they then begin to sink into the drink and there remain drown until they dissolve away on the bottom.

That’s the life we have to look forward to should we continue to do as the world around us tell us we should.

It’s that existence in which we become so engorged on the substance of a world of selfishness that eventually said arrogance just causes us to forget that we’re the created and thus in need of our Creator to keep making the way for us to remain whatever He made us to be back before we forgot and got so flooded with this world’s forsaken filth that we just sunk to the bottom of it and embraced the darkness as our home as we too lost that ability, that audacity to move.

No, we just sink into the drink that has most here so drunk that they don’t dare even believe they can be better anymore.

Hence the oil.

It’s needed in that water doesn’t like oil and neither oil water. The two don’t mix. In fact, whenever the two are attempted to be combined in a glass or bottle, the oil rises to the top as the water settles.

Get it?

The water settles.

The world settles. People settle. Society settles. They quit. They give up. They accept where they are living as who they are as the best their life can be. Is that truly what we believe? Is that who we really want to be? Nothing more than a people who woke up one day and called it good?

Friends, that’s what this world wants us all to do. To just give up on all this ‘improvement’ stuff. That’s why the masses still hate Jesus so much! It’s not because He’s unloving or not kind. He literally died to prove otherwise! It’s simply because He has the audacity to get in our face and tell us that we’re falling short of His grace in what are instead lives being lived according to this lie we’re being sold by a world that wants nothing more than our to blend in with them so that they can feel better about not doing better.

That is the overall goal, the outermost aspiration of this death in masquerade that is affirmation.

It’s to coax everyone into just quitting on life and living however they already are wherever they happen to be which is to then forever be only as far as they happened to have gone when they finally heard that they could give up on trying for more as they were good enough already.

Yes, this world wants good enough.

And, well, good for them!

Honestly, if all anyone wants is only whatever they already have living wherever they already are as whomever they’ve always been, then good for them! We should all be truly excited for those who find their reward and get to enjoy it to the absolute max that it can offer.

But friends, that’s the problem!

It’s that our becoming waterlogged and thereby forgetting that we’re meant to float through this world on our way home, picking up as little of this place as we possibly can along the way, it will only leave us sinking so deep and so fast that we won’t know what happened. We’ll just be one day awakened to see all we could have been had we been a bit more willing to fight for the more that He will show us we should have been.

That’s the horror of hell. Sure, the fire will probably suck. Having to hear the endless weeping and gnashing of teeth sounds like something that would get pretty old pretty quick. Having not a single chance of ever knowing hope or peace or love or rest would be really bad. But having to spend forever knowing we failed to honor our Father in what will then be seen inside the lives we’ll know we could have lived, should have lived, and thus unwelcome in His presence having chosen to live sunken amongst those who didn’t want to honor Him, no, that’s unimaginable.

Why settle for it then?

Why keep listening to all the lies telling us that we’re good enough as we are? Why buy this idea that makes us believe that we don’t need to change a thing as we can be no better? Are you truly good with that? That you’ve already maxed out your potential? Can you honestly live out the rest of your days doing as little as humanly possible and think that as being humane? Can you look someone else in the face and all but tell them to just give up and accept that they can’t grow anymore?

That’s what this world wants us to believe.

But friends, we have to be the ones who agree!

So again, why do that?

No, if God wanted us to be so unmoved by who we are and how we’ve been living then He’d have given us roots rather than arms and legs meant to run and reach for whatever better we can all still always be. This life in this world brings with it a daily chance at better. The only difference between those who are of God and those who have forgot is that those who try and forget do so because they know that being of God demands we try harder to uphold what is His honor as opposed to ours.

And the truth is that most here don’t want to do that because we’ve become pretty convinced that life is better whenever we seek for our glory in our story than that we’d find in seeking His glory in lives lived as if this weren’t our story but that we were rather here only to share His.

That’s the commission.

Problem is that it’s a blatant contradiction to the way society chooses to live.

Oil and water.

Friends, it literally all boils down to the question asking which do you want to be? And, oh yeah, there’s that fact to throw in there too! Water boils and thereby turns to steam and evaporates whenever the heat’s turned up. Water turns to nothing when life gets hot. And, well, that rainbow that some have attempted to usurp, it actually means that He won’t destroy the world with water but rather He’s promised this next time it’ll be fire.

You want to be found standing here so flooded with this world’s filth that all you have to show is water?

Oil doesn’t boil my friends but can rather withstand the heat.

So what’s it to be? Remain common? Stay normal? Do as the world does and become what the world is? Sure, that may seem like a fine reward to some, and if that’s the case for you then I am heartbrokenly happy for you. Because yeah, doing as this world does will win you all of this world’s love that you could ever want. And for some that’s all they do want, to just be loved and accepted by those around them.

Problem is being loved by those who deny Christ is going to cause you to do the same right up until you’re so waterlogged with their denials that you deny Him yourself.

And He’s promised that whosoever denies Him before man will be the same as He denies before the Father.

Then comes the fire.

Look, it’s your call. We can all either settle for the fall or seek to rise above it. The truth is that settling for anything short of everything improved is a pretty foolish thing to do, and yes, we all do know that truth. Question is has it set us free or are we, like they, still running from it?

Oh yeah, oil doesn’t run either.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold