Day 3983 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

Perfecting holiness

And that in something of an overall doubling down upon both the promises and the callings through which they’re to be proven in what remains, for now, an already perfected perpetuity as is already being proven as endless and thus immature as all such growth is supposed to be. For how dare we ever arrive at this place in mind or time in which we think that our lives are as good as they can be? How might we have truly seen all there is to see? Have we indeed undergone all the growth through which a soul can go?

How would we know?

This is something that’s weighed on me ever since by birthday or so, about 10 days ago. In fact, it’s probably been running through my head for a lot longer than that because for a long time now it’s felt, it being life itself, it’s felt as if something just wasn’t right, a little off, lagging behind and yet yearning to break free and burst forth into those cold winds blowing out of the north like a buffalo faced into the storm just aching for that which spells its breaking but with a rare audacity to see for sure.

I want to see for sure where my breaking begins because I feel in my bones that then and only then will I ever begin to finally grow in Him who came to die to not only save my life but change the same along the way to wherever it is that His will plans for me to be. That part I don’t want to know. How’s that for a weird thought? I don’t want to know where all He intends for me to go. I don’t want to know the fullness of His plans for me. I wish not to be so left without awe and wonder.

Because if those two are ever lost then where would faith be found?

Of what would faith be able to feel?

No, I want to know Him in however much clarity and fullness and certainty as He may have measured out for me. But I find suddenly, here at 38, this almost childlike necessity of not knowing much more than that. In fact, I’m truly worn out from my now decades having been spent trying to prove that I could figure out more than I was ever supposed to. Indeed, I look back with fresh eyes now able to see a past in which I fought so hard to be enough as measured in what this world considers as such and all I seem to have found was just a way of life beat to the ground.

I’m tired.

Maybe because I’m getting older. Maybe because the weather’s finally turned colder and it feels an increasingly good idea to stay under those covers rather than sitting before a computer typing out these endless considerations. Maybe it’s all just piled up to the point that things are in fact starting to break down fast and I’m finding that I’m feeling a life basically reeling to figure out what faith is and why I’ve not done a better job at letting it be just that before now.

I don’t know, but you see, this to me is the perfect backdrop for a belief to begin, a faith to grow, a life to finally start to really know what it’s being lived for. That’s something that all of us wish to find and finally then begin to actually understand. Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? Are we doing already anything that we’re supposed to? Is anything we’re doing helping us become something that we can know inside our hearts and with our souls is truly something worthy of the time in life we give it that we can’t get back?

What are we gaining, how are we growing that has us without question truly knowing that the best is still to come and thus we’re not as good as we are yet to be?

These are all things that allow for the spice of life to continue feeling so flavorful and full. It’s the curiosity. The confusion. The certainty. The audacity to admit that we know not what we’re doing but rather than playing dumb and acting then only the same we rather humble ourselves to finding the ability to grow hidden within our humility. A humility that’s honestly only hidden either within or then from.

All because that’s the life we’ve come to know.

It’s that life spent on the run after always something more, never stopping to wonder why something less isn’t enough. Indeed, why not rather be wronged as Paul asks? Why not embrace suffering if it means meeting healing up ahead? Why not endure sound teaching which confronts up front with at first offense but then leads to betterment and hope on the back end? Why not turn our ears to what we know we need to hear as opposed to only what this complacent world wants us to listen to?

Why not wonder what awaits inside our thoughts that we’ve for so long refused ourselves the time to think?

I wonder a lot about all I’ve not wondered about in my 38 years on this earth. Alas now it’s done in something of a half-tone as I stand torn between who I am as is best defined by where and what I’ve done and too who I can still become as is already known by a God that I know but not nearly enough. Almost every single day I spend time both looking back upon the path that led me to who, what, where and why I am what I’m pretty sure I have really become and the other half straining to look ahead into the best that’s still supposed to hopefully be what I pray He still helps me become.

Because looking back at a life lived so lost thinking that I could somehow know the way has left me with a firm grip on the reality which instead continues to say that I need always far more help than my ego would ever imagine.

Indeed, I’m finding that our ego is really bad at imagining as it instead loves to pretend that it already knows all there is to know.

But again my friends, if we were to know all there was to know, where then would hope exist? For what would belief strive to see, fight to feel? How might faith deepen when we’re so off the deep-end that we think we’re swimming upon the surface whilst actually drowning in mere human delight?

Is that truly all there is to life?

I hope not because if so, well, then I suppose there’s nothing more of life, of hope, of faith, love, light, truth to know. Truly, if all that exists to form the reason that we exist is just this generally sought enjoyment of worldly experiences and expectations then I guess we have arrived at our destination and can indeed feel completely free to just debark, leave it in park and sit in wonder as to what more there isn’t on the way.

But I don’t want to give so much away as the rest of my life. I don’t want to harness my up ahead to what’s already been all but left for dead. Why? Because I know I’ll try! I am a man of patterns and plans perfected, so much so that I’ve stopped making the latter and just sort of tinker with the former seeking only to tweak them ever so slightly so as to allow in me a plausible degree of movement, one just enough to prove I’m still alive and living but never anywhere close to enough to actually inspire me to move in order to prove it.

Because that’s the life we’ve all come to know. It’s that way in which the furthest we’ll go is just slightly adjusting the past looking for ways to only perfect whatever already was rather than welcoming the struggle that is our growing in what all isn’t yet. Because we’re terrified of that. We are truly shaken to our core with this idea that there’s more in store.

Why?

Because more still to come means that we’ve still time on the clock and thus a reason for that. And too that in order to reach the more that is still to come we’ve too still to come through a ton of trials and tempests along the way which will likely, as they always have, ask of us the same more that we either don’t think we have to give or simply don’t want to risk realizing we don’t.

Indeed, this is why I believe so many around us are so hesitant if not hate-filled when it comes to faith.

It’s simply because all such hope as all faith, hope, trust, love even truly are exist only alongside this incredibly humbling reality that says, and that constantly, that we neither know what we’re doing, where we’re going nor then what to expect along the way and neither then how to ensure that we’re ready for either where we’re going or whatever will come along the path paved leading us there.

And we hate that because, well, it renders us absolutely powerless. It steals our say and says our audacity to have ever believed we had one was already more foolish than our arrogance dared to believe. And that because arrogance never dares to believe as all belief only begins when our understandings and wisdom and power and ability come to their inevitable end.

That’s what I want to find:

My end.

Why?

Because, again as Paul posits, He must become greater as I then become less. Because, well, that’s the only way this faith can work! It cannot succeed so long as we’re of this belief that we can be enough, know enough, do enough to measure up to what Jesus already did for all of us. This idea hit me like a ton of bricks right to the face just last night. It’s that I’ve spent a large swath of my life living as if it were all up to my doing, my knowing, my trying to do what I knew I could as was always hindered by what I thought I didn’t know I couldn’t.

And, well, that’s basically what I’m tired of.

I’m tired of my best being the boundary to my better. I’m sick of allowing my best to build this barricade to my believing in something more and how I need to get there. I’m over this whole worldly idea that tells us that it’s on us to find whatever matters most because, well, I know what I’ve thought mattered. And, as it turns out, most of it didn’t. In fact, my life today is absolutely nothing of what I thought it would be back when I thought I knew everything.

What else is that supposed to tell me other than I know absolutely nothing of what my life is supposed to be, of what I’m supposed to be doing, of even everything that I still get stuck thinking that I know?

Friends, any time that we actually start thinking that we have something figured out, chances are we’re more wrong than we’ve ever been.

Why?

Because that isn’t life. Life isn’t about what we know or how much of it we have the audacity to imagine we actually understand. No, life is about humbly growing inside of every single day that we’re given because, contrary to human wisdom, life has but one finish line and they’ve not grabbed the shovels yet.

No, we’re still going, or at least should be. But that’s the great question of all belief! Are we? Are we going? Are we growing? Are we trying to accept the fact that tells us that we can always grow in and toward wherever it is that we’re going, but only when we stop living acting as if we know where that is as if we can find it?

I don’t want my eyes to see it because I know that as soon as they did, I’d just become bored with it and start looking for something else. Because that is the life that this world sells. It’s this lie that tells that there’s always more to look for, but too that it’s somehow best to only ever look wherever we happen to have already arrived. How is that life? Just sifting through the ashes of all the betters that we allow to be burned for fire here inside the caves of lives stayed upon this assumption that our best is but dirt and gold?

Is that all there is to know?

Again, I hope not because if all there is to hope for, hope in is just what we see and how we feel then I’m afraid we’ve been played and this whole thing is just a horrible joke. And, well, I just refuse to believe that because I don’t believe God to be that unkind as to create all of life to exist of the consist of mere earthen possessions and plans.

I mean He created the heavens and the stars and the imaginations that once conceived of flying cars and pirate ships and damsels in distress and yet instead we’ve found this mess in which you’re made fun of if you believe as you should know by now that your best is only whatever you can see.

Indeed, this world believes that all belief is best had in whatever already is. And it’s in this that we’ve lowered our anchors into a world of anger and set out to find delight in doing only as the Romans do, even learning to never ask why we’re ourselves becoming only angry.

Could it be that we’ve simply stopped trying? That we retired from believing simply because the world told us to grow up? That we accepted this idea of our abilities proving our best as somehow actually better able to get us there than our always believing that we’re but burdens to be carried along the way, often dragged kicking and screaming from what we’ve sadly come to accept as good enough as we go?

Friends, my point is that only God knows what our best truly is. He’s the only One who knows both the fullness of where we’re going, what all we’re going to go through on the way, just how much we’re likely to struggle with it, and yet most of all why it’s all worth it. We know none of this, and this is why we’d be far better off to keep seeking Him no matter what. Because we can never find Him enough. We can never know Him enough. We simply cannot imagine big enough to measure up to what is the hope of Heaven and how it’s not about streets of gold.

No, the hope of Heaven is being with Him who is our peace, our rest, our joy.

That’s what I want out of life. His versions of everything, not mine. And, well, I think, no, I believe that that’s what He wants for us too. And that’s because of His call to perfect holiness out of reverence for Him. Because when we do so learn to fear, honor, respect, praise Him, please Him if that’s anywhere within the realm of something we’re at all able to do, only then can we truly begin what is the process of our being set apart for special use.

And that’s what being holy really is.

It’s to set something apart from the majority that’s only to ever be normal. It’s to make something unique, to deem it special, important, useful even. Can you imagine that? That we could still be useful for something?

Oh, the humanity!

For anymore we think we’re useful for, at best, enjoying life as is sadly anymore mostly enjoyed only whenever we’re doing whatever we want. That’s become the grandest hope of most down here. To just waste away their remaining years in the lap of comfort’s luxury. Obviously not realizing that everything here is ending and thus their comfort too if such is what they continue to seek.

Indeed, so many will have had their reward in full, and well, call me a fool, and an obviously ungrateful one at that, but this world as it sets is simply not what I’ve the ability to imagine as being the reward that Jesus died for.

Sorry.

Just don’t see it.

And that’s because I, even in my own life, see so often entirely too little that could even accidentally be considered an upholding of that call to perfect holiness, to grow in Christ Jesus, to live in accordance with the Gospel, to actually live like God might truly be there watching all we do and hearing all we say. And I say this because there is a clearly increasing amount of things being said and done that have nothing of Christ in them.

And I can’t accept that. Not because my fallen human nature doesn’t want to as he fully understands how easy that would be. No, I can’t accept it because I literally cannot accept things anymore. I can’t settle for some reason. I feel more out of place every single day, and that sometimes in my own mind! Indeed, I don’t often understand the things I say or catch myself doing. In truth, I hate some of the things that I slip up and say or happen to do.

Yet this tells me that I’m still learning. And, well, if I am still learning then no, I must not be done yet. I must still have ways to grow, things to improve, a hope thus found in the both!

That’s the life I want to know, the faith that I want to know. It’s that one in which there’s always more for me to see, be, do, leave behind so that I can eventually find what is so much better that I’ll spend forever not caring about whatever I lost along the way to wherever His path proves to lead.

I just don’t want to leave anything undone of all that His patience with me says that I can, should still become.

And yet I know I would because He’s started to help me see all the things that I have proven so often so willing to settle for accepting. He does indeed tear the veils off of our faces so that we can then begin to see the more that was always there for us to be. Doesn’t mean it’s easy to get there. Doesn’t even make it easy to get there. If anything, this path only seems to get harder inside of every step we take as it narrows in what are ways that I think are meant to help us see that it can’t be on you or me as we just can’t do what He did.

All we can do is make what He did the overarching trust we have in our lives as we then begin to live to honor His sacrifice as is done only inside our doing now what He’s always asked us to:

To perfect holiness in our growing reverence of He who is holy.

And indeed, He will help this work approach its completion, and no, we’ll probably not understand the ways in which He does it all that often. But friends, that’s probably a good thing because, again, if we could understand it then we’d probably find a way to run away from it.

Because that’s just what we do.

And that’s why it’s time to do something new!

It’s all because the Spirit He’s given us does not make us afraid or weak or so prone to complacency as our every past has proven all of us to be. Rather the Spirit of God is that which leads into an ever-increasing humility whereby we slowly come to see the more He’s always had for you and me to become. He will grow us in His glory, and yeah, that growth will come at the loss of our own.

But friends, when we finally start to see just how flimsy our vain glory has always been, well, then we’ll finally understand the call to keep going and keep growing.

And that’s because our glory knows only to stop at whatever we think is good enough.

His glory leads all the way to Heaven and doesn’t care to worry much about what has to happen to get us there.

Because His glory knows that the promise is worth whatever it takes, even our striving for what reality says we simply cannot be: Perfect. No, we can’t be perfect but we can be holy and it’s about time that we start trying because, well, we’re running out of time to do just that.

But we’re definitely not running out of reasons to see why we need to start as we’ve clearly plenty of room for improvement.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold