Day 3988 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 5:24 NIV

It’s a process

And honestly, it’s one we just both are not good at and in all likelihood simply never can be. And yet perhaps this is why we all always seem so hesitant at best when it comes to this faith that demands so much as what’s indeed an entire life. I mean, it’s something that will continue to make little sense as it runs in stark contradiction unto our senses and sensations and the overall objectification of the both as is known unto all. We are a people who know only to seek our own flesh’s favor.

And so whenever something so blatantly asks that we entirely stop doing that, it’s akin to dying itself.

Which is kind of the point.

It’s that in order for us to reach a better promise we’ve to at first peruse all we’ve pursued that doesn’t hold the same kind of profit. And yet this is where this process seems to break down into our all but sometimes doing the same as we strain through pain and rain seeking some way to understand why it is that we at first hear that we can’t like or enjoy all that we know we have and thus still do and then, at some point, why we all of the sudden don’t like or enjoy all that we once did.

This work that He begins within is in every way something new, something strange, something different, difficult and dangerous every single day. And yet it’s not that difficulty or danger as are so readily known by all in which we struggle whenever something external offers to hinder our elsewise perfectly planned path toward whatever promise or payout we seek, or mostly just away from whatever problem we obviously seek not. No, rather this difficulty and danger is something entirely more personal.

It’s more local.

It’s to many loco.

I mean, it’s an undertaking undertaken only within someone, right at the very heart aimed from there into the soul that has, in all reality, been but an afterthought for what may well be years if not decades at this point. And that simply because the flesh has been our focus for as long as we both can and yet may not want to remember. And that simply because, if we were to be honest, we’re none of us nearly as proud as our puffed out chests and noses held high would otherwise seem to say.

No, I dare say that we’re all quite ashamed of ourselves in light of the many mistakes that we know we’ve made, even if the same haven’t been known by anyone else. In fact, it could be argued that the things we’ve kept so concealed are in truth given only more power in our doing so. And so, I think that what we’ll all come to see, and in this case hopefully experience, is that we’ve lied to ourselves and everyone else for so long that we may honestly not even know what we like, what we enjoy, who we even are.

Unless we ourselves somehow take pride in being mastered by our many mistakes and all the misunderstandings that led us to make them.

And, granted, these days I don’t find it too hard to imagine that somebody out there might be that far gone into what’s as of now a life so vastly lost that pleasure is the prize and with it is found so much pride that said person would truly rather die than not do whatever they’ve come to enjoy more then than life itself.

It’s getting weird out there!

But the point of this faith is aimed at the weirdness, the wrongness inside of us. And I contend that it’s the personal aspect of a belief that causes us only to always seem to see the danger and difficulty that all such hope and imagination will always both demand and yet deserve. It’s just that we’re all so far gone into the pleasing of ourselves that hope and imagination and joy and love and even life are all seen as secondary concerns lagging long behind our doing as we know to make us feel good.

Yes, our feelings and emotions and this commotion of the two blending always trying to lead unto our doing only of whatever makes us happy and leaves us satisfied has caused our every better to for this long die as it’s been long forced to feed upon the crumbs which fall from the table of our guts being glut upon our gain and regret.

And yeah, that is as perfect a picture as any might paint of this path we’ve paved to a life lived always only our way.

It’s this one walked in both want and win and yet still then our finding ourselves only wanting more again. And that’s because, despite our widespread and obvious understanding that this life in which we’re standing in this place in which we’re crawling is best to be filled with the same. Always. Because there’s always something else here to want. Always something else that someone else already has. Always some fancy new shiny invention with the singular intention of making our lives better or easier or simply more comfortable.

And we’ve indeed become such creatures of comfort that we seek all but incessantly only that.

And whatever helps us accomplish it, arrive at it.

We just want to be comfortable. And commended for our ability to be it so constantly among a world that’s filled with those always lacking what we ourselves claim we never are. But are we really not lacking anything in life or is that just the flesh lying behind smiles that seem to say that our lives are going so okay that we’d not change anything?

And that simply because we’re comfortable?

Which all but rounds the corner right back to why so many seem to have so much trouble with the simplicity of Christ’s call to crosses carried.

It’s that we’re comfortable here inside our mansions of millions of either dollars or followers both offering us a continued general reverence unto the way of life we’ve come to live. We indeed seem to assume that we’re doing this so right as our mind might wish to imagine we are only because we’ve so many cheering us on within little thumbs up and tiny red hearts and comment sections blowing up commending us for our being so brave as to both embrace and then chase our own truth.

Yes, you do you has become the rallying cry amongst this culture we’re in, each of us then apparently thinking it best to let ourselves lead the way.

All but perfectly proving that it’s our flesh that’s choosing this direction we go in life.

But so too then the destination at which we’ll arrive.

Problem then being that the destination never changed as all will return to that from which it came. And, well, this means that the flesh will return to being dirt as that’s where God gathered this body that was always only meant to house the Spirit, a gift we’ve so forsaken that it’s been all but again forgotten behind all these years of fear found in our not doing whatever made or makes us feel good.

A Spirit which itself shall also return to there from where it came, God being the aim this time.

And that’s the issue that Christ came to help us at first become again cognizant of and then doing something about.

What?

Die.

Yep, it’s gotten so very bad, this way of life, that all that’s left by which to fix all we’ve failed, forsaken, forgotten or just gotten so mixed up that it’s again just mistaken and misunderstood is simply the death of, well, us. And why is that? It’s because we’ve not done wrong this long simply for the sake of not knowing how to do better. We don’t really have the sort of plausible deniability or utter lack of personal responsibility that we’ve all lived to seek inside our worry over cost and consequence.

No, those things really do exist and, yes, it’s because of this that one day our bill will come due.

And again, that’s why Jesus came to do what He done did. It was to open our eyes to the very cost of these lives that we’ve chosen to live at the behest and suggest of what is a flesh that has learned to all but perfectly crave and lust and yearn and burn for something new all the time. And that’s simply not for what we were designed. Rather we were, as we talk about all the time, created in God’s image to thus be His reflection in what are then lives being lived as if we live only by and because and for and to and toward Him alone.

But the flesh knows now only to get in the way. And it’s been that way for so long now that, again, all we know anymore it seems is to seek the satisfaction of the flesh as opposed to the salvation of the same.

And that simply because we seem to have become so blinded by our delights that we see only danger in our coming unto the light that is the life that is the Christ, assuming salvation not needed because, well, what could we possibly need to be so saved from when it seems, unto us, that our lives are going swimmingly? A lie sold by ourselves and bought the same as is told in this line that says that if the overall goal of life is as many claim be it might, then so long as we feel good and have fun then we’ve nothing to be saved from.

Rather we’re apparently all killing it if that’s the case.

Problem is that’s not the case and we’re thus only killing ourselves.

And yet we’re afraid to die to what is that life that has us so lost as to look upon the cross, count the loss, and turn right back to doing what caused His dying.

As if we just don’t want to understand why.

Why?

Because we know. We know that what we’re doing isn’t nearly as right as our pride has long tried to pretend. We know that the movies we watch are garbage. Songs the same. We know that the things we chase aren’t worth the time, effort, intention we waste upon getting them. We know that so many of these plans and priorities will only go up in smoke and leave us then with nothing to show for all the trouble we’ve found in trying to avoid the trouble we’d eventually go through anyway.

In fact, we know that there is no way to actually avoid the troubles, the trials, the tempests and torrents of this life.

But we can sure make sure that we’re distracted enough by our many delights that we needn’t but barely notice them whenever they do come, and that only just enough to carve out a story aimed at more of our glory as is anymore only gained in someone else seeing our pain and feeling bad for us and offering us a shoulder to cry on when life gets so hard on us.

Yes, this world loves to coddle as it seems to prove we care.

But if we really cared about anyone, ourselves included, we might not be quite so quick to throw that fit whenever life gets heavy.

Why?

Because what if the difficulties we face are only there to help us build up true strength, real resolve, honest hope and a truth so trustworthy that we actually become of the audacity to deny our doubt and step on out into the storm just to see where it leads? Indeed, what if the challenges God sends us toward are there only to call us forward into that hope that is behind us at this point?

Why is it behind us?

Because we’ve been running away from Him simply because He asks that we do as He did so that we too can find what He’s found.

What did He find?

Eternal life.

What did He have to do to find it, and thus what are we called to do to find it too?

Die.

That’s the story of Calvary my friends. It’s that Christ came on this earth with the express plan and purpose to purchase for us a promise that is entirely, and in fact eternally different from that that we’d bought inside this lie that says this life is best to be lived only seeking to please the flesh. Indeed, in the Gospel we see that Jesus came in the form of the human flesh, putting on our experience, so as to experience for us what we’d become all but numb to our kind of dumb deserving to endure.

Yes, Jesus came among us so as to live a life in this flesh so as to, having taken on the flesh, put the flesh to its death so that all those living for the flesh might come to see that doing so demands the death that He died in our place so that, by grace, through faith, we might now be saved and, in that, delivered starting as soon as today from what has been our share of that way of that life that cost Him His.

And yet this is where it all just goes muddy.

Why?

Well, because those living a life, and thus alive, are understandably hesitant to the idea of dying as it seems to be only the end of everything we’ve known. And, well, when it seems, from our perspective at least, that what we’ve known has been everything of comfortable and cozy and so culturally commendable that we’ve this chorus of cheers ringing in our ears every single day, makes no sense to walk away. Why give up having gained so much of what remains a world more than ready, always able and astoundingly willing to help continue so doing?

Yes, why walk away from what is a way in which we’re always so pleased and comfortable and found enjoying ourselves all but all the time?

Makes no sense at all.

But let’s just, for the sake of time, say that we somehow get past that. That we in some way come to see that maybe there is more out there to find, more for us to be. That we finally manage to break down, or be broken down until we agree to see that perhaps our being pleased isn’t the end-all-be-all that it’s for so long been, maybe seen because of the fact that it always asks that we do it all over again whenever whatever we’ve gained begins to strain and life turns quite plain again.

Even then it doesn’t get easier.

Because even then this path He paved will help us find more of those things that once felt good, maybe still do, that we somehow also become somehow interested in maybe agreeing to lose. Why? Well because He’s not led us wrong yet. May have not seemed to be the case when He at first showed us our waste of what was, perhaps remains a life in which the flesh puts up this fight to continue being pleased and satisfied.

And indeed, having each us already died to what has been something in life that we once lived to look for, thought we liked, were maybe even convinced we loved so much that we couldn’t live without it, turns out we are in fact living without it.

And yes, all of us have experienced this. Might not realize it, but if we ever did, well, we just might come to see that we kind of like it.

What?

All this new that He continues to do at only the express expense of our laying down and letting go of the old. Something we know we’d have never done if it weren’t for the Son having His way inside our lives seeking only to lead us away from what all was never a life.

And the list is different for each of us in both length and specifics.

But the story is the same.

It’s that all of us have already walked away from what were things that we enjoyed for a time, perhaps imagined we’d enjoy for all time. We’ve all had those things, thoughts, theories that we were at one point so certain of being right and our having liked that we, again, didn’t think we could live without.

Yet here we are, and perhaps just as happy if not more so without them.

How’s that possible?

Um, because we’re good at being wrong.

Which kind of proves the purpose in there perhaps being a profit to find in our agreeing to die to what has long been a life spent doing only as the flesh thought we needed. Just turns out that the flesh, though even outfitted with a brain, simply ain’t that good at using it to do this living thing right. Rather our minds have become quite easily mangled by all the mystery, mischief and majesty of a world that’s both filled with royalty and yet somehow quite royally messed up.

And if we were to be honest, our lives and how we’ve lived them have entirely too often seemed only the same. For our way has always seemed unto us as the only way to go because, well, we’ve long thought so highly of ourselves that we’ve long thought we were the only ones who could know what was best for us. And, having each of us found and felt so much pleasure of the flesh, we’ve become pretty much convinced that we’re right.

And it’s in this that pleasing the flesh has become our only delight, our every decision, our main destination. We care for nothing else but ourselves and their being satisfied.

Is that all there is to life?

The answer’s a simple no, but it takes us a really long time to learn the gravity held in such a small word. And that’s because we’ve spent our lives learning only to say yes to everything asked for by the flesh. And so learning the power of no is something that’s simply bound to take some time and bring some trouble.

Trust me, it’s had me quite confused for days!

But the point is that maybe we need that confusion. Maybe we need the challenge that is this call to carry our cross. Maybe we need the both because maybe we don’t know what best to do with a life. Maybe we can’t know how best to live a life so long as the flesh is still seen as being of any importance worth retaining any input.

Because maybe the flesh only knows to seek its own glory or success or satisfaction. And while those may all feel good to the pride we’ve become, pride holds no power to prove any promises. Because promises are always held later, just out of sight. And, well, pride doesn’t know how to move as it seems to insist that it’s already found all that’s best.

Has it?

Is your life perfect? Or is it still just seemingly so because all you still seem to know is that kind of life that finds delight only doing whatever your flesh asks you to do?

Indeed, whose slave are you?

In truth we all serve and thus belong to something. And that something will in fact determine where we’re going. And yes, our surrendering unto turning and serving Christ is a change that will cost us our lives. And yeah, that’s hard, always will be until we do leave. But friends, that’s the point. It’s that the cross proves that we don’t know what life’s about and the empty grave toward which it aimed only says we’ve somewhere else to be.

Why stay here then in what’s only ever been a life in which our being pleased was all that mattered most?

Does that really matter most or might that hope of a better place filled with unending life maybe matter more?

Sure, it’s a process to get there, and it’s a quite narrow path as well. But, well, what else are we gonna do with all this time we’ve still left to live? Give it to the flesh that’s still heading back to being dirt?

No, I personally want more out of a promise than just dirt.

Even if reaching that promise of that something more happens to hurt every now and then.

Because maybe the pain of loss only proves we’re moving ahead in the process that precedes the promise.

But there is truly only one way to find out.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold