Day 3990 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Timothy 3:13 NIV

Can’t you hear the sound?

It’s a chorus crying out this song of a solemn hope being held out just a little longer unto a people who continue to flounder inside what is a life in which to forget and forsake the gravity of faith is seen as something somehow best to prove what all a life’s meant to do. Indeed, we live within this sea of those who seem not at all able to see the clouds starting to part, hear not the trumpet’s start and have then no fear of that day promised drawing near.

All because instead they hear the sound of only the laughter loved by those who love not the Lord but only themselves.

For that is the way of life that sells unto those who’re sealed inside this mind that makes them continue to believe that believing is a child’s game, something meant to be forever saved for those miniscule munchkins who’ve this foolishness about them that allows them to actually still believe in such things as everything better. And well, that’s just something that the rest of us have lost along the way to our being now old enough to assume we know enough to have actually figured out what life means.

As if it might mean so little as our having fun and always feeling good.

Or at least that’s the message that we hear every day around here. It’s that this life is our time in which to find whatever our eyes, our minds feel best to fit what we think we get in regard to life and its reason for existing, and our existing within it. Or rather alongside it. For in truth, that’s what we’re all promised to learn about this lane in which we’ve lain aside every single chance at our living a decent life, let alone that better one to which we’re called as is found only on the other side of crosses carried around.

Without ever again stopping to put them down.

Why?

Because, well, why go back to death? That’s the question I asked yesterday, and one that’s been on my mind for the better part of a week now, and so one that will likely inspire at least a couple more perusal posts such as this one’s about to become. And that simply because of the obviousness of what it is that we’ve become, what this world’s become, what this world will become and have thus us become when He has come and some are gone and most are left and suddenly not quite so sure as to why as they were back when they thought they knew everything.

Simply because they assumed that fun and other such frivolities are the purpose of life itself.

Truth is that they’re not. Sure, they add a certain spice to life. Having fun and making friends makes this ride seem more alive as it’s undeniably more enjoyable to spend it leaning upon another, or many others for that matter. Even the Scripture warns a woe to those who’ve none upon whom to lean or toward whom to look in their inevitable time of need.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?” Ecclesiastes 4:9-11

And yet, this matter seems to call for great discernment and a growing degree in discipline unto it in that so too it warns that “a man of many companions may come to ruin” because “bad company corrupts good character” leading us unto perhaps the gravest warning of all as is written within the obviousness of how it’s better to “walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.”

And so we find that friendship, like fun, may be good as it can prove a good return upon the investments we give it, so too can it backfire in what are ways that inspire us to share in their decisions to die inside doubt and disbelief.

Why?

Because that’s simply the way this world’s chosen to go. And we in fact hear the cry every single day anymore. Truly, just turn on your tv and flip the channel to a news station. I promise that within five minutes you’ll become convinced that all hope is lost and hell’s already here. And that’s because society’s become of this incessant interest in tearing itself apart. Cities are burning to the ground as a result of people being shot in the process of protests that always claim to start peaceful but just never seem anymore at all able to stay there.

Why?

Because we’re not of a peaceful mind anymore. Rather nearly every aspect of all that life is is anymore given unto hatred, division, disinterest, indifference even. For we know that it almost doesn’t pay to care these days as doing so is the surest way to be found as offensive by those who care about the same topic or issue but from the other point of view. We can’t see eye-to-eye anymore, not with anyone.

Why?

Because we’re gone.

Heart, soul, kindness, compassion, humility willing to serve rather than be served, it’s over. And that’s because those things aren’t fun. In fact they’re all quite hard unto a people such as we’ve become who’ve become so numb to the call of the cross carried by the Christ who cried out as He bled out and died out, “It is finished.”

It’s just then that most here aren’t yet finished with it.

What?

Sin. Depravity. Debauchery. The detestable darkness that is an indifferent soul’s growing disinterest in anything but themselves and their comfort or pleasure or satisfaction or success. Indeed, we’ve become a people of such pride and in that such greed that anymore we’re all but willing to unalive someone else simply for saying something that we likely didn’t hear right simply because we’ve vastly forgotten how to listen. No, we can hear that someone’s speaking, but sadly we’ve learned to talk in buzzwords and hashtags and so we listen only for the highlights and end up missing the point altogether.

And that’s because the point of a person isn’t always proven in what they say as we all struggle sometimes to find the right words to say the right things. And this is what anymore proves such a growing problem as all this hatred and division that’s swelling up all around us. It’s that we’re also increasingly impatient, and when that’s combined with this frame of mind that’s already looking always to be offended so as to play again the harmed victim, we will always hear whatever we need to make that happen.

All because that’s what life’s become.

I was talking with God about all that’s going on just last night. There’s so little peace in this life. So little trust. So little love. I mean we’ve arrived at this place in time and mind in which we’re truly indifferent to even life itself. Ready always to sentence a stranger unto the gravest of danger simply because of a difference of opinion.

And we’re supposed to feel obligated to make friends and do as we’re told and go along without ever even pretending we might have a cause to question any of what’s happening?

No, no I’m afraid that to do so would be just about the most foolish thing we could do. Why? Because we’ve been told that friendship with the world is enmity against God because the wisdom of this world is foolishness unto Him as they who find faith in Christ to be foolish as it deserves the laying down of a sinfully lost way of life and that met with the aforementioned taking up of crosses upon which we’re called to each personally crucify whatever might remain of that life in which we too lived as if He never did and thus still doesn’t.

Friends, do you understand the gravity of that belief?

Do you understand what it would mean if He’s not there, the Gospel not true, Heaven not then the promise?

What, where, who would that leave us?

Nothing, here and just us.

And, well, is that what our hope is truly supposed to be? This is indeed something that we consider inside these posts all the time. It’s that question as to whether or not we’re truly as great as we so often believe ourselves to be. Is the way of life this world is living, and still insisting we join ourselves, is it really all it’s been so widely cracked up to be?

Does putting lipstick on a pig change the fact that it’s still wallowing in mud?

No, no it doesn’t. And yet we live anymore as if photo filters and highlight reels are proof positive of lives the same. Is it? Is some professionally staged photoshoot and ghostwritten caption truly evidence of a life being lived well when the camera’s off?

Again, no it isn’t.

But anymore such are the things that so many here are increasingly captivated by. We are living vicariously through those likely not living the life they’re showing their fans. And it’s because of this that we’re losing our ability to live our own lives, think our own thoughts, believe our own beliefs. It’s all because we’ve become so reliant upon the world around us to help us find their version of better that we’ve bought the lie that their lies are as good as we can ever hope to be.

Is it really?

Is fame, fortune, the fun and friendship that both find so easily, are those the things that should so dominate our estimation of our life’s reward? Same coin, is our ability to deny we’ve done any wrong truly enough to prove us undeserving of the punishment owed unto the God that our every wrong choice was made in our thinking that He either wasn’t there or was hopefully out to lunch and wouldn’t see?

Friends, we’re anymore so lost at sea inside this swell of what’s a society sold to doing as none ever should that we too are increasingly willing to consider doing as we shouldn’t either. Why? Because that’s the price of admission. You have to be this tall on yourself to ride this ride. You have to look the part, know the lines, do the crimes and lose the time that you should have spent realizing all the reasons we have to not do as the world does.

Reasons such as shame and regret, which, as we mentioned just yesterday, are not in any way anything that anyone should set out searching for.

But yet we live in a world filled with those continue to find them, and yet oddly enough it’s those who continue to find them (only to continue denying they do) that turn toward us and make fun of how we’re not anymore so quick to just go along down that road paved at first in fun but finally only in failure and misery.

Indeed, this world will never understand those who stop doing as they continue to. Because they still seem to see only this idea that life is meant for fun and fun is meant for life. And in this all they seem to care to find is a life filled with fun because, to them, the same then means that their lives are finally full.

Are they?

Speaking personally, I’ve had a lot of fun thus far in life. A lot of fun. I’ve been given the chance to experience some things that have left me with some memories that I truly hope to carry with me for as long as possible. But friends, so too has some of the fun I’ve had, and the friends I’ve made in so doing, it’s left me with only a misery that I cannot seem to get rid of fast enough.

And so what’s the point of making fun or friendship our priority when, odds are, we’re likely going to be asked to do some things, say some stuff, or at the very least smile and agree with those who do, that we may not really feel as if we can go along with? Is it worth gaining the world, in any measure, if that measure is only gained at the expense of again making our soul and its hope an afterthought?

Again, this is something we’ve all done. But friends, that’s just it! Having already done it, do we truly think it wise to do again?

See, that’s where this train jumps the tracks. It’s that, at some point, each of us will look up and realize that it just ain’t worth it anymore. And that simply because there is no amount of fun, friends, no following or even fortune that’s worth carrying inside our skin this awareness of sin and the death that it both defines and thus deserves.

No, there is nothing in this world that’s worth feeling shame.

Problem is that it seems that most of the world isn’t to that point yet.

It seems most here aren’t yet to that understanding that has them realizing that maybe there’s more to life than being liked by those who like some pretty messed up stuff. They’re not yet of the understanding that standing in the company of mockers or doubters or Christ deniers or other such thieves of life itself will probably only cause you to do as they do and believe what they might.

And that’s because whatever we’re surrounded by or elsewise focused on, this is what determines for us the direction we go in life.

Sure, we can say we’re above such powers as public influence. We can say we’re beyond being bought with promises of riches and fame. We can perhaps even honestly believe that we can never again be so easily tricked as to go along with things that we know aren’t right.

But friends, we’ve each an entire past filled with evidence that we’re lying to ourselves if we truly think any of the above are true.

No, the fact is that we’re all incredibly quick to lose whatever someone else tells us to let go or put away in order to achieve our gaining of whatever they convince us we need in our lives. Be it money, fame, a social media following, a simple matter of our feeling that sense of belonging, we’ll do some crazy stuff to achieve the stuff that we come to want for us.

All of it done without ever stopping to ask any questions, have any doubts, maybe even reconsider as to whether or not we actually need whatever it is that another is offering in what likely seems a deal too good to be true.

Kind of like the devil offering Jesus what Jesus already had.

Wonder if we ever stop to realize that his deals have never changed.

For you see, in his tempting of Christ the devil took Jesus to the top of a hill from which He could see all the kingdoms of the earth. “I’ll give you all these, make you king of everything and everyone if only you’ll bow down and worship me.”

And yet he offered this to the Immanuel, God with us. He offered Jesus the ability to be king of all the kingdoms on earth. Friends, Jesus created the earth and everything in it! The devil literally offered Jesus all that Jesus already owned, already controlled. All thinking that maybe Jesus somehow didn’t realize that those things both weren’t the devil’s to give and that, even more ironic, they were already His!

Such as riches, fame, power, importance, influence even. Indeed, this world seeks incessantly for all of these things not realizing that we already have them! Friends, we are offered adoption through redemption as was bought the blood of Jesus Christ, a gift making us fellow shareholders in the promise of Heaven.

He came to remind us that we too are God’s children and thus promised the very inheritance of life everlasting!

What can this world offer us?

What is there here that we need? Rather, what is there here that so many think they have to have that only keeps them from realizing all they’ve already been given?

That’s the difference. It’s that this world is still looking for what some of us have found you can only find in getting rid of and giving away all that this world thinks still matters. That’s why Jesus told that guy to go and sell everything he had, give the earnings to those with nothing and then come and follow Him. It was because everything this world has is nothing and thus everything this world offers us is only the same.

It’s nothing.

Fun is nothing. Friendship is nothing. Fame is nothing. It’s all fake, and that’s because it’s all temporary at best. Folks, I’ve had money. I’ve made friends. I’ve experienced a time in life in which I felt so popular that I knew no enemies. Guess what? It’s all gone. It’s over already. All those friends I once had, ain’t talked to any of them in going on 20 years. The money, spent it on stuff that’s mostly been either sold on ebay or elsewise just thrown away.

The fame, the following, the fellowship with those I tried to please and went along with their doing of things that I now can’t regret any more than I do, it’s all faded.

And since it has, I just don’t see any point in trying to get any of it back.

Just to watch it inevitably fade away again?

No thanks.

No, I want hopes and dreams and goals in things that don’t fade, don’t rust, don’t ruin or run away whenever life gets hard and I prove unable to uphold it well.

In short then, I want Jesus as only He frees us from that way of life spent thinking that it’s all on us to have it all figured out to the figures found in a world’s fealty to foolishness and frivolity. I’ve lived for those things long enough and thus know enough about them to know that there’s no life waiting to be found within them.

Problem is that most around us don’t get that yet as many here are still vastly lost looking for what this world claims it has to offer, for a nominal fee of course. But friends, that fee is our souls. And that’s why we need to start taking this journey a little more seriously than our every past says we ever have. It’s because the adversary still prowls around seeking for those he can devour through promises of riches and fame and fun and friends, all offered unto those who don’t yet seem to know that all he’s really after is stealing, killing, destroying everything that is God’s.

That’s why Jesus tells us to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

It’s because this world will never agree that it belongs to God because most here instead belong to this idea that this life is whatever they want to make it.

It isn’t.

This life is our time to find God in whatever measure His faithfulness, patience and forgiveness will allow within us.

But we cannot find Him, will never find Him when we’re busy living a life looking only to this world to tell us what to do and how to live and why they’re ideas are better than His.

A lie that will only grow more popular as time grows thinner.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold