Day 4025 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 52:11 NIV

Run from your life

That’s not really something that ever really seems something that anyone ever seeks or assumes they might need to. No, for indeed every single life as has ever been lived within this world has been lived within the belief that we are free. And that because simply we’re all anymore so simple as to continue to assume that freedom means only our continuing to do whatever it is that we’ve come to believe we ought to. And that’s usually nothing more than whatever makes us happy or elsewise causes us to feel good.

And thus freedom is often seen as nothing more than a symptom of satisfaction, or perhaps satisfaction a symptom of freedom.

Either way the two are clearly connected if not at this time nigh inseparable.

At least that’s how it seems from inside this scene in which we see all of every life being lived. Not that we can actually see the sum of everything everyone’s ever done as we’re not God, though we do like to imagine we are sometimes. And yet this imagining is what’s causing so much bad to keep happening as we indeed prove increasingly to be those who are in truth deceived and growing even further so.

And that by a version of freedom that seeks incessantly for the satisfaction that we’ve all come to crave in whatever furtherly depraved place that it may so happen to wait.

Wait for what?

Wait for us to want it bad enough to lower ourselves to where human pleasure is willing to go in search of itself. And, as we’re seeing unfold, there really is nothing of any place or prize that’s proving too deep or dark for humans to not venture. Rather we’re watching a world begin to divulge the depravities in which it seems that a great deal of humanity has been living in, looking for, leaning toward and all but loving every step of the way.

To where?

Well, right where He told us we’d end up should we continue to choose the common path as is paved of billions of people who continue to insist that all of life is meant to go their way as is a way that has no way of ever again being proven anywhere close to anything even remotely decent or acceptable or commendable, at least not nearly as much as we so often to imagine they might be, we might be.

No, no there’s increasingly little of us that is all that much of all that He created us to be. Because rare do we see any such things as humility, honesty, modesty, a man content with the commonly perceived mundanity of morality. No, these things, as mentioned yesterday, they’ve become but hindrances to the way of life this world’s so come to love that has most here vehemently if not violently hating anyone who at first lives otherwise and then, from there, dares suggest that others might should consider the same.

Folks here haven’t the heart to hear nor the brain to believe in such a blatant affront to their every affluent assumption as is always presented right there beside their bedside gumption as is given, again, to only whatever makes them happy or causes them to feel good.

For that’s all that most here care about in what’s then the one place in which rewards are indeed being both sought and thus sadly found.

All because odds usually are that we’re probably going to find whatever we decide to spend our lives looking for. Because even if what we’re looking for isn’t there, well, we seem to mind not this version of life in which we become all but willing to die in what grows to become an ever-deepening desperation to prove we’re not wrong however that might happen.

Even if it means attempting to rewrite rules, redefine words, redesign society itself.

It simply doesn’t matter whatever we may have to do so long as the doing thereof allows us something of an evidence of how we’re not dumb to have done whatever we have seeking to show forth what we may still not have to show off. Simply because some things remains entirely impossible, illogical, just plain illegal. But despite all of that, it seems that, unto us, we’ve become a people vastly more inclined to simple redraw the line than limit our lusts to staying inside the same.

No, we’ve gone so far off the deep end in terms of our understanding of freedom that we’re now looking for still more ways in which to do more things that have either never been done before or have simply been those things that most here never even wanted to do before.

Before when?

Before death began.

Which, in case you didn’t know, such is what we’re walking in. Such is what many here are calling ‘friend’. Such is what all of us have in fact not only met face-to-face but indeed come to race to what is, or at least should be, the last place anyone should ever want to end up. And that’s because the place to which we’ve raced is this day in which all of life is seen as if a game. It’s a world where everyone just awakes to do whatever they want as if that’s the goal.

It’s a story in which each and every day tends to lean gory as we’ve become a people who seem to assume glory is waiting always for us to go into the furthest recesses of our minds seeking there for something more extreme to find.

All because we’ve become so overdone in terms of depravity and delight that all that makes us feel anything anymore is the extremes. There’s always something else that we’ve not done, something more that we’ve not seen, someone different that we’ve not been. It’s like all of life has become a gateway drug which leads then to a life leaned in to where we are, again, the only ones who we assume to matter anymore.

Indeed, all of us have given way to such greed for so many things that we spend our days all but locked inside these tiny little worlds in which the population is only us.

We call them cell phones, laptops, consoles.

All of which are now believed to exist simply to cater to us in whatever way that we may just so happen to know of an algorithm that’s already in existence and there just waiting for us to create an account and let it start figuring out exactly what we want.

It’s absolutely terrifying what we’ve become.

Why?

Because it’s absolutely nothing of what we were created to be. Rather we were created to be God’s children, endowed with His very image, entrusted with His own will, encouraged with His own Word, emancipated by His own Son!

The emancipation part simply because, all from the start, we’ve rather insisted upon a version of life that’s still falling apart!

Why?

Because we again seem to still assume that freedom means nothing more than our doing of whatever it is that we’ve come to want to do, and then from there the doing of whatever more we’ll so readily learn to try by this time tomorrow. And indeed, we are a people so afraid of being bored, of being alone, of being cold, tired, sick, scared that we welcome anything and everything that may in any way do anything that could help us stave the same.

We don’t even care what anymore. We rather just need always that something else that’s right there waiting for us to come to want whatever it is that we’ve slowly learned might achieve for us a deeper depth to the kind of freedom that we’ve seemingly felt here inside what is a life in which freedom is nothing more than our doing whatever we want.

Thus the product of our living as if we’re the ones on the thrones who are, because of all our success and superiority, expected to live this life as if nothing but a nonstop party thrown in our honor of our having come to hold these self-perceived offices of the same.

Yes, we are a people of self-given honor, given in response to doing literally anything that we may actually believe to matter.

And again, it doesn’t even matter what anymore as, again, all that matters is how it makes us feel.

But friends, that’s kind of the question!

How do we feel? Granted, judging by the images on tickchat and facegram and snaptweet, it sure does seem like we’re all riding high in what are supposedly lives that are going so amazingly well that we’d then have no reason to be doing anything else. Every day we all awake to basically swim through another’s highlight reel. And so yeah, it does seem as if everything is going really well for pretty much everyone.

But what about when the lights are off? Can the same be said behind the filter? Are the same smiles there to be seen whenever it’s just you with only you looking back at you in the mirror?

I doubt it.

Why?

Because it’s empty. It’s pointless. Sure, it’s popular and profitable and proving then the very perfect estimation of a life’s purpose as proven, apparently, only in power and the popularity which anymore drives it. But again, what beyond that? What is anything we’re doing achieving for us? What can anything we’re doing be achieving for us that we honestly wish to have or hold, see or be, when it seems that pretty much all of everything that we do is only done to make someone else jealous of our lives spent under the sun and ignoring the Son?

Is that the goal of all this? To become so ‘free’ that we indeed exist to think that we’re the ones who matter most? That life itself is nothing but a toast given by everyone on our behalf? That we deserve to be served by a loyal staff who desire only to cater to our every delight? To be able to afford to such constant service?

For that’s what many here are seemingly swimming toward.

Life, as most live it here, it’s anymore something so increasingly weird that, again, everyone is living it so differently that none of us even dare to imagine having anything in common with anyone else. And thus too we seek then having nothing to do with anyone else either as, well, odds are they’ll only offend us eventually and, well, we both don’t deserve that and thus too don’t need that as, well, we’re again the only ones who deserve to be honored in light of the amazing way we’re living our lives.

Even right up to the point in which we seem to imagine that God’s there for us.

Despite the fact that He existed long before us and has, at times, lamented that He created us.

Something that, seeing the things that are unfolding these days, isn’t quite so hard to imagine His feeling still!

Why?

Because not only have we not come apart from the world and sought this calling to touch no unclean thing, rather we’ve continued destroying the world with all the unclean things that we ourselves have become in what have become lives lived so entirely numb to Him and His Son that we exist as if neither do. Something so easy to prove in light of so much of what people continue to do because so much of what’s being done is in blatant denial of anything He ever asked us to.

Indeed, He once made it so easy that He boiled it all down to 10 commandments.

But to us freedom is nothing more than a lack of all such limits, and so, well, so much for that idea!

No, we’ve far too many ideas our own that we’re at this point all but owned by seeing as how they daily determine everything from what we think to what we want to what all we slowly become willing to do in order to have whatever it is that we think we need. Indeed, to us want and need are one and the same. And it’s because of this that our lives are being still lived as if He’s still not there watching, hearing, feeling the hurt of all we determine to have or hate.

For that’s the result of our freedom.

It’s something proven in that we’ll either have everything we want or we’ll hate anything or anyone who in any way keeps us from it. We’re all in such this rush to have our cake and eat it too that we’re all but to the point of eating one another inside a hatred, a darkness, an evil so vile that violence is now normal and yet we continue to pat ourselves on the back all the while.

All while our every goal in life has become an idol that we serve seeking to satisfy ourselves with what will hopefully become one more honor, one more glory, one more gain given in our story as is written by us for us so that we’re both author and perfector of what’s, to us, a life so perfect that none could ever have anything to say unto the otherwise.

Not even God!

Because, contrary to the hope of this verse, our coming out from amongst a world filled with nations lost inside such swelling nonsense that it just never stops, we’ve rather remained amongst the nonsense and opted to ask God to come unto us and hope that we’ll receive Him.

Yeah, we’ve become so high on ourselves that we seem to assume that, again, God is there for us and thus to be always waiting for us to accept Him.

We even spew this stuff in sermons and such.

Open your heart. Invite Him in. Give Jesus a chance. Try Him out.

And indeed, we are called to taste and see that He is good, but friends, if we think this is anything that’s of our own doing then we still have most certainly no idea what we’re doing because the simple fact is that all of this, all of us are in His control. We’re either living in accordance with that as is seen inside such things as humility, honesty, modesty or, well, we’re not.

And again, judging by the overwhelming lack of such fruit being sown, let alone seen, no, it’s easy to see that we are indeed still a people still of this world.

For that such things as disagreements, divisions, depravities and delusions still exist among us, do not such show that we are still of this world?

And, well, is that in any way anywhere He’s ever asked us to be?

Granted, He’s the One who put us here. But friends, He didn’t put us here to become what we so clearly have. Rather He put us here to be His. But all will be known by their fruit, and so, what’s growing in our lives and does it have anything to do with anything at all that God has said He’s willing to accept?

Indeed, what is there in our lives, our hearts, our minds, our hopes that has any hope of His saying that we’ve done well in our wanting or winning thereof? Is there anything in our lives that shows forth an understanding that Christ laid His down? What of all that’s going on this world, things and theories that thus people are focused on, what of it all says anything at all about Him, His Word, His will, His way?

If we were to be honest, well, there just ain’t much!

Which, oddly enough, makes it pretty stinking easy to determine whether or not we’re saved. Because if we’re still doing anything that this world is doing, odds are we’re doing wrong because the simple truth is that this place is getting worse and, well, we shouldn’t then want to have all that much in common with whatever it is that this world’s becoming.

No, we should want to come out from it. We should want to be considered as if aliens within it. We should live our lives longing to die to every way, every want, every wish, every form of human wickedness that is so glaringly ruining this place.

But do we?

Do we want less and less of all that’s here? Are we ourselves becoming less and less like what’s here? Are we becoming more like Christ?

Or do we even know that He is the example of who we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to do, where we’re supposed to go?

And yes, I mean both Heaven as that is our ultimate hope. But so too do I mean the cross as so too have we each a life to lose as we’ve each lived one in love with all that is death. We have each of us touched so much death, so much that is unclean, that we are by no means anywhere even close to be considered acceptable in His sight.

Friends, this is why Christ had to die!

It was because the blood of goats and bulls couldn’t cover what we’d become. No, our doing more of what’s clearly more wicked demanded His doing of something that covered more completely the same.

And so He came and lived a life in which He touched no unclean thing, did no unclean thing, thought no impure thought, chased after no worldly acclaim or accomplishment, literally lived to lay down His life and be considered forgotten, forsaken, entirely afflicted.

All so that we too could all come unto that same cross and toss down our lives at the foundation thereof in what is finally a show of His Spirit having revived in us a life lived for a freedom that doesn’t have us ending up only dying.

Because the version of freedom this world continues to chase leads only to that same grave but without that Savior waiting there to save. Not that He doesn’t want to but simply because so many here have become so lost inside their lives lived as slaves of worldly freedom that they don’t want Him.

Because most here have come to believe that they don’t need Him. Because most here are so unclean and unworthy but yet unwilling to do anything about it that they just continue to remain a part of what is a world that makes them unclean, unworthy, unwanting of anything other than whatever this world still convinces us to want.

All of which is exactly what God calls us all to leave behind.

Why?

Because contrary to common assumption, these aren’t our lives. They’re rather but a treasure that’s been entrusted unto us in the form of His Spirit given unto us to see what all we’re able to do with it. And yet, just like the parable of the lazy the servant, rather than putting His investment to good work, we’ve rather buried it in the dirt of lives lived lost inside every form of deception, depravity and dishonor that we could ever imagine.

All of which leaves us then staring down the barrel of His returning and being wholly displeased with our having all but denied the opportunity to spend our lives trying to honor Him inside of our delighting to do the good works for which He created us to do.

Good works which can’t be done so long as we’re still worried about wanting, winning, worrying about anything under the sun where there is nothing new but only wickedness that may be new to us.

It’s not new to Him. Rather He’s been the One calling us right from the start to avoid taking part in all the things that we do not need to be entangled with nor thus ensnared by.

So indeed, let us for once turn away from the tree that is this world’s desire to know more of what we do not need to know, to do, to be and turn rather toward He who came to save us from what this world’s come to become. Because only in Him are we covered by the blood of a sacrifice that we are not worthy of.

But friends, the Good News is that He never called us to be worthy. He just calls us to walk away from everything that’s caused our being worthy to have become such a massive impossibility.

Sure, we’re free to refuse Him, and in truth, most here will because all of us have and it’s just way easier to keep doing as we’ve been doing than it is to do something different. So yeah, we have the freedom to change nothing. But friends, if we continue to chase nothing then we’ll have no grounds to act surprised when we come to find nothing is all we have to find.

He offers us more, and though His more comes at the express expense of everything we’ve known thus far, it also achieves for us a freedom that goes far beyond personal satisfaction.

His freedom leads unto Heaven.

Where has our version gotten us?

And why stay?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold