Day 4031 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

James 1:21 NIV

A chance to choose

Granted, there are those who believe, and perhaps rightly so, that we have very little say in regard to the way in which this life goes. And this seems quite true for the most part as it seems that at each day’s start we’re already well behind in regard to both time and mind as are both found in the only place that both either will be or have already been mostly only lost. And indeed, time here is something that we have absolutely no vote in regard to as rather we’ve each a specific measure that we ourselves didn’t decide nor determine.

Does seem as if we have had at least some say in regard to all the ways that we’ve lost our minds thanks to how we’ve spent said time.

And I say this because I think we’ll all look up to one day find that, when stared at the past looking back at us from where we are as will hopefully be different than we have by then become, we had plenty of opportunities to make the changes we have well before we had. And I say this because it’s undeniably something that I myself have experienced, and something that I talk about experiencing still.

Which is that I find that I worry now not for what tomorrow may bring nor even the number of tomorrows I may have as rather I, like Stonewall Jackson, find a rather settled confidence in that regard that allows me to worry of other things.

“My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”

And indeed, I don’t worry about it as, well, I can neither add a day nor hour unto my life via the doing of such (Matthew 6:27), and too, I trust that such a gift as the hope of my salvation rests not upon my hands but rather those of He who came here to reach out for sinners like me. And this assurance of His having completed that which He came to accomplish has then freed me to spend my time in worry upon other things that such a hope ought to inspire us to worry about.

Things such as our words and what it is that we’re saying within them. Or our actions and all that we’re accomplishing alongside them. Or our thoughts and where all they’re being allowed to lead us as we look always unto them. Or our memories as are always of things that we’ve been given the ability to remember for either the benefit of our having learned or the blessing of still being able to do so.

Indeed, I have come to believe that the ability to remember is nothing which should be considered in step with the call to avoid the outcome of Lot’s wife and her looking back unto the destruction of what was being destroyed. Rather I contend that our ability to remember is something that God has clearly given us as what should be a tool used to peruse our past’s paths and ensure that we’re walking still the best of the batch still lain before us inside every single day that we may still have.

However many that may be.

And I believe that the difference in worry as should be shifted from however many days we may have left to do what we feel inside our bones we probably really need to unto the concern over what we do do within the time we do have left in life is what we’ll be judged by. Not what we hope we’re able to do but what we don’t allow hope to possibly hold hostage for just a little too long.

In other words, we’re going to, as Scripture says, be judged by our fruit as are deeds planted at first by Him thanks to His having planned ahead of our time the good things we’re here to do, things He’d thus intended for us to walk through rather than only talk about, and whether or not we actually grew said fruit via our pouring ourselves as if water meant to encourage their growth as opposed to our own.

Which, make no mistake, our own growth will happen too so long as we do do whatever He has us still here to.

It all just seems to boil down to a difference of intentions as is always determined by the distance between outcomes that exists between every fork in this road called life that may start as thin as a cut by a knife. For once torn apart, these diverging paths as are determined by our decisions, they continue to veer until we’re either where we’re supposed to be living as who we’re supposed to be doing then what we’re here to do, or simply nowhere near any of the above.

Which, rather than the time of my death as would be defined by however many days I have left, is the only worry I really have. Because, again looking back, I see now a past that both went the way I apparently wanted it to thanks to my having lived then to choose to do only whatever I myself wanted to, only to have arrived at this thought in mind that makes me wonder as to where, who I would be as could have been living in what could have been a much different life even had I made the changes that I did just a little sooner than I have.

Not that it would have made all that much difference, but I don’t know that I can believe that it wouldn’t have either.

Which is the part that kind of sucks to be honest. It’s that open-ended wonder as to what more I could have accomplished had I started to trying to accomplish what I have far sooner than I did. It’s the curiosity as to what all I might now see had I started looking for this better life long before I started trying to find it. It’s the worry that I’ve missed chances that were right in front of my eyes, chances leading to an even better life lived as a far better person, all because my eyes were busy looking at something that I may well have forgotten already.

I have so many such worries as are won from within what is a life that is vastly different than that I once lived on the wrong side of wicked things that I’ve since laid down. And don’t get me wrong, I, like Paul, by no means allow myself to think that I’ve finished the race or found the prize or conquered this life. No, rather I, like he, do what I can to strike that blow to my body seeking to make it my slave for once rather than slipping back to my being the body’s slave all over again.

A difference I know entirely well.

And yet, sadly, one that I still find myself realizing in deeper measure all the time. All because still I find that I sometimes do things that I don’t want to whilst then also, with that same time spent doing as I don’t want to do, missing out on the doing instead of the better things that I only find I would have liked to do only after I’ve sadly done what I only realize too late was what I didn’t want to do.

And yes, it is an entirely confusing thing sometimes as, yes, this mind of mine is sometimes friend more times foe. Indeed, so much of life anymore feels this never-ending battle between the common audacity to imagine the better I’ve become daring to believe not in the better still that I can be. And indeed, this war I do my best to fight daily in my doing as often as I can the things that I know I should be, which are often the things that my body tells me it wishes not to do.

Things like getting up early so that I can write these posts before the noise of the world makes it increasingly harder to think. Or doing upwards of 300 pushups every Monday morning, with a workout still to come later that day. Or skipping meals so that I don’t dare slide back into the old me who used to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted and ended up struggling with obesity and all the various weights it causes, mental mostly. Or putting others first and being patient while I do so, something none of us really want to do.

Or admitting my mistakes and confessing my sins in what are prayers I pray as if I know what to say and yet always wonder if I said it right.

There are indeed so many of these things in our lives that offer us these little chances to actually choose what we win and when we lose in what is a life that we were born to give away, just not at all to all the things that we’ve sadly chosen to give it to.

In fact, that’s why I know that we do get to choose. It’s because, again judging my own past via the fruit borne therein, I can’t imagine God having directed me, designed me, delighted for me to do so much of what I have done. No, that was another at work in me. That was sin working in me. That was selfishness working in me. That was laziness working in me. That was lust working in me. That was greed working in me. That was gluttony working in me.

That was the common human gullibility working in me convincing me that I was free to do as I pleased without any worry ever given unto anything in the way of consequence.

Consequences I ended up not only not outrunning but rather running headlong into.

Because the simple fact of every life is that we’re all going to smash into God.

The only difference is when and how.

This is the choice that I believe He gives us. It’s that choice as is being made every day by everyone as is made inside of, again, everything we say, do, think, or simply refuse to. But the problem then becomes that it turns into two against one. For on one side we have God asking us to do things His way whilst on the other we have both our either doing otherwise or continuing to live as if we don’t even have to decide right now. And it could be argued that our refusal to choose is just as bad as our choosing wrong.

After all, He’s told us himself that He hates such lukewarmth and would rather we were either hot or cold as at least with those He could do something.

And so our refusal to act seems indeed just as bad as our doing wrong because, well, we could do right. And yet so many times in this life we do nothing. We just sort of sit there as if life’s some kind of rest stop in which we can always afford to waste time “gathering our thoughts” as if the sum of our thinkings will help us to think of some way to get out of the rather dire dilemma our every decision has found us in.

The dilemma defined by the need to confess and repent inside what often times seems a heart still bent on trying to find some way to prove such a call entirely unnecessary.

As if we can convinced God to change His mind in regard to His call for us to change ours.

After all, is that not all but exactly what this verse here is calling us to do?

To change our minds? To look at our lives and finally agree to find all that is within them that shouldn’t be within them? To judge our own fruit as is borne inside the things we do and determine whether or not any of it should be done? To, having determined that which we do which we should not continue, rid ourselves then of those things that we have done but no longer want to do?

Friends, this is repentance!

It’s a turning away from something toward something so entirely different that it’s found in the opposite direction. In this case that would be the seed that He has sown inside of our hearts that was planted there well before these lives we’re living got their start and we started then living them only letting them continue to fall apart.

The seed is called truth and it shall set free indeed those who turn off the path the devil has them on living a life doing only his bidding (stealing, killing, destroying) unto the path of rather upholding God’s will as is shown inside fruit sown not to please the flesh but rather only harvested should the flesh be put to death as the flesh desires that which is contrary to the Spirit of Truth that is placed inside of us, meant there to lead and guide us unto the doing of what God desires instead.

But that’s just it, is there any evidence of this death?

Have we reached today doing anything different than whatever it was we were doing before we heard of Christ? Do our lives and how we live them, what we do within them, does any of it look, feel, sound seem any different than it did before we learned the story of Calvary? Are we saying different words than we did back then? Are our words, even if they’re the same as they’re not inventing new ones, are they saying anything different? Do our actions tell a different story about a different person walking a different direction toward what remains the same destination but an eternally different outcome?

For all of us will appear before the judgement seat of God, and, once there, all of us will hit our knees and confess that Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings.

Will we do so at what’s, by then, the end of what was then a life we had lived trying to do as much as we could of all that He’s asked us to? Will confessing Him as our Lord and Savior be something we’d spent some time practicing inside our having lived our last days here doing such things as called to here? Or will we, like many unfortunately, reach that kneeling at the end of a life spent speeding upon the wide-open and wicked?

For that’s the road we’ve all known, that broad road unto destruction.

But friends, hence the need for the turning that is repentance!

Which is again the fruit that’s meant to be borne by the seed planted inside of our hearts. It’s that fruit we taste every time we try to do something we want to do only to do it and feel bad about it. It’s that met inside our making mistakes with the strange ability to realize them as mistakes. It’s that known in those words we’ve always said but just taste a strange sour all of the sudden. It’s that found in our feeling unsettled in certain settings. It’s that in which we start seeing things through what seem new eyes that cause us to start questioning some stuff.

It’s the fruit that will eventually all but lead us unto the outermost fringes of this world from which we’ll spend out the rest of our days staring at the skies all but dying for those clouds to part so that we can start our journey home.

A journey we can’t wait to take, and don’t have to anymore thanks to our having come unto the humility that agreed finally to do as He’d asked us to in the ridding ourselves of all we’ve said, done, thought, bought, been, become that His Son and the Spirit left behind by the same came to help us find didn’t belong in the life of someone who dares believe that they can change from a sinner to an adopted child of the God of all creation.

Something that is indeed hard for any of us to believe thanks to our having done so much stuff that such things as guilt and regret tell us we never should have.

Question is whether or not we’re still doing those things.

Or, as is the goal of sanctification aimed at our very eternal salvation, have we rather began learning to choose to do something new? For that is why He came, told us so himself. He came to do a new thing.

Do you still not perceive it?

And if you don’t perceive it, well then what are you looking at still that still has you not able to do so?

Friends, point is there are so many things in life as lived of this world that only serve as distractions, mostly determined to become such by us alone. Indeed, even things that God has made have become things that we’ve come to serve as if idols. For all of us have lusted for such things as gold and silver and diamonds and rubies. In fact, there are even people here who idolize fruit!

Saw some dude duct-tape a banana to a wall and call it art and someone else paid them millions for it!

Is that the kind of choices we should be choosing?

Or is that not just one more example of a life spent losing our minds trying to find something inside this life to love because we just don’t understand that God loves us and this means thus that we need here nothing else as everything here is only holding us back from heaping up hope in that one place He’s given us to call our home?

What’s holding us back from longing to leave for that promise? What things are we doing, choices are we making that have us not spending our time growing in Him? What things are we doing, choices are we making that shows Him that He’s growing in us?

Because the simple fact is that He’s planted the same seed inside everyone.

The coming difference of eternity’s different destinations will be determined by those who lived to water His will over their wants.

Is that what we’re doing or are we still doing something different?

Truth is that it is not hard at all to tell the difference and so if we can’t see much difference from who we are and what we’re doing today from who we were and what we did yesterday, then we might be in some trouble. Because the sad reality is that all of humanity has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in what has been, for all of us then, a life lived choosing to seek our glory rather than His.

Are we still making that same kind of choice?

Or are we maybe starting to wonder if there might be another voice we should listen to that doesn’t inspire us to do all the things that we’ve done that we’ve only come to ever since only wish we never did?

For such a feeling is the fruit that’s supposed to grow from that seed that it’s said He’s planted inside.

Do you see any of it yet?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold