Day 4034 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 139:24 NIV

Patience on purpose

And that on His part on our behalf so that we can end with our own, both purpose and path as have been lived at best in part of heart as half has been held as if hostage here where it seems that the vast majority of us both want to stay and thus plan the same. Which is precisely why our plans must change! It’s because, despite however good, fun, lavish or enjoyable our lives may have seemed to us, or how much better our plans for them would make them, losing our ability to believe in even better is what got us here.

Where?

Nowhere we should want to be living as they who are people nobody should want to stay in what is now a place that is nothing we should wish to keep thanks to all we’ve done to sink down this deep into the doing of all these things that we’ve done for so long now that our greatest worry seems not doing them anymore. Indeed, we’re such a people of trends and traditions that we can’t bear the idea of losing them, leaving them behind, as this would force us to find something else to do with life.

Which is pretty much the last thing we want to do. Rather we seem perpetually content with the current content of a contentment lost atop the current of what is a culture collapsing so fast that none of us seem to feel it. Some claim they see it while others mentioned they hear it from time to time. But the overall glaring reality of our “reality” is that it’s really bad, and that getting worse, and that at the hands of those who seem to not know how bad it is.

And, oh yeah, those hands are ours!

Not really the indictment we’re looking for in life as rather we’ve all tried to fashion this life into this fun-filled and frill-laden vacation through what’s always only all we want whilst always missing or at least misunderstanding the more we don’t. And it’s not that we delight in misunderstanding as it has a proven track record of making one look foolish for their having believed in whatever they ended up getting backwards.

But hey, you gotta have some kind of alibi, am I right?

Well, again, as the recent theme has been, no. No I’m not. In fact, truth is that none of us are and that about just about everything in life. In truth, we all get more wrong than we do get right because it seems that our doing right is usually by accident alone because, well, the past proves that we’re all far more prone to making mistakes and doing things we shouldn’t do.

Which, for most of us, are the things we continue to do.

Indeed, we’re all Paul in that regard, only without the humility which offers us an awareness of it.

No, instead we continue to do the things we don’t want to do whilst sadly not yet knowing that we don’t want to do them. Rather that regret always comes only later as, well, you can come to regret things you’ve already done. Though there have been a few times in my life in which I regretted things that I thought about doing later on. Guess I’m just a sucker for shame, seeking it wherever I can find it in my life as has been lived by my mind telling my feet always where to go and my tongue what to say once I got there.

To where?

Not sure to be honest. Because the honesty of this journey that’s been mine has been something like that Johnny Cash song they play in those hotel commercials. For indeed, I look back on my past and it does seem as if “I’ve been everywhere man! Crossed the deserts bare, man. Breathed the mountain air, man. Of travel I’ve a-had my share, man.”

Yeah, I’ve been everywhere!

Except I never really went anywhere and seem to have mostly only gotten the same:

Nowhere.

At least nowhere I want to remain. In fact, looking at my past, I see only, as this verse calls them, offensive ways. Indeed, who’d have ever thought that the ticket I’d bought for the ride I chose along the line I’d drawn all by myself would have led me to where I’d left me only offended by myself? For none of us ever really seem as if we ever set out to seek our own self-aggrandizement. But, then again, I guess that’s kind of the point with your average aggrandizement.

It’s nothing we’re able to see.

Rather it’s something done in something of a blindness of sorts in which at least some of what we say and a lot of all we do is only said and done to make us look as important or impressive as we really want to think we actually could be. It’s something of a selfishness in which we seek our own improvement to such an extent that, existing well beyond our own actual power or ability or intellect even, we eventually just lose sight of who we really are in what becomes a kind of life in which we live what’s basically a role that we play for everyone else to see something else inside of us that we’ve come to perhaps even believe is there.

Like righteousness. Or wisdom. Or authority.

Indeed, these things have all been in at least some ways sort of usurped in what have long been lives lived as if we, being fallen men, could possibly uphold them. And granted, to a certain extent we not only can but are in fact called to. But the overall issue is that we’ve managed to take them and spin them, as we do with everything else, into what’s always seemed these kinds of things that rely upon our being the ones who show them off in perfected perfection.

Which has been what’s always caused our seeking of perfection in what is a way of life lived entirely alike what is a world that is increasingly far from perfect.

And that, again, thanks to our own hands having had something to do with it.

With what?

With everything falling apart. Seriously, this place is anymore chaotic at best and catastrophic more often than not. And that’s because of all of this selfish vanity that we’ve settled for in what have long been lives lived as if we were better than we ever really were. Again, it all comes back to this idea of pleasing people that we’ve been dancing around for a few days now. We’ve all done so many things trying to make others think more highly of us than they ever really had any real reason to.

Because the truth remains that we’re really bad at living life.

And I suppose that to some extent that’s not all our fault. After all, we do live in what is a world that is, again, increasingly far from perfect and, as a result of it, we’re all at constant risk of our being led ever astray into that way in which most live in what is then a way of life that seems unto our eyes as both entirely common and thus probably commended and thus always recommended if we too just so happen to wish to “win” whatever it is that everyone else seems to be.

I just don’t have it in me anymore to see anything here as a win.

Because, well, everything here is actually lost already and we’re just here long enough to give some of us a chance to come to terms with that in what then becomes our turning away from here toward home.

Which is the whole idea of His patience having a far better purpose than ours ever could. And that because, well, reality seems to prove quite continually that we have no patience and, well, even if we did His would still be better. Why? Because His patience is extended in kindness whereas ours, within whatever impressive infrequency we’ve ever dared show it, has often been seen only in a sense of begrudgement.

And that’s because, having all of us become so certain that this is our home and thus our goal and thus apparently then the one place that’s supposed to hold all we’re apparently supposed to have, we’re kind of in an ongoing hurry. Because time’s awasting and we’ve somehow a closet awareness of that fact that’s found for us an urgency, which could be a good thing, but only for bad things.

Which is a bad thing.

Which is why His patience is a good thing.

It’s because, in His mercy as is met in His patience proving still willing to give us a little more time to open our eyes to finally find that we’ve been living wrong, well, the same then offers us still that dwindling hope of His taking us by the hand and leading us home. Dwindling not because He’s running out of mercy but rather simply because we can’t really continue expecting Him to remain patient with us when we just keep slapping His hand away.

Something we do because we’ve, having become almost entirely aggrandized, seem to still assume that we ourselves can be enough to do enough to win enough to have enough that, should He really be a loving God, wouldn’t then take away from us.

Because it’s really unkind to take away that which someone else loves.

And indeed, He’s promised He won’t. For a while more at least. In fact, He’s told us that we can have our rewards here and testified to the fact there will be many who have.

But friends, such is the choice we all have to make.

It’s that which is literally being made at least every single day if not multiple times within them. And it’s made within every word we say, everything we do, every idol we serve or, and it’s a really big or, every humility we seek. Problem then has become that so much of all we do is not done with all that much in the way of humility to be seen. And that’s because, well, as a people who’ve come to think so highly of ourselves as to continually ask God to leave us alone to do this our way, all we then have is an ongoing trust in our way.

All with a glaring inability to see the issues found constantly in our way.

And how most, if not all of them, are things we ourselves have put in our way.

All of which are then things that we’ll need outside help to get thus out of our way of our heading off in another way toward a better thing that the sum of everything we’ve ever found or assumed we could could ever best.

No, there is absolutely nothing of all we’ve done, been, become that can in any way even pretend to compete with the plans and promises He’s promised us. And we can know this for certain because a certain Savior left Heaven behind to come on this earth in order to die in order to lead us toward the eternal life He’s promised unto all who place their faith in Him and live out the rest of their time working only to increase it however they might.

Something often done in only their admitting their lack of such ability as has always been right there to see in what has been a story written of an ego which was never then able to see that we are indeed “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

His words, not mine.

Which is pretty much the problem, is it not?

That His Word is often not anything we’d ourselves even attempt to say in what have long been lives telling what’s often proven only the antithesis to His story? Indeed, we’ve all of us lived as if the heroes, the champions, the very kings and queens, the proverbial gods in our own lives as have been lived with our doing basically anything we want without our ever stopping to consider even the plausible presence of anything that we may need to eventually repent from, if we want to live that is.

Which we all should as, well, being alive is pretty nice!

But the problem is that there’s nothing really all that nice about how we live. I’m mean sure, we’ve got some nice stuff. We’ve penned some nice plans to have even more of it in the coming days, week, years. We’ve made some nice memories of things we’ve gotten to see or experience. Life here has been nice. Issue is though that we’ve not been nice. Granted, we probably don’t see it that way.

But again, that’s the problem!

It’s that we can’t see it. And that’s because, well, those who do wrong thinking it right obviously then aren’t the best to tell the difference! And, well, the cross proves that we’ve all done so many things so very wrong that it amounted to a kind of death that we don’t even have to witness nor then worry about anymore. Indeed, even in this place where such things as human trafficking and people victimizing children are heartbreakingly common, even we seem to agree that crucifixion is a bit much.

Not that we have any qualms about killing one another as rather that seems to be one of our favorite pastimes.

Which, again, pretty much proves the problem!

We don’t seem to understand just how far gone we really are. And, having become so blind to just how wicked we’ve become, we then need a whole lot of help to even start realizing all the mess we need to clean up. Much less actually convincing us to get up off our lazy backsides and actually get to cleaning it up! And that’s because we’ve again become these kinds of folks who seem to see only still that all we do is somehow justified in being done.

Is it?

Well, probably not because, well, the world’s in pretty rough shape considering how it’s apparently filled with all these perfect people who get nothing wrong. And sure, perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we are saints. Suppose we are perfect.

Guess that either makes Scripture fake or God a liar.

But I ain’t seeming to see any hope to be found in either.

Because, well, I just so happen to know I’ve been the liar. I’ve been a thief. I’ve been an addict. I’ve been a glutton. I’ve been a gossip. I’ve been a people-pleaser. I’ve been a time-waster. I’ve been an excuse-maker. I’ve been a trouble-maker. I’ve been everything short of a life-taker, though, actually, I can’t even really make that case either as rather I must confess that Christ died at my hands because of my sins.

And yet, how can I possibly confess that I’ve been a sinner if not for His help having helped me to see all the things I’ve done that I never should have even imagined? How can I feel ashamed of so many of the things that I’ve said in my life? How can I feel guilt over all the thoughts I now know I never should have thought? How can I feel embarrassed of all the junk that I’ve bought? How can I recognize any of all the lies I’ve bought in what is a world that still sells the same to a people who still like the same kind because they still help us stay in that mind in which we’re always right and never wrong?

How is any of it possible without His patience having extended unto me the time it’s taken me to finally decay so badly that I found the only hope I have is that He is there, even though that means that I’ve let Him down more times than I can count?

And how can I count them, much less any of the rest of them that I’ve yet to realize, if not for His helping me to see things through His eyes as see the way to the life that He died for me to have?

Look, I fully understand this sort of catch-22 we’re in. For on the one hand we can continue quite easily to keep on living as we’re not doing anything wrong. And in fact, the majority here will take that path. Or we can open our hearts to this chance that there’s a God who exists who wishes to save His people. And while that sounds undeniably more hopeful than our merely hoping we’re not wrong, it comes with its own issues in that, again, if He is there then He has seen and heard and known all that we’ve done.

And that’s not good.

Because if He’s seen all we’ve done, heard all we’ve said, then there’s no way He can be pleased with us. Because, deep down, we all know that we’ve messed up plenty of times in life. We all know we’ve done things we shouldn’t have done. We all know that we’ve said things without thinking them through. We all know we’ve made idols of things that thus took His place as Lord in our lives.

Problem continues to be though that we exist amongst that majority who are indeed continuing to live as if they’re doing nothing wrong.

And so we have this constant swirling of opposing viewpoints, both with benefits and issues, that thus continues to require of us that daily choice as to which voice it is that we determine to listen to.

And, well, it’s probably not all that often that we choose to listen to the One that’s standing there reminding us of all that we’re saying, doing, thinking that we’re only getting wrong. Because, well, we’ve all become pretty much perfectly convinced that we’re usually only right. And that’s just a kind of self-aggrandizing denial that will obviously take some time to undo and break through.

I just don’t know how much time we have left.

Rather these days I look around and see only more and more reasons as to why He has fewer reasons than ever to just end this mess and get to sorting the harvest.

But we’re amazingly still here in what is the one place in which we can change. Not that we want to and many here continue to make it wholly obvious that they don’t and that, well, many then won’t. But friends, we only get this one chance. And, well, it’s one that we’ve all already messed up more times than we can imagine in more ways than we can fathom.

Most of which were only done because we, like everyone, took His patience both for granted and also for weakness.

Make no mistake, it isn’t and thus shouldn’t be.

No, we need to start trying to see His patience for the mercy it’s always been because, again, I don’t know how much longer we have because I just don’t know why He’d continue extending mercy to people who mostly continue to slap the hand away.

That has been our way and it is to be proven one most certainly offensive. And yes, it will prove a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, hands that most have lived slapping out of their way as if they didn’t need His help.

Friends, we need as much of His help as He’s possibly still willing to give.

We just can’t remain so obtuse to imagine, to all but insist that He has an endless amount of mercy or patience. Not that He doesn’t, but simply because there has to come a moment in which He gets justice for all the injustices that have done against Him.

Otherwise He would again be a liar and He most definitely is not.

So please do not take His patience for granted but rather ask Him to help you see all that you’re meant to change with all of this time that He gives for us to do just that. And no, it won’t be easy to see all the things we’ve messed up. But the first step to fixing a problem is admitting we have one.

And make no mistake, we have one!

And His Name is Jesus and He will remain a problem for us so long as we live as if enemies of His.

Which we all have.

So let’s change that while we can.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold