Day 4035 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 139:23 NIV

The request

It’s one that few ever make and barely more even dare listen to, live by, walk in or crawl toward. And why? Because of the subject of yesterday’s verse as is considered inside offensive ways found in our lives as are then lived in a blatant if not in fact blanket opposition unto He who will do as we request so long as said desire does align with the heart of Him and thus His will for us. Indeed, He’s told us that should we seek Him will all our hearts then He shall give us all our hearts desire.

Seeming to say that should our hearts desire Him we’ll be given both all of who He is, thus all of what this means, and, from that, the new hearts He’s promised elsewhere.

As in both elsewhere in Scripture and too not here where we live as if it was never written.

Or at least all of us do for a time in what’s then a life given unto being of that common kind that is here common amongst man in which man is the goal, the aim for all pleasure and thus our being pleased the purpose. And we all give into this because our hearts have indeed become warped beyond repair. He tells us such in that same book we’re afraid to read too, that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” A verse from Jeremiah which ends with a consideration all its own:

“Who can understand it?”

Well, the problem seems to be, and it’s the one that seems to prove all of our other problems such as pride and its seeking always for such things as power and popularity as are found in the doing of things that please those from whom such rewards come, that we live as if we do. Truly, we all live, again at least for a time, as if we understand ourselves so fully that we cannot fail to find all that thus takes our faith, our focus, our fealty and following.

And we love this “understanding” as it allows us to become always the ones who determine, and that for ourselves, everything from all we do to all we don’t to why we won’t and where we’ll not worry about ever going as is then determined undesired by what are hearts that we all seem to have forgotten are “deceitful above all things.”

And indeed, what does this mean, “deceitful above all things”?

Well, for something to be deceitful means that it has been defined as “having a tendency or disposition to deceive or give false impressions.” In other words it’s dishonest. It’s deceptive. It’s misleading. It’s this mindset set upon our either leaving the truth and thus the only real reality behind or not leaving behind the twisted versions with which we’ve long sought to replace it in what’s then a journey we’ve all taken toward nowhere other than everywhere we’ve already been.

Which is the one place that we all love to go and prefer to stay because, well, we know the way.

Granted, it’s a journey we take atop a crooked path that, having been paved in the past, can only then prove of the rewards we sought back when we bought the supplies that are the lies that we laid into the ground so that we’d have something to walk on along what was then a journey taken toward a better we never became.

Which is itself pretty strange when you think about it.

Because if we’ve always known what was best, so much as we’ve always pretended we did, then why the lack of improvement? And no, I’m not saying that we’ve none of us improved as rather I’m sure we have and hope we are still. But you see, that’s kind of the point that I’m getting at. It’s that improvement is an ongoing thing as we’ll none of us ever reach perfection in this place. No, rather all of us have still plenty of things that we can change, fix, turn away from, perhaps even literally set on fire so as to remove them forever from our lives.

But we never really seem to see any smoke.

And that’s because we’ve become so good at blowing it that we don’t believe it whenever we do see it. Which, if we were to be honest, is almost every day. And that as is billowing up from within this place in which our only race is that toward first, or at least a continuation of our estimation of our being the only ones who deserve said standing. A standing again always taken in that one place we’ve always been which is, again, this one place we’ve all but burned to the ground as we’ve all sought our best and somehow assume we’ve found the same.

All with still time on the clock in which to just sit and enjoy all that we’ve already found, fixed, forsaken or figured out.

Or at least that’s the idea I guess.

Which it’s not really much of a guess as there’s really nothing other that it could be. Rather it’s again pretty blatant that most here have arrived upon their desired destination as most here have retired from trying for more, be that for themselves or from the same. No, instead the now common pursuit in life is that of early retirement in which, work done, we can spend out the rest of our days working only in those ways and on those things that we agree are best for us.

A path paved in our own personal perspectives and their purchased prerogatives.

Which is again why we love it so, this way of life in which so much changes and yet always stays then the same. It’s truly incredible how we’ve worked to make this thing work. For all the time we continue to find all these things that we want or think we have to have. And we seem to truly appreciate the opportunity to have them, to hold them, to hope to have and hold them. And yet once we do, we find that longing not at all fulfilled as rather we’re off and seeking for something else.

And this has become the way the heart knows to take. It’s that of deceiving and being deceived. For in this life we deceive others by telling them such things as how we’re happy with who we are, where we are, what we’re doing and what more we disagree that we might be missing and we show them this in highlight reels that we share online of what do look like lives going better than fine. And so too are we deceived into thinking that others are living better lives doing better things as then better people, which often comes with this idea of our being able to meet their example in what becomes our desire for their things, their lives, their platforms of power and popularity.

It all always comes back to that.

Why? Well, because that’s all we’ve known to care about for so long that our entire understanding of life has become entirely reliant upon them remaining our only focus. And that’s because we’ve become so afraid of change, as it inarguably means some measure of failure, that we daren’t change anything at all. Rather we just now exist to merely come up with excuses to excuse our lack of movement in what was always meant to be an ongoing journey not spent toward this place but rather only through this place.

A race few of us have ever run because we’ve become so in love with so much found under the sun that the same has become all we know to love.

Leaving then hearts enamored with what’s truly nothing more than enamel and paper and plastic and pretend.

Not that none of what we live to love isn’t real as at least some of it is.

No, it’s just that it’s not really worth as much as our hearts have come to hope.

Indeed, even hope itself is something our hearts have vastly come to misunderstand. And I know this to be true because so much of all we do is only done as if our only wish is that God’s not there. All because that would mean that He’d not seen all we’d done in what have become lives lived as if He doesn’t. And that all because all our hearts have known to love is all that both isn’t Him and yet in our lives has been treated as if it was.

Yes, we’ve all known a great many idols, most of them our own ideals of what we’ve long believed were our own lives and however we might imagine them going in this most common of all mythical directions called our own. Truly, this idea of life going our way is something that won’t go away. Rather it remains the foremost priority pursued by so very many that the rest of us, having chosen to continue to tune in to their highlights, are then at perpetual risk of desiring more than the living of the life we’ve been given.

Which is the one we’ve not been living as we’ve been living it for only all we either have or hope to soon. For that is, again, the commonest of all common ways found amongst this fallen and still falling humanity. Because, well, we’re all of us still falling both in love with all that only steals life and thus for the lie that apparently has us believing otherwise. After all, who in their right mind would give so much of this one life to what are millions of things that truly do not matter at all?

Well, the short answer is that we all would and that because we all have. Indeed, every single one of us have welcomed into our eyes, ears, hearts, minds, lives so many things that we’ve obviously then assumed to be of some level of importance worthy our not focusing on, working on, working toward other things. And again, we’ve all done this for so long now, and so much has gone wrong along the way, that we don’t really know what to do.

So we just continue to resort to assuming that nothing is the best possible answer.

We do nothing. We change nothing. We fix nothing. We get rid of nothing. We remain nothing. Not that we in any way see it that way because instead we’re still at least somewhat able to measure our lives via what’s found inside. And granted, this is hopefully one of those things that’s dwindling rapidly as we near the coming of that promised day. But still, this is at best always only on a personal basis which then leaves us as the only ones who can ever know whether or not we’re ready to go.

And I think we can measure that best only in hearts and heads that are nearing the daring to ask this request be fulfilled by He who’s promised it would be.

But the problem is that, and it’s one we’ve seemingly all impressively forgotten, there are questions that aren’t rhetorical. And requests then too. Indeed, there are things in life that are actually meant to change us, improve us, rebuke us yes, but also restore us because of it. And I for one do believe that this verse is a really good example of that. Because it’s one asked in what just feels like a willingness to find out whatever may be found out.

And I believe that to be the case because it was asked of a man who the Bible defines as being after God’s own heart, meaning that his desire was to do as God desired.

Thus meaning that he, David, was known for having little regard for his own perspectives, prerogatives, priorities even. And that because he believed that God’s plans and promises and purposes were to be proven far better than his ever could. And so, in light of this kind of faith that sought to please God alone, at least as best as any man can, this found David of the courage to ask God to sift through his heart, to sort through his life, to test the ways in which he had lived and was living in order to see what all he might do to improve the same.

But you see, this is one thing that we then clearly don’t do. And I believe that because, well, we continue to choose to chase after only all that wastes our time, our focus, our efforts, our intentions upon what are mere human inventions of matter and meaning given these days almost exclusively to those things which eternity will prove never meant anything at all.

And yet they’re literally all that many here are living for. And that so fervently, so focused in fact that they’ve then no time nor even understanding to ask such a request as this from He who is a God they do not know in what are lives in which this is shown all but every single inside of every single thing that people here prioritize over He who holds the very keys to life.

Indeed, we all know that way in which we too lived to do only all that was done thinking that God didn’t know, didn’t care, couldn’t see and thus wouldn’t punish.

And I say this because of what’s an obvious lack of humility that’s always then seen in lives that never change.

Rather there remains nothing new under the sun as still we live to approach all but all of life itself in same exact way as we always did and those before us too. Granted, the prizes are new. The profits novel. The plans slightly tweaked so as to achieve a better aim in what is a place that is vastly advanced in a technological sense. But other than the existence of computers and cars we trust to drive us around, no, truth is there’s not much new to found on this ground.

It’s all just the same.

And that’s all because we deny God so very often that the world thinks itself justified, validated by their living still as if He doesn’t.

Which then leaves them thinking that something as asked here is as foolish as any other waste of time could ever be. After all, if God’s not there, as many here contend, then why ask Him anything? Why fear Him in any way? Why agree to do anything, change anything, request that He help us figure out what to change and how to do it in order to ensure our lives align with only His will for us?

Doesn’t make any sense to those of senses so singed that they cannot anymore think of anything but themselves alone in what are indeed lives being lived as if our being left the same is the only best goal to chase.

Yes, most folks here just want to be left alone and that by those around them but God most of all. And that’s because we know the answer, the outcome to a request such as this. We know what would happen were He to truly test us. We know what He’d find if He were to search our hearts. Yes, we all know deep down that would He did all He’d find would only break His.

Why?

Because we all stopped living life. We all gave up. We all quit trying to learn, to grow, to improve, to lose thus the things that have long stood in the way of our doing the above. Indeed, we rolled over and allowed such mindsets as arrogance and vanity and gluttony to lord over us in what have thus become lives in which we serve ourselves only, and that only an endless course of this course of life that just continues to go in circles.

Kind of like that water that spins around the toilet whenever we flush it.

Yes, life here is going down the drain, and yet most here seem to be okay with it this way. Why? Because for it to be anything different would require us to do something different. And well, one of our greatest untold realizations is that we don’t know what we’re doing. We like to think we do. We definitely enjoy living as if we might. In fact, this is a glaring example of that whole “heart is deceitful” thing we mentioned. We’re all lost inside this ongoing dishonesty as to how our lives are going.

A fact proven as easily as asking a stranger how they’re doing.

“Doing good!”

Indeed, such is my standard answer whenever another dares acknowledge my presence, a fleeting feeling to be sure! But yeah, I always say I’m doing good. Can’t complain. Because, well, if the truth were to come out it would be awkward and that’s because, well, nobody really wants to stop and have a deep discussion in regard to why we’re all struggling.

And that’s because we’re not usually interested in having a conversation about God and all the ways we’re failing Him inside what are lives lived for the desires of hearts that have even deceived us into believing that we can do this all on our own.

We can’t.

And I know this because we’ve tried and, again, the world’s going down in flames because of it.

All because we won’t turn to God, admit we screwed up, confess we need help and actually dare to welcome His helping us. Simply because we honestly seem to still believe that we don’t need it. And that because we all understand that should we ask for His help, well, He’d readily give it in the very ways in which we’ve all needed it all along.

But again, we know what that means.

That it means losing things. That it means changing things. That it would mean our potential losing of our lives have they been found to have not been found being lived to honor Him. And, in truth, none of them have been. No, long gone are the days of anyone being defined as someone after God’s heart.

We’re all only after all that’s here.

And we know that that’s what He’d find were we to ask Him to search our hearts and test our lives. Yes, we know that we’d fail because we know we’ve not cared for a really long time. But friends, such is the gift of time so long as we have some still. It’s that we can change. We can grow. We can move and that on from all that’s only kept us afraid to turn to God and ask Him for the help we know we need.

Not that it will ever not be scary as I’m sure it will because we all know that we deserve only rejection as we’ve only rejected Him.

Thankfully His ways are higher than ours!

Indeed, He who is the Way leads even unto Heaven!

Kind of makes you start to wonder why we don’t just give up the ghost and let go the life that we’ve lived in exchange for His helping us change into those He created us to be and now calls us to become once more.

Guess the only reason we don’t is because we’re scared that we’re maybe so far gone that He can’t.

That is why we don’t ask, is it not?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold