Day 4040 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Joel 2:25 ESV

The restoration

Of that which His army has taken in what’s been His war as remains waged against the wages of sin and death for which we here still seek to win in what’s been a now longstanding enmity against He who created us in love only to watch us determine to lose our lives thanks to our having lost our minds in this thinking that it somehow makes sense to stand still against Him who came to this earth in order to lay down His life so that we might take ours back up in the form of crosses carried which carry with them the opportunity to bridge where we are with wherever Heaven is.

And indeed, it is a strange battle to behold as those who hold souls sold to what has long been every lowest bidder that has always only offered the meager measure of whatever it happened to be that we thought mattered in what’s since proven a moment that means less and less as the amount of time we’ve left grows only the same.

For yes, the truth of time itself is that we’re all running out of it as it has always been a measure not meant to last forever.

Problem is that that’s not a truth we’ve ever even tried to keep in mind here inside what we’ve all but insisted become a world in which the only time is doing is often wasting as we’re always in rather a hurry to have and hold whatever more of all that’s here that we can’t see, somehow, for the ruin that it already is. A blindness we’ve bought with the wages we’ve won having fought this fight against the light that dares set us free from all our deeds done only in the dark.

A gift we should be increasingly cognizant as to our ongoing need thereof, a fact which should find us growing in both hope and the humility which allows it had.

But no. No instead things here just continue to go bad as we watch a world continue to live against Him who is guilty of such crimes against humanity as offering the same hope and healing and joy and meaning and the very promise of Heaven as is told to be a place in which all the worst of all that’s here isn’t welcome to come and nor do we have to leave once home.

Problem then becomes that unto most this world is still our home as still it holds all most here hope to, proving still then that we’re so worn thin that we’re all willing to go on ahead settling for all that’s passing away in what is a place promised to be doing the same as is truly already playing out in all these scenes seen of society doing things that would have never even been imagined even a few years ago.

No, we truly are seeing to it that we ourselves are fulfilling the words of that prophet who said such things as “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

For indeed, the levels of deception and our denials of our being on the common receiving end are reaching record lows on an almost daily basis.

Who’d have imagined that we ourselves would be the ones who prove the Word right, becoming then our very own sign inside our very own lives?

Amazing isn’t it?

That God can use us against us, turning our lives and how we’ve lived them for things not worth living for as defined by the lack of life found within them to point out both the flaws and failures within us only to, having done so, remind us then of the lack of such emptiness He’d at first placed within what have long since been hearts so hollow as to hold still this hope in all that’s both here and thus too hopeless?

Indeed, it is amazing how He can open our eyes to seeing the decay of our reality as has been chosen by our doing of things that ought to have never been done, instilling in us an almost instant guilt as to the destruction we’ve decided upon, only to, having helped us see all that we have had our hand in destroying, help us feel, not merely see, but feel His redemption start to take place thanks to Christ having taken our place upon that cross only to call us take up personal versions of the same.

That is why He came!

It was to both put an end to sin and death for those who could be saved and salvaged from the same and to do so asking them to carry crosses their own as a show that they agree that this world is not their home and thus they’re increasing in this willingness to rid themselves of all that’s here so that there’s nothing left holding them back whenever He says their souls needn’t stay anymore either.

And yet this seems the place of one of the greatest struggles in terms of salvation and our understanding thereof. It’s that we’re a people of finalities. We’re a people of finish lines. We’re a people of making plans, ensuring them fulfilled, and then, well, never really thinking about them again. And so, to us, it doesn’t really make all that much sense that His plans for us would seem to be both fulfilled via His saying such things as “it is finished” but also “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

After all, which is it?

Is it finished as in nothing else needing to be done?

Are we not set free from our sins by all that He did?

Is there more still to do of all that He said He was finished doing?

Is salvation really something that we should be so worried about reaching the ending?

See, this is what I believe to be part of these here spoken “years that the swarming locust has eaten”. It’s all the years that we could have been and thus should have been both planting harvests of hope and that of our home in Heaven but have instead spent planting and reaping only worries amongst the rest of the weeds who we then agree to continue to allow the Word which was planted by Him in us to amount to, well, not all that much.

Why?

Because the worries of this life continue to creep in and choke the Word, thereby continuing to make it unfruitful in what are lives that have still only a fruit to show of such things as foolishness and frivolity and foul language and fornication and fortunes being made still from all the above. Indeed, this world remains the image that we all seek to emulate in what are ways that are by no means passive but rather seem only surpassing in importance all the time.

Proving then the problem is that while He may be done with the work He’d come to do, we’re clearly not done working against the work He’s long since finished.

Rather we’re all just still down here living as if all that matters is what’s likewise down here. We remain a people vastly worried over such things as where we’re going, what we’re doing, who we are and what we plan on becoming as opposed to where He’s leading, what He did to lead us there, why He might have delighted to endure such a suffering, what that might mean, and, maybe a matter also important, what all we should be doing, or shouldn’t be doing still, on this side of everything He’s said and done.

Both then and since.

For indeed, the Word of God remains alive and active as it continues knocking on hearts asking to be allowed entrance unto what’s then a soul redeemed, a life restored, a heart resolved to stop living as if life itself ought to revolve around us and the petty impiety that we’ve so often proven we’re probably still quite able to want.

Alas, that’s about the last thing that most here do want as is told in the priorities we still hold of what is still seen as the one place that our entire life is best to be lived.

Thus proving few of us know anything of crosses taken up as rather there remains in us this ongoing willingness to give more years away to the doing still those very same things that we did before we heard of His glory and grace rushing into our grave to save from the same by asking us to take up crosses and upon them kill away all these losses of what’s become a life that knows to live for nothing else.

Yes, we’ve simultaneously missed the moment, the meaning, the mercy, the majesty and the Maker.

All because still we tinker away at what remains a way of life going both the way of all mankind but only promised to get there to find that life didn’t wait for us but rather went on ahead toward the place He came to prove all life would go. All while many, if not most, reach that line only to find that their life is then over as they saved their death for last having agreed with those many, probably most, who lived here thinking that life was meant to stay.

Indeed, for them will.

Because the truth is that Jesus never stopped flipping tables. He never stopped setting things right. He never once gave up trying to get through to us so as to save still as many as might allow themselves to realize they need to be saved.

Issue is that we’ve given away so much to that which seeks to destroy in us, take from us however many years and yearnings we’re willing to keep giving away unto those things that both this place has but that too this place keeps.

Never really got that, did we?

That all that’s here is the same as all that stays here? That His calling us to store up for ourselves treasures in Heaven was done so that such forces as locusts and felons couldn’t take them? That He was trying to help us to understand that where we stand is the sand of time in what’s then a life that’s ebbing away toward that coming day upon which we’ll be judged by what we’ve held in our hearts?

That that’s why He knocks on the doors thereof seeking to come inside and make His refuge the same?

Indeed, He died to live inside and yet we remain locked outside of His hope thanks to our seeing still this broken world as our home even though it’s filled with only all that we have less and less reason to want.

Truly, why do we want anymore anything that can be lost? Why do we lose so much time trying to find all that forever says we can’t keep? Why try to keep anything if the keeping thereof only proves our hands entirely preoccupied and thus unable to reach for anything more that may happen to be anywhere else?

Yes, why is this world still allowed to house our hope of our being home and feeling whole?

Suppose it’s just because we’ve long since become convinced that we are God and thus able to fashion life out of the dirt of this earth.

Only problem is that all we’ve given life to, either in the speaking of life toward or the literal giving of ours to, it’s only thus taken ours from us in the form of lies we’ve believed as truth, wickedness believed to be the way we should live, evil the thing most here have come to love, and thus life itself all but already over and entirely unworthy of being given anymore.

After all, why should He?

Why should God redeem for us the years we’ve ourselves chosen to let go to waste as was won within all the world we grew to want? Why should He give us more time that He knows we’d only give away to doing more of those very same things that we did last time with what was the less time we have now to doing something different?

Indeed, why should He hold out hope that we care to be any different when it seems instead that our deceit, depravity, darkness and indifference are all that we seem able to grow?

No, truth is that we’ve all but taken away any reason for Him to do anything else on our behalf. After all, if Jesus wasn’t enough to inspire in us a desire to turn things around then I don’t know what could be. As we just talked about yesterday, He literally nailed our sins to the tree and did so to take them and their death off our debt. He died to set us free and yet we still live as if we’re only free to do as we please.

Again, why should He give us more time to do only that?

Well, truth is that He won’t. And that’s because, well, this here is a promise only given unto those who do as He’s called us to just a few verses prior to this in which we’re to “rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God.” Why? “For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion.” And, best of all, “He relents from sending disaster.”

Yes, He is still proving rather patient with us, is He not? I mean He’s given us an almost full 2,000 years since Christ left to get our act together, come to our senses, come unto the Son, take up our crosses, count our losses and let out headed for the hope of that home that He promised He was leaving to make ready for those who themselves got ready to leave this place that the empty grave now proves home never was.

And yet still we take this offer for granted. Still we do the same things that we’ve always done. Still we willfully give away years and fears to our not having something in and of this world where so much has indeed already been destroyed.

Friends, how much more do we really want to live to lose?

Again, we do understand that part of His promise, right?

That everything in and of this world, thus including our every hope given there toward, it’s all passing away. And that passing away is just a nicer way of saying that it’s dying? That life as we’ve known it as has been lived for all the sinfulness we’ve known, it’s ending?

Why then continue doing whatever it is that we were doing that caused Him to come and die for us to ourselves be done with it?

Surely we at least get that part!

That His suffering was meant to help us see the sheer misery that awaits at the end of a life spent sowing seeds of selfishness and sin? That His death signified the loss of life that all sin owes? That the empty tomb He left behind after having died proves that we too, if we do as He’s asked us to, can leave death behind and look forward to still living life when this dead and dying world is no longer where we’re found?

Indeed, this is His redemption. It’s the giving us back everything we’d lost to living like the world, to living for the world, to living in a world that still lives as if He doesn’t as is seen inside the rampant swell of sin that so many are walking in. Yes, this world is crumbling as people just keep stumbling over every refusal to lay down their shallow desires in exchange for His promise of something better later.

Friends, that’s why He allows things in this world to be destroyed. It’s not because He wishes to take from us the things we enjoy but rather to help us see that many of the things we’ve come to enjoy can and will be destroyed because they’ve nothing to do with Him other than our turning our attention always away from Him.

He’s allowing this world to implode all so that some of us can come to know that it shouldn’t be this way, a fact that should inspire some to start swimming away from what’s daily proving a sinking ship.

Are we though?

Or, like most, are we still seeking our rewards here?

I have to say that, again, one of the most terrifying verses in all of Scripture is that in which He tells us that many will have had their reward. And it’s terrifying because it means they’ll not have any other. And that means that this place will have proven the very best of all they ever find.

And I personally can’t imagine that being the outcome.

Not that I’m not grateful for this life nor where He’s given us to live it. But friends, how can we look around and be in any way proud of what all we’ve done to it?

No, instead it seems that we’ve all lived our lives helping the locust destroy this place. We’ve given years to doing as we shouldn’t, willfully then losing our lives to the very things that cost Him his.

And yet He offers to restore to us the time we’ve lost to doing as we never should have done. In fact, He promises even more than that! Indeed, He promises us a place in which time itself doesn’t exist because such things as life and love and joy and hope and peace and rest will never end!

What then are we still looking for in what is the one place in which all that does end is both time and life?

Friends, we are all going to die, this much is a brutal guarantee. But you see, it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to be afraid of our going the way that everyone else has gone. Why? Because He promises us the gift of eternal life at what’s then the fulfillment of this very verse! He will give us back the life we’d lost to planting what became a harvest of hardship, of hatred, of anger, of resentment, of rejection, of deception, of decay, of death.

He will give us life if we join Him in the laying down and ridding of the one we’ve lived in sin.

And yeah, I know it seems as if we’ve a lot to lose in letting go of all we’ve had or because of it become. But friends, again as I asked just yesterday, what more do we have gain if we do in fact do away with all that’s only temporary anyway?

After all, here we have the very Father of forever promising to restore unto us all that we’ve lost.

And I think we all know what all we’ve lost as such things as love and joy and peace aren’t seen much around these parts.

So how about we start for the place He’s promised them found forever? Sure, we’ll lose a lot we’ve come to love along the way. But friends, that’s kind of the point in His having sent destruction upon us! It was to help us see that we’d come to love all that can be destroyed.

And what sense is there in that?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold