Day 4047 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 119:37 NIV

The relinquishing

It’s something of a severe surrendering in which the one doing said surrendering does so noticing that there remains no viable reason to go forward in a continued requisitioning of what they’ve finally come to see isn’t at all something that they can prove as being capable of uplifting or fulfilling as their past pride may have inspired them to believe. It’s a letting go and getting on of and from everything that is that isn’t what is should have been in exchange for the then found freedom of finding something else without all the stress of trying to make seem best what simply isn’t.

In other words, it’s a great walking away from the entire sum of everything that may have become all that we never believed it should ever be.

And indeed, this is a hard concept for us to consider here inside what is a world in which we all but tether our lives to this trying to find more and more with which to fill them. Indeed, this is the standard victim of every life as it’s come to be lived in this land of the lost so lost that we cannot seem to see that we actually lose a little of ourselves every single time that we set out in search to find something that we neither need nor then have any real reason to add unto our lives.

After all, we’re all but drowning as it is in what is a way of life in which we’ve added so much unto ourselves that our very souls are sinking inside this selfishness that has become us. And while we may struggle mightily, and that probably endlessly, with this idea of surrendering anything that we may elsewise still assume we might like or could need, the fact is that at some point we have to realize that adding things into life doesn’t add onto life.

If anything, it probably only detracts from life.

And that’s because all this stuff with which we’re here surrounded and all but surrendered already, it’s just excess. It’s nonsense. It’s the substance of a selfishness so stupefied that it has us all willing to die just to find this one more thing that we don’t need to live a life. In fact, I’m entirely convinced that one day we’re all going to be quite surprised when we finally find out just how little we needed.

But sadly only when it’s taken away from us quite forcefully by He who tried to do the same thing in a way far easier.

Problem with His way is that He asks that we be the ones to walk away, to let go, to look at where we are, who we are, what we have and accept that, no, it isn’t everything. That in fact the gross likelihood is that it’s only everything that isn’t life nor thus needed inside the same.

But this is a hard walking away!

Why?

Because these here defined “worthless things”, they’ve defined our lives. They’ve long been the sum of all we’ve tried to find. They are the very substance for which so many have become so blind that they cannot see the simplicity of a Savior reaching down from Heaven and calling us home from what is then apparently not one. All because we’ve all become quite convinced that this world is one. Indeed, many here live as if this place is the only home they’ll ever know.

And this explains why then so many of the same seem so intent upon growing the contents of their existence. It’s because, if this is our home, then yeah, we may as well amass as much stuff as we can possibly get our hands on. But then the issue becomes that getting our hands on something demands at first our giving said thing our attention. And then our intention. And then our time. And then our basic impairment unto the seeking for anything else.

All because we’re not really able to focus on all that many things at once.

Rather any time that we try to do so we end up just muddying the lot and losing more than we might have ever imagined. And truly, I cannot recall nor thus recount all the times in recent years that I’ve thought about all that I’ve missed or misunderstood thanks to my standing always so very assured that I knew what I was doing, where I was going, what I was to find once I got there and just how incredible it would feel once I did.

That’s not to say that I’ve not found a way to a great deal of things that did turn out as good as I’d imagined them to be. Take losing weight for example. I am eternally grateful that God above saw fit to help me get more fit, to start taking better care of myself, to take back some responsibility that I’d relinquished unto the laziness that found me weighing over 300 pounds and feeling like dirt.

Problem is that despite how good it felt to lose the weight and how much enjoyment I came to have in working out and eating better, somewhere along the line all I seemed to find was a mind wrestling with body dysmorphia and a tendency to push myself toward these extremes that have seemingly become quite counterproductive in that anymore I don’t feel all that great and rather can’t seem to shake this realization that I’ve gotten it all mixed up somehow.

Likely because such is our tendency in life.

We all like to take the simple joys, the ordinary excitements, the call to divine enjoyment of God and His good will for our lives and spin them into this endless sea of something else that we seem always adamant to see inside of it.

Ourselves usually.

This reality is especially true of Scripture. So many of us approach that book of those books as if each of the 66 were written specifically for us. And we begin the journey of reading the Bible with all our own little idiocies and idiosyncrasies obviously in mind. We read ourselves into the stories, into the warnings, into the purposes and promises for which He breathed the life that is breathing from those pages.

All because we’ve all become so focused on ourselves that we literally live as if everything else revolves around us.

Going so far as to even twist Scripture to fit the narrative that we’ve annotated inside what have largely come to be seen as our lives. We manage to make for these misunderstandings that allow for us to be the ones always winning, never wrong, usually amazing and rarely not. All because such has become the overall estimation of every pride in existence.

And the problem is that there’s one for all of us because, well, all of us have chosen to abide by the pride that has us convinced that we’re the only subjects not subject to anything or anyone.

Rather we’ve all come to live as if we’re the ones on the thrones. We’re the ones who wear the crowns. We’re the ones the crowds gather to cheer as we go along our way of this self-perceived endless procession of personal advancement that only finds us better and better all the time.

But friends, is that really the case?

Is all that we’re doing in life truly all we should be doing in life? Are the people who we’ve become really so amazing that they’re who we should stay? Are the things we’re seeking inside these lives able at all to actually add anything to our lives?

Or are not all the above only quite obvious distractions from what matters most?

Indeed, how can we ever begin to even pretend that we have any idea as to what matters most when it seems that, to us, something new matters all the time? How can anything mean anything whenever everything means something? Can we not see how thin we’ve spread ourselves in this way of life spent serving ourselves? I mean honestly, how many more plans or promises or priorities can we afford to focus on when our lives are already coming apart in our trying to start doing something about all the ones we’ve already made?

So many of them eventually to be broken simply because we can’t possibly carry all these burdens we’ve placed upon ourselves.

This is the very crossroads that I’m finally starting to realize that I’ve found in my own life. It’s one that’s come at the culmination of my trying to do so many different things, to have so many different things, to want always even more things that are truly only slightly different than whatever it is that I already have that I honestly don’t even enjoy having anymore. Rather it seems that everything I have, everything I am is only becoming a reminder of all the mistakes I’ve made and my then obvious tendency to make them.

Something that should inspire us to quit while we’re behind and relinquish this arrogance that has still trying to find some new way to further perfect our lives.

But instead, as we discussed yesterday, we’ve replaced such shame with blame and know now only to point it at everyone else. Because, as with the example of twisting Scripture we just talked about, we can never be the ones in the wrong. No, we’re too good for that. We’re too special for that. We’re nothing but these little angels who’ve sought all the angles to make that truly seem the case.

But friends, problem is that angels don’t waste their existence upon the substance of selfish assumptions. Rather they delight in the delights of God alone, seeking to serve at His discretion as they exist in this endless devotion that is devoid of distraction.

And we can’t say the same.

Instead we’re walking still in what is a world that offers us so much stuff that the common enjoyment and excitement of it all is bound to at least make us a little curious. And the problem is that we never stop at being a little anything. No, we go all in. We dive so deep into these various rabbit holes that eventually all of life becomes all about all we can hold if only we’ll go a little further and there find the little more that we’re just sure is waiting right around the next corner of our minds.

Minds that to us seem as if goldmines filled with goals to make and gains to take and glory to have and gloating to do and all the above only more reasons to refuse to lose all that He calls us to leave behind in this walk away that this life is meant to be.

Not that such was His first idea as rather He meant for us to stay in the Garden.

But since those first of us walked away from His will and inspired the rest of us to do the same, well, now the goal is for our to come away from the world toward which we’ve run and repent of all the nonsense that we’ve come up with along the way.

Such is the relinquishing.

It’s this sovereign surrendering of our every assumption, our every possession, our every pride as is poured in arrogance that inspires within us an endless interest in what more we might find were we to go just a little further away from the Father toward all this worthless worldliness that’s long had us so confused and distracted that we actually seem to honestly think that life is what we make it.

And we hear this rubbish all the time!

Live your best life. Live your truth. You do you.

As if we who lie to ourselves constantly have a truth?

No, rather this just shows the level of insanity we’ve reached here inside what is a life in which we reach endlessly trying to find this evermore that we always want within our lives.

And we’ve proven so many times that we can always manage to find one more spot to put one more thing, never once seeming to see all that we’re losing in all that we’re gaining. All because the soul got sold long ago and, well, once that’s gone there’s really no point in worrying all that much about anything else. For once we stop caring about who we are and the gravity of what that means, then yeah, everything else can mean something.

Because we mean nothing other than the sum of the substance seen inside our hearts and houses.

Simply because our hearts themselves have long since become only these homes of every hollow hope known to men who just continue to prove that we continue to assume that holding something in our hand is the surest way for our to find what matters most.

Making then idols out of everything.

Even the very same things that we use to carry our groceries home or wheel our trash around in for the trash truck driver to pick up once a week.

Indeed, we’re so far gone in this allure for worthless things that we honestly can’t seem to see that we’re to the point of worshipping paper and plastic. We don’t even hold out for wood or metal or jewels anymore. No, if it’s something that someone else inside this world wants for themselves then we’ll probably learn to want it too.

Not because we need whatever it is but simply because this air of competition comes complete with a complete loss of reality.

And again, I admit this personally as, again with the losing weight idea, I seem to have crossed a line in my mind in which general health and feeling better took a backseat to looking good and impressing someone.

Who?

I literally have no idea as I spend most of my days quite alone.

And I dare say most of us do in what have become these lives we live to lose to everything from social media to the vanity of a make believe bodybuilder staring back us in the mirror seeing only the places that are lacking and never the peace we’ve lost along the way.

What else have we lost? What all are we missing? What memories won’t we have one day when we look up to realize our families have gone and we’re all alone and have nothing more to show for all the time we wasted other than a bunch of pictures of ourselves that we’d taken and all the likes that we got from strangers for posting them? What stories won’t we have to tell those we don’t have a relationship with because we were so busy writing this story unto our glory as was made in our feeling good watching porn for the ease of not having to ask the pretty girl out who then never became our wife who then never gave us the children we don’t have to make memories with?

I am truly heartbroken over all the things I’ve missed in what I know is a life in which so much of what I’ve looked toward and run for has proven already worthless.

And yet I am this very morning more thankful than ever that He’s given me at least this one more day to embrace some kind of change wherein my focus might finally shift both toward Him and thus away from this place in which we’ve all dissolved into this race to make all of life all about us.

I don’t want to be the one in control anymore. I don’t want to be the goal anymore. I don’t want to keep pretending that I know what I’m doing when it’s so blatantly obvious that I have no idea where I’m going, much less then how to get there.

No, I don’t want to give any more of my life to this common idea that has us all convinced that we can find our way to Heaven.

Why?

Because I don’t have a way to Heaven. Because Heaven has never existed inside of any of my many assumptions. Heaven isn’t limited to what I’ve thought might matter. Heaven isn’t found on a map that I can draw because every map I’ve ever drawn has only led me further away from all the things that Heaven is promised to hold.

Indeed, amongst all the things that I’ve sought to find or try to feel, I’ve never once found a happiness that lasted, a joy that didn’t run dry, a peace that refused to leave or a purpose upon which I could lean.

Rather all I’ve found is that I can always find another way to make another thing seem to matter when it turns out that I was wrong about the last idea that I was just certain would prove important.

Indeed, I’ve thought a lot of things would prove far more special, important, amazing than they have. And too I never once dared to imagine that I could have been so wrong as have I have been so often. But again, this morning I’m thankful for another gift called today in which I can try once more to walk away from all the things that I’ve allowed to become my life. Not because all of them are worthless, and in truth, there some things that I’ve come to do that do matter and make a difference, things that I do believe make me better.

But it’s those things that I want to do better. Things like these posts, I pray every single day that I can do better at upholding this opportunity to share His Word. Working out, I want to do that better so that I actually feel better again rather than just trying to look better for a mirror. My little lawn care business, I want to do that better even if it means doing one or two less every week.

Because, in the end, we’re all going to look up to see that so much of life as far as the way we’ve all come to live it has been sadly lost to this incessant assumption that quantity matters more than quality.

And sure, it might here.

But friends, here ain’t home and so I don’t know why our focus should be here either.

For the sum of just about everything that is here is worthless. We are surrounded by so many distractions that it’s truly no wonder that we all keep losing our traction and continue sliding backwards.

Thankfully He’s said that He would cure us of this. But the reality is that He can only cure the illnesses that we’re willing to let go. And no, this world’s never seen such things as success or luxury or vanity or material wealth as illness. But friends, if it keeps us at a distance from He who is the Life then yeah, it’s as deadly as we could ever imagine.

Even if most here don’t want to imagine it.

My point is that worthless things have become our focus and we’ve each developed such a devotion for them that this here call to turn from them is one that makes no sense at all. But can’t you see that that’s the problem! That we actually have things in our lives, in our minds that we’re hesitant to let go of, even in exchange for His promise of eternal life?

Friends, what here can possibly matter so much that we’re willing to keep wrestling with God’s asking us to let it go?

I get that we’ve become convinced that a great deal of things in this world mean something but if they can’t get us to Heaven and ensure we’re welcomed inside those gates then they need to go away. Otherwise they’ll just keep getting in our way of this call to follow the Way that came to save our lives by turning our eyes away from all that’s worthless, from all that’s worldly, from all that we’ve all thus wasted our lives trying to prove could matter more than it can.

Because nothing here can get us to Heaven nor ensure we’re welcomed inside.

Rather Jesus already left to get our place ready.

Let us then spend out these days getting ready too by our letting go and agreeing to lose the sum of everything that He’s trying to help us see can’t come with us when we go.

And no, it’s not that He doesn’t want us to have anything in this world. It’s just that He doesn’t want anything in this world to have anything in us. And the simple fact is that we’ll know nothing of freedom until we allow Him to help us understand the difference.

Something done in our relinquishing this arrogance that has us so disinterested in being different.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold