Day 4050 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:13 NIV

The reconsidering

If there’s one thing that seems to become a common undertaking along this path spent wading through the time we’ve lived wasting upon the vast sum of everything that was never worth anything, it’s that. It’s the reconsidering of everything you’ve done searching for any semblance of even a plausible reason why. Not to validate what is unjustifiable but rather to find any possible hints or confusions that led unto the delusions that demanded we make those decisions that only came out in the end as disasters.

It’s wanting to try our best to understand why we’ve done what we have so that we have no chance of doing it again thanks to His having taken us by the hand and helped us up and out of whatever it was that we’ve become.

For the only true way to ensure that you never go back to who you’ve been is to take a stranglehold upon this chance to understand that we’ve done things that defined us as sinners in need of saving, an understanding that will aid us in the changing of where we’re standing, why we’re standing there, what we’re standing for and where all the above add up to our eventually getting to go when He finally says we don’t need to stay here anymore.

And that itself is perhaps the wildest and most freeing feeling ever to be found hidden inside this path spent reconsidering our past.

It’s this entirely alien idea that helps us slowly begin to see that who we are living where we are as are both defined anymore by all we’ve done, it isn’t likely all that measurable nor then comparable to the life He both created us to live and now calls us in the Son to try for once more. This concept seems at first almost contemptuous as it asks of us this nigh on physically violent second guessing of everything from all we’ve done to the sum of what all those deeds have made us become.

Because it hurts.

In truth it hurts like hell.

Why?

Because the more we come to know of Christ, growing in He and He in us, the more we’ll too come to realize that this way of life that we’ve all lived in this world as is lived of this world, it is the closest to hell we’ll ever be. And while that is a most hopeful of reality, it sadly comes only through our seeing of as many of our many mistakes already made as He might need for us to realize weren’t the things we should have done, not the words we should have said, not the thoughts we should have had.

No, the more we grow in Christ and He in us the more we’ll come to see the lack thereof in the life we’ve lived thus far.

And it’s as humbling and humiliating and heartbreaking and heavy and hard and harrowing and hollowing and horrific an experience as anyone might ever experience.

And we all need to experience it.

Why?

Because if we don’t then all we have to look forward to in life is just continuing to slowly die unto what, for today, remains that life for which Christ gave His so that in Him we might live both the lives He created us to live while we’re here, but that lived with a blossoming understanding as to the hope of Heaven and our getting to leave a place that most definitely isn’t anything of such a hope in such a home as Heaven is promised to be.

A fact upon which we can begin to lean if for nothing else than the reality that we all leave this place but that Heaven is rather a place we get to stay forever.

And forever is a really long time.

Problem is that we’ve all already lived a pretty long time in what is again a way of life that’s so worldly that we’re entirely too dirty to be welcomed unto the promise of what’s said to be unending perfection in everything from peace to the chance to talk face-to-face with the other sheep who made it through this war that is this life in this world and even the joy of basking in the beauty of our Savior who made it all possible for however many of us end up making it up there.

Indeed, we’ve all so entirely misspent our lives thus far that we’ve become wholly unworthy of such a hope. In fact, looking around it’s almost amazing or maybe even embarrassing that we can imagine what hope really is. Because, well, it ain’t this! Nothing that this world has come to become is anything of hopeful, of happy, of useful even. Rather everything here is ruined. It’s all crumbling and caving in and nothing seems to make any sense.

And yet somehow it seems as though it once did.

Which is where the reconsidering either begins or hopes to end.

And to be honest, I’m not really sure as to which as I still find myself most days caught here in between the reconsidering of all the things that I’ve dared to do that I never should have wanted to or chosen to and yet also with this odd joy beginning to show inside what is a pair of eyes that are starting to see what really does seem a quite changed life.

For I can say with every ounce of honesty that I have to offer that I’m not who I used to be.

Alas that same honesty knows that I’m honestly not yet far enough away either.

No, rather again it often feels like I’m still stuck inside what’s meant to be a single step taken of what is an eternal journey aimed toward an endless better that I am truly thankful that I’ve been given the ability to believe I can be. For I have no idea as to where a hope like that would come from.

Because it definitely didn’t come from my past!

Rather in what’s perhaps been entirely too much time spent looking back all I can see are all the things I wish I hadn’t done which led me to the person I wish I’d never become. Indeed, as I’ve mentioned in so many of these posts, combing through my past looking for the reasons as to why I made the mistakes that I have, it is truly as if I’m reading someone else’s story.

And that is indeed a good thing as I can tell from the oddity that that means that I have changed.

But the scary part remains that I know I did do all those things. I know then that I really was that person. I know that I did steal stuff for a while there in my late teens, early twenties. I know that I was fat and lazy, obese and obsessed with denying it so that I didn’t have to do anything about it. I know that it was me who made all those choices all those times to look at all those things that still plague my dreams of a life I can’t kill off or flee from fast enough.

Thankfully I know in my heart that I’m trying.

It’s just that part of this ongoing reconsidering has me always wondering if I’m trying hard enough, doing enough, changing enough to measure up to what is that better that I do believe I can still become.

And what perhaps hurts even more is walking alongside so many who I worry aren’t even able to see the chance they’ve been given to be something more than they’ve seemingly agreed to remain. And that’s not a judgmental statement in the least as I understand that everyone has the same free will as me and so I’m in no place to judge anyone. But Scripture does call us to judge the fruits so as to differentiate between those who are of God and the many who simply are not.

So that we’ll not welcome any further the risk of our growing as weeds rather than wheat He planned for us to be.

And it’s within this ongoing effort unto knowing more of who He is, what He did, what that means, what I should be doing in light of it all, it’s all this that has me realizing that so much of what’s going on around here has increasingly little to do with “His good purpose.” Because, and it’s so incredibly easy to see, I simply don’t know how anyone could see that anything that’s going on here is all that good at all.

Let alone good enough to measure up to the perfection in such things as holiness and righteousness that He’s explicitly stated He expects from us.

Rather this world is imploding upon itself inside what feels like a billion lives being lived for a billion gods who aren’t Him.

And honestly, what do we expect to happen when we’ve become so disinterested in Him as our every single past proves we all have been?

No friends, there is nothing good that can come from a world that’s gone willfully dumb to the simple desires of their loving Father.

Much less a world that continues to prove that such is the only direction they’re willing to go.

But thankfully this is itself something that begins to feel almost a blessing along this journey along which we’re meant to unbecome all that we had become. Indeed, along the way following behind the Way we’ll all come to see all that is that simply shouldn’t be. We’ll start hearing words that we’ve heard all our lives that just don’t sound right anymore. We’ll either do something ourselves or see someone else do something that we’ve done ourselves so many times before only to suddenly realize that it’s not right to do.

We will grow to see so much life being lived to lose, being lived for all that we’ll lose that it will inspire us to hurry up and lose as much of our lost as we possibly can.

Doesn’t make it easy.

But at least He helps us find a reason why.

And that reason comes inside the reconsidering. It shows up whenever we stare down who we are and why it doesn’t feel okay anymore. It comes in those moments in which we somehow manage to notice that we’ve made a mistake in what’s been a life in which we’ve always tried to stay convinced that we never get anything wrong. It happens every time that we see something, hear something, realize something that we’ve lived for, looked for, longed for that wasn’t ever worth the time or effort we’d given to it.

Indeed, He helps us find so mean reasons to just stop doing so much of what we’ve done. And no, they’re usually not easy, it’s not really ever comfortable, in fact it’s pretty much always confusing and concerning as, well, whenever you start trying to become something better the reality is that you’re going to start realizing all the ways in which you’ve not been the better that you now hope to be.

There is nothing about that that’s easy to see!

Rather what we grow to see is every denial of Him that we’ve allowed for in our lives so far. We notice every refusal to repent of things that we’ve finally grown to hate. We understand then the vast discrepancy found in between His will for our lives and the way in which we’ve lived them.

And it’s a massive difference to be sure.

But you see, that’s the ultimate gift that He came to give us. It’s both an assurance as to where we’re going and that He’s already done all that needed doing in order to make Heaven the promise that it is for all who humble themselves unto living their lives following Him, but it’s also a kind of certainty that we can only ever feel inside of our agreeing to join Him in His doing of a new thing.

And, in the case of our lives and how we’ve been living them, a new everything.

Which, granted, that is the hard part as there does come a whole lot of changing. But the simple fact of salvation is that it wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t messed up so much so bad that another had to come and lead us back to all we’d lost. That’s redemption’s purpose. It’s to get back what’s been lost, stolen, elsewise given away. And indeed, to redeem is right at the top of God’s good purpose.

Why?

Because we’ve all lost our lives thanks to our all having lost our minds to what’s become a life in which we’ve done so very much that we should have never even had the idea to do, let alone the audacity to have since done.

And yet we have.

All of us have done things that we are in fact ashamed of. May not openly admit it. Might not be the kind of thing that we bring up at the dinner table. Probably isn’t our idea of the best way to spend a party. But the fact is that all of us have done things that we now know we shouldn’t have. And friends, that shame and the misery it brings, it’s what begins the reconsidering.

Or at least it should.

But unfortunately so often it doesn’t because, well, we run from it. We hide it. We deny it, just tell ourselves that we’re being idiots if ever we find ourselves feeling as if we’re doing, saying, thinking something that maybe we shouldn’t.

Why?

Because that’s become all we know to do in life.

It’s to hide. To deny. To refuse and reject anything that says we’re doing anything that we shouldn’t be. All because we’ve all become quite convinced that we do nothing wrong. Not because we don’t but simply because we don’t want to have to do anything about it. We don’t want to change. We don’t want to admit we need to change. We don’t want to have do anything that asks us to do anything any differently.

Because we’ve sadly become weak, scared, lazy, lustful, boastful, haughty, arrogant and yet so unhopeful that we’ve each allowed for hope itself to become held inside only the things that we can hold.

When did we so decide that such is the best way to live these lives?

And, considering how it’s seeming to work out in what is a world that’s falling apart, why then do we still keep living them like this?

If not because we’re terrified of coming to realizing just how wrong we’ve been and what that means and how the both agree that maybe Jesus did come to save us, did die to do so, and thus, perhaps, we need to die to some stuff too?

That is His good purpose for us for which He works in us to will us to act in such a way that is unlike anything we’ve ever done.

Friends, that’s why He told us that He’d come to do a new thing.

Wasn’t to bring glory to the old things!

No, it was to help us see that so too might we need to do something new. And, again, that something new eventually becomes everything different. And indeed, such is a truly heavy ask as it does mean that we need to lay down the entirety of our lives in exchange for crosses that we carry around always willing and ever ready to kill upon them whatever He helps us to see shouldn’t be as alive in us as it’s sadly become.

That’s where the reconsidering comes in.

It’s this ongoing process in which we’re helped to sort through, sift through, sit through this retelling of what’s been our life’s story as was sadly written by us and our will for what we’d hoped it would become. And yeah, there may have been some pretty good times that have hopefully left us with some wonderful memories. But friends, fact is that in reality those cherished memories are only held so tightly so that we needn’t see all the darkness, the shame, the guilt and regret that they’re covering.

I’m not saying that we’d not remember those good times otherwise.

But I don’t know that nostalgia would have such this grip on us if we could remember all the times that weren’t quite so good.

Which just so happen to be the ones that He helps us finally face. It’s all those things that we’ve said, done, believed before that only left us cold, tired, lonely and entirely afraid of His coming once more. Because the fact of the matter is that we’ve all lived a life before that cost Him His, and, well, it’s hard for us to imagine He’d be happy about that.

Thankfully that is exactly why mercy and grace offer to meet us in the place we’ve been standing with the express purpose of making sure that we’re never found standing here again.

It’s called sanctification and it is the very purpose of salvation as there’s really no point in saving someone if you haven’t a plan to ensure they’re moved from the way of life they’d been living from which they need the saving.

No, this is His moving us to do something different, to become something more, to want something else other than whatever this is that we’ve had before. All because He does have far more in store for us. But friends, He can only lead us unto those many treasures of Heaven if we’ll agree to let go our grip on all that we’ve ruined here.

Hard part is that we have to come to see the ruin, the wreck, the havoc we’ve wreaked upon what’s been a life in which we’d thought we were doing pretty well. No, it’s His helping us come to realize that, again, this life is the closest to hell we should ever want to be.

Not an easy thing to see!

Thankfully His plans have never worried about being easy because He knows that what matters most is where they lead, not through what they go. Challenge for us is coming to learn the difference having all gotten it backwards all this time. But that we can grow to see all the mistakes we’ve made and the stupid things we’ve done and worthless words we’ve said is a gift unlike any other.

Because it wounds with healing being obvious. It hurts with hope being the reason. It confronts us but only to help change us.

And the cross allows us to understand that our growth in His hope is worth whatever we have to go through to get it.

Even if it means enduring the rehashing, rethinking, reconsidering of things that we may have probably always thought were okay only to realize that very little of anything we’ve done was ever alright.

Yeah, His good purpose for us may cause us to realize the death we’ve allowed for in our lives, and sure, that’ll cut like a knife held to the throat of every hope we’ve ever had for ourselves. But let us always rejoice in the knowledge that faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Especially those of He who was wounded that we might be healed.

Indeed, we have to come to understand how sick we are before we’ll ever seek the help we need. Thankfully He helps us realize just that.

And too, from then on, everything else we do that we might shouldn’t want to after all.

Because we all get things wrong. So let us be grateful that He hasn’t used all our mistakes as the reasons they should have been for His to have given up on us.

For He hasn’t yet.

And so let’s stop giving up on Him and all He’s still trying to do to ensure we’re ready to fit through the eye of the needle that is the Name that is our only way through those gates. Even though it means our second guessing everything.

After all, isn’t the second chance we’ve all been given worth all the second guessing it should have us doing?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold