Day 4072 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 34:19 NIV

The misconception

Something like this is almost always a result of this conception built atop a person’s personal perception which, if we’re being honest, is likely anymore rather prideful if not completely so. But it’s this idea that’s given birth inside this mindset sat upon this ongoing assumption that we ourselves can understand the baser foundation of pretty much anything. And while there could be some legitimacy to that theory, the truth is that unfortunately these days we simply allow too many things to get in the way of a simple understanding.

In fact most days find us quite unsure if we’re standing and if so what for.

No, anymore much of life is sadly defined as merely a time in which we daily allow our minds what’s amounted to basically a free-reign over, well, basically all things. Indeed, we’ve become of this obviously apparent understanding of life that has somehow, ironically, always managed to misconstrue free-will with freedom and thus too a general lack of any real consequence outside of the random bad day.

Which we still never seem to be of the ability to imagine we might either have brought upon ourselves or simply deserve in light of many of the things we do.

And that’s because we sadly still assume we’re due nothing but an easy journey, a safe trip, a life of nothing but comfort and success. And why is this? Because such things are both easy and thus conducive to our conceptualization of what life is all about. And that’s simply because we just really, really want life to be all about us and how safe we feel, how comfortable we are, how good things are going. That’s truly all that it seems matters to us anymore.

Why?

Because our concept of life, or at least our conception thereof, it’s for so long been built within this cultural understanding of the easy days being rewards we’re owed as measured in a rather frustrating infrenquency compared to the decidedly harder, longer, tougher, darker days that we most definitely feel we never deserve to have to endure.

Which is pretty much the problem altogether, isn’t it?

It’s that we’ve so wonderfully lost our appreciation of endurance that we simply seek to basically deny anything and everything that exists merely to give us the opportunity to have it, to grow it, to experience it even. No, so much of life as we’ve selfishly determined to live it is lost in this idea that, again, everything should be easy, safe, comfortable, thus conducive to the concepts that we can’t quite realize we’ve all but compartmentalized our lives into.

Because we don’t seem to understand that that’s something we do too.

Instead all of life has always been, for us in ours at least, this ongoing expectation measured in our meeting of fair winds and following seas always promising this general ease to, well, pretty much everything. Not that we totally despise all difficulty in life as we’ve even found ways to promote pride inside of at least those simpler struggles, seeking within challenge the chance to gloat in the strength they allow us to show off to what is a world that we still for some reason seem to think is actually watching.

They’re not.

But that’s indeed not ever stopped us from living for what truly amounts to nothing but simple appearances. And that’s something we’ve settled upon because we’ve all become so entirely vain that the very sum of everything we do or don’t is always determined only by this same idea that has us quite wholly convinced that comfort and success are what matter most in life.

They’re not.

But convincing a people of pride and every perspective then placed or purchased for or from within the same of that, well, good luck!

No, rather than being able to even consider such an idea as our not only needing to go through hard times for the sake of our growth in such gifts as hope, let alone our actually deserving to go through things which should all but steal our every hope away thanks to all the messed up stuff we’ve done thus far, instead we’ve just determined to, let’s say, rewrite the book.

Almost literally.

Truly, our sense of pride and its perspective of endless vanity has even gone so far to find for us this ability to think we either have or somehow deserve the opportunity to basically overhaul the Gospel seeking to make it seem a little more gentle, a little less harsh, a little less hard, a little less heavy.

Not that we care if the cross Christ carried were the same.

No, we just want our load to be lighter, brighter, easier to manage. And that’s because, well, how better are we to ever look better than when our lives are going always however we want them to as is always determined by that which makes us look and/or feel good from what we again seem to perceive as being but lives lived in the lights as if we’re the stars of this show? That’s entirely why we always insist that this life go however we ourselves think it should.

It’s all because we want to look good, feel good, seem good to those who still for some reason think good exists here.

And that even inside some of us!

And indeed, we love this idea so very much that we’ve even used it as the motivation to form what is this, for lack of better words, bastardization of the Gospel truth. For truly, we’ve taken something meant for and made from exclusively His glory and spun it instead into a story spent seeking our gain. Can you believe that? That we’ve become so deluded in our thinking that we’ve become so convinced that everything is so about us that even the story of our own salvation should be amended to add a few more benefits and promises?

Promises such as health and prosperity?

Yes, I’m sure that by now you’ve all heard of the prosperity gospel, little g. It’s this idea, this theory in which if we’ll just do a certain thing or collection of things, like saying the right prayers using within them the special words taught us by another or giving a specific amount to the church of which we seek to become a member or if we’ll agree to take part in a series of courses given by the same conglomerate, then we’ll be so very blessed that in our lives we’ll never again know anything of stress.

Rather, by our again doing the just right things by saying those just right words, God will be so happy that He will all but remove Heaven’s gates from their frames and flood our lives with the very sum of everything we could ever want.

Indeed, we’ve taken greed and forced it into the Gospel of Christ, the One who came to this world to empty His life of everything from comfort to, well, life itself in order to help us see the vast degeneracy in which we were living and to show us visually that He would do anything to save us from the same.

Everything except change what God has always defined as all that He undeniably deserves.

No, there will never be a single word of His Word that’s to be altered. Rather remains the fact that all have sinned and fallen short. All have sadly forsaken Him, forgotten Him behind their desire to live their life as they saw fit rather than trying to fit their lives through the needle’s eye. All have indeed watched on with glee as He was pierced for our transgressions, never once caring to realize that the punishment which brings someday our peace was placed upon Him who took our place upon what’s most days a cross we can neither see as ever having been our own nor the need then to take up those still lying motionless, meaningless beside us.

Because we know how picking them up would make us feel. And, perhaps even worse, we know how picking them up would make us look. And to a people whose every concept of life is built atop a bottomless pride, no, we simply won’t even allow the consideration in our minds.

Rather those crosses can stay on the ground as we stay routinely convinced that, even if Jesus died, it wasn’t for us as we’re rather those good people that we so love to still assume are somehow not only among us but in fact are us.

Yes, we are God’s special creation, His very gift to this world in which we’re walking.

And it’s because of this prideful estimation that we’re so enthralled by the suggestion that at least part of the Gospel is meant to make us feel good, look good, seem good, see good, hear good, live good as is to be always determined, defined, decided beside our personal measures as to what all matters and why we feel always that it’s obviously unneeded for our to have to explain why we then feel as if we deserve no pain, no trouble, no torment, no issues.

No, such should be obvious.

It’s apparently found in that God loves us and therefore never wants for us to be challenged, to be changed, to be freed from our chains as are both plain as day and yet never plain to us.

Rather we see freedom as this feeling of a life going well. We believe mercy exists to meet us where we are and keep us safe while we stay put. We consider His patience to be weakness as we see inside most days only those things that we wish to look at, never then noticing the door’s closing nor the fact that we’re usually on the wrong side of it.

Indeed, we perceive salvation as something kind given to those many around us who need it far more than we do because, well, so often we can only see that we don’t as our lives haven’t gone so bad that we too should have to ask forgiveness.

And that humbly if not ashamedly so.

No, rather we seem clearly to know little of shame anymore. And honestly, that’s probably because neither do we seek to know much of pain or trouble or trial or torment or the torrent that is our current consensus that suggests to us that we’re doing okay and thus don’t need to be saved but rather deserve to be served a steady diet of all we like in life, as is always determined by what we think will ensure that our lives go right.

All the way to again inventing all these new concepts that we think make the Gospel either make more sense or make us look better or feel less worse.

All because of a simple misconception: That God’s on our side.

No friends, God is not on our side.

And why is that? Because we’ve never chosen to be on His. Rather, again, all of us have sinned and fallen then short of the glory of God inside what have thus been lives in which we’ve all lived seeking only our own glory, our own gain, our own story written free of pain and problem but filled with profit and it always promised. No, we have each been God’s enemies!

We’ve lived lives that have shown Him only that we despise Him.

What then makes us think He’s on our side?

Have we forgotten that a house divided cannot stand?

Friends, if God were on our side in all those times in which we’ve not cared, never tried to be on His, then He would thus be divided in Himself against Himself. But God doesn’t divide. God doesn’t redefine things to suit our unwillingness to change.

He doesn’t negotiate with terrorists!

And yes, anyone who costs the life of an innocent person is a terrorist.

And, in case you forgot, the cross was endured as a punishment meant for us thanks to the sins we ourselves have committed against Him.

What then is all this talk about how our walk should be easy, our lives fun endlessly? Where has come this idea that has so many of us still convinced that He exists only to ensure that our stay here is everything we want it to be? Who are we to think we deserve anything from He who is a God that we’ve only shown endlessly our rejection, our denial, our defiance, our rebellion?

Look, I understand that Jesus is called a friend of sinners, but friends, that doesn’t mean that the friendship it built upon sin.

Yes, He ate with those considered criminals and lowlifes and scumbags, a fact for which we should all be indefinably thankful seeing as how we’re all lowlife criminal scumbags!

But He ate with them not to learn from them so as to become like them. No, He ate with them so that they might see Him and seek then to become like Him.

And that’s clearly not the concept of faith or belief or the both combined into Christianity that we’ve settled for today. Rather, again, our version so often has so much to do with this idea that He’s up there working things out for our good. Which He is as His Word again doesn’t change. And so yeah, He does still work all things for the good, but get this part please, of those who love Him. Of those who have been called according to His purpose.

Of those who have answered that call inside what is a life so changed that they do love God and it does finally show inside what is a mind that cares not what we go through nor go without as we’ve finally learned to understand that this life is not our reward but rather only our reason to seek it elsewhere and as something else.

Friends, that’s what we’ve been talking about for days now. It’s that this life, contrary to common conception or consideration or confusion, it’s not our promise. After all, a promise is never given for the moment in which it's given, is it? No, rather every promise ever given is given for a time still to come. Thus His promise of peace, of rest, of a hope for that home in Heaven, they’re all still to come. For it's clear from looking around at where we are and what all’s going on that, no, we're not there yet!

So why then continue to contend that we deserve our best life here? Why continue to seek for our gain here? Why continue to give our lives to expecting Him to make this journey so amazingly comfortable, so continually easy that we eventually give up any and every hope of leaving?

No, this world and all it’s become should inspire us all to stop being so stinking dumb as to make a mockery of His mercy by our expecting it to mean only a life lived easy and always comfy.

In fact, we shouldn’t want to be comfortable in a place that still refuses to believe in Christ. We shouldn’t want to be liked by those who hate the Gospel of our salvation. We shouldn’t seek all these treaties of friendship with those who continue to treat Heaven as an afterthought thought about only after they’ve ensured this meantime is going just right.

Who cares if this life goes right?

In fact, if this life were always going right, well then what could He save us from? And if He didn’t need to save us from anything then what would we need to seek Him for?

And if we didn’t feel that need to seek He who saves, we just never would.

But friends, you can’t find what you never look for because you’ll simply never realize you should as you simply can’t notice the lack, the emptiness, the danger.

Indeed, we need lack and emptiness and danger inside pretty much every single day because all of those are things that remind us both how little we are, how unable we are, how miserable we are, all of which inspire us to seek Him further, deeper, more desperately.

We need God to give us more than we can handle so that we can finally learn that the only wise move is to hand over the reins, the reign, the lead, the very living of our life to He who died in order to help us find that we need His help if we’re ever to come apart from this highway to hell.

And well, a life that’s always easy or safe or profitable, that’s not one that offers us any room to see just how bad things are. And if we never see how bad things are then we’ll probably never want to leave because, well, we’re really adverse to change and so we never really do unless we really have to.

But friends, that we’re sinners should be enough to help us understand that we really do have to change.

Problem is that pride will always find a way to keep us oblivious to the fact that we are just that. Rather pride knows only to see us as perfect, as untarnished, as those who thus do not deserve to be tried or tired or tested in any way at any time.

How else are we to ever know what of us is dust and what little is gold?

No, we need life here to be hard so that Heaven can bring rest. We need life here to test us so that we find those places that still we’re lacking, falling short. We need the storms to blow away our arrogance and the rain they bring to wash away our ego. We need this life to be a battle.

Why?

Because how else is anyone supposed to save the day unless the day needs saved?

My point is that we’ll never be able to see His provision unless and until we’re placed in moments and miseries that make His mercy impossible to notice. And so He troubles to us. He leads us into trials. He calls us into the grave for crying out loud! Seems pretty obvious that keeping our lives ain’t the general premise!

No, rather we’re called to lay down our lives, to all but hate the living of them thanks to both what all we’ve mistakenly done in them and the vileness in which those around us continue to live theirs. Indeed, this place should be like walking on coals. Why? Because that gives us the hope of somewhere better to go. And honestly, what’s a life without hope?

And truly, who hopes for what they already have?

We don’t need to have peace here, joy here, comfort here. We need those to be rather things promised up ahead so that we continue going toward them.

And, well, what better to inspire us to both start moving and then keep going than all the pain and misery and disappointment we’ll meet in this world?

Many here may love this idea that God’s only there to make our lives here easy. But as for me, I just can’t see any reason or reward in His doing so. Rather the One who endured Calvary should stand continually as an example of our every expectation. And that being that yes, in this world we will have trouble but that no, this world is not our home.

So let us stop living like we’ve already arrived and rather dare to start moving toward the life that is promised to be nothing that this one so obviously is.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold