Day 4098 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jonah 2:4 NIV

What is determination?

Is it the investigation of at least the willingness to try? Is it the audacity to stare risk in the eye and wonder why not rather than why? Is it the courage to consider that there may well be no other choice but to see what you can be? Is it the rarity of a heart that’s able to hold so tight to hope that all it knows is to try for whatever that hope can always become? Is it believing that hope can in fact always become something bigger, better and, in that belief, adamant to find the very outermost of every hope’s extremity? Is it an extreme toward which we go when even hope itself seems all but gone for good?

Is it our souls becoming something a bit more unbreakable, unwilling even to bend anymore as we know there is still more that is in store that asks we become relentless in our pursuit there toward?

Is it a body able to feel deprived, in danger, filled with doubt and a million miles from nowhere but yet entirely unworried as it knows that it will find something better out there somewhere?

Is it a childlike willingness to look for that somewhere in which better waits?

In this life there come for us many days in which we’ll be asked to seek for a determination that, as God’s been known to suggest we try, looks not at the outward appearance but rather seeks for the heart of a matter. And I know this because said times have already come. They’ve come countless times in fact. Problem seems that we’ve mostly missed them as we’ve become rather afraid of them as, yeah, they do come as if enemies outwardly opposed to our obvious preferences as posed upon comfort and its complacency.

Our complacency.

But you see, that is the problem that we will all have to face. And yes, that again as, again, we’ve already been each faced with this choice. We’ve all of us heard before that voice screaming at us all about all the things that we can’t do, can’t understand, cannot withstand even long enough to stand. We’ve all heard that side of life that said we would die should we try. And, well, we’ve taken that voice upon its word. We’ve heard all we needed to hear as whenever fear is found, we’ve found all we care to feel.

And having felt fear so often as all of us have, all of us have then too had plenty of chances that have passed us by as we ourselves passed on them as they presented us with what seemed an obvious choice:

Stay or suffer.

And, well, we all know that suffering sucks. That’s kind of what it’s known for. Actually, I think that’s pretty much all it’s known for. And that’s because none of us have left within us much of that all but lost ability to believe beyond the burden. We’ve all but lost our audacity to imagine beyond the misery. We’ve sat aside our willingness to risk this life as we’ve become so afraid to die that many here doubt there awaits more life on the other side of when we will.

And make no mistake, we all most certainly will.

The question becomes then will we have ever dared to live before we do?

And in order to attempt at making an attempt to help us answer that question, may I present to you the opportunity that is determination.

Determination is defined as “the ability to continue trying to do something, although it is very difficult” and that because so too is it “the act of coming to a decision or of fixing or settling a purpose.” In other words, it’s not merely making our minds up as we all have upon such matters as what to eat for dinner but rather seeking within them such a firmness of intention as invented inside a purpose, a plan, a prayer perhaps that’s so very resolved that it refuses to budge.

And that no matter what.

Granted, this is a rare thing to see these days as most days most folks live most ways as if nothing much in life, of life, for life asks quite that much. Instead we’ve become rather willing to compromise, to negotiate, to beg and barter so as to avoid the path harder in exchange for the chance to remain as unchanged as possible. Yes, our greatest goal has become to know that way of life in which life goes so continually okay that we, though able to admit it not near perfect, considered it good enough for us to stay.

Because staying doesn’t ask anything. Staying is accomplished as easily as our doing, saying, thinking, believing whatever it is that we already did that led us to whatever, wherever, whoever it is that we are. Staying is, as far as we can tell, the surest way to prove successful as, well, we’ve clearly already found, felt, accomplished, achieved whatever it took to get us to whatever, wherever, whoever it is that we are.

But my question is whether that whatever, wherever, whoever it is that we already are is truly whatever, wherever and whoever it is that we’d always hoped to be?

Have we arrived at the very best of our lives?

Because it’s absolutely no secret that many here are rather intent to find it, feel it, live it. To live your best life has become such the common goal that I’ve literally seen the suggestion stenciled on doormats in apartment buildings inspiring there everyone to seek their best life as they walk out the door. It’s everywhere. T-shirts, bumper stickers, little posters we hang on our wall and it’s probably been plastered on plenty of billboards too.

And that’s because it’s an entirely justifiable sentiment.

For it makes plenty of sense, perhaps even all of it, for our to seek for our best life. I mean, why on earth would anyone else seek for anything less? So yes, it should be our best life that we do seek and, yeah, we should seek to become quite determined to do so in what is a determination that, we now know, is an “ability to continue trying to do something” and that “although it is very difficult” to in fact either find or, once apparently there prove, that we are in fact doing what we became determined to do.

And I think that the guy at the center of this book in which we find today’s verse is a pretty good example of that.

Because, yeah, Jonah probably thought he was living his best life when God came alongside and asked him to go do something that probably made no sense, offered plenty of danger anyway, and thus amounted to the grand total of something he was totally disinterested in. So disinterested in fact that he ran. Ran away. Literally tried to run from God so as to not do what God had asked him to.

And we all know the rest as we’ve all heard of the fish and how it came along to, let’s say, help Jonah reevaluate some things.

Like how we can try to run from God because what He asks us to do or puts on our hearts to try does often seem scary, nonsensical, absolutely maniacal and probably pretty dangerous. But that in doing so we’re probably only running toward something just as potentially disastrous, and perhaps getting there even faster.

Something that I again know we’ve all done.

Why?

Because our every single past is packed with proof of an entire life we’ve agreed to lose as it was found only down those paths that we were determined to avoid. Personally, as that’s the only example I can really speak to with any measure of actual understanding and memory, my past is packed with proof of a guy who sought to avoid all struggle and strife up until the point in which my life became so miserable that my mind turned on me and started seeing me as the enemy.

Why?

Because a day came in which I realized that I’d run away from so many harder things, and become incredibly determined to keep doing so, that I looked up and saw a stranger in danger of dying entirely too early. And that because I ate only junk, got next to no exercise, and the two combined into my weighing over 300 pounds, my body hurting all the time, my sense of pride in myself all but gone, self-confidence then the same, and all of it because my brain had determined to do as little as possible.

Because that will always be the easiest thing to do.

I was running away from anything and everything hard. And that because I, like you I’m guessing, was lost in that life in which I was stressing over even any suggestion of struggle or strife or any other such detractors from the easy life, the simple life, the safe life that I think we all think we’ve found inside this version of life in which we refuse everything that asks anything of us.

We’ve all become determined to avoid as many difficulties and dangers as humanly possible.

And so we all know what determination is as, yes, we’ve in fact all developed “the ability to continue trying to do something,” the something in this case being nothing, and that “although it is very difficult” to actually manage to do nothing in life as even life asks such efforts as feeding ourselves and getting dressed and even every now and then thinking thoughts.

Though that last one is seemingly becoming something that many here seem rather determined to fight against.

And why is this? Why are we so afraid to try? What are we unwilling to risk? Again, are our lives as they set truly as good as they can get? Are we happy with who we are, what we’re doing, the wonder as what we’re not and thus who we aren’t?

I’m not.

In fact, referring back to that dude that was fat and lazy and looking only for ways to stay that way as he thought he literally might die if ever he tried to do anything about it because, let’s face it, the body at rest really wants to stay as rest as it knows full well that any surprise stress, such as exercise or not supersizing the fries, could well explode the heart inside that’s, sadly, gotten perhaps too used to doing just about nothing at all, well, I don’t ever want to see him again.

A fact I’m so determined about that I try all the time to make sure he stays dead.

And yeah, sometimes he sneaks back and rears his ugly head in the form of random cravings for the garbage I used to eat or those thoughts I still sometimes think about how much easier it would be to not get my workout in the for the day.

But the fact is that, having made all the changes that God’s helped me to make, I am determined to never go back again.

Because I know what’s there and that it’s nothing I want, nothing I need, nothing and nobody that I ever again wish to be.

Do you have that in your life?

That something that you’re absolutely adamant to leave behind? Or maybe even that something that you’re entirely determined to find? Have you ever felt that audacity to keep trying even though all you keep finding is only situations and circumstances that make our tendency toward quitting look more and more reasonable? Have you ever found that fire inside that’s willing to look at life for what it is and refuses to accept it?

Have you ever had those thoughts that wonder what it might be like to plunge into the storm rather than running from it?

Ever wondered if you might find God, or at least find out more about Him, if you didn’t spend so much time running from the storms He sends and the rain they bring and the pain that means and the suffering of it all?

I hope so.

I pray that that’s something all of us come to know. That obviously rare ability to look at things as they are, to ourselves for who we’ve become, and refuse to accept it. To not settle anymore. To not keep giving up. To actually get ourselves up, brush our dreams off, and get back in the fight that is this life. Indeed, my hope for everyone is that they eventually come to embrace the fact that this life is a fight, a good fight, that we’re thus meant to fight, to risk, to lose in fact.

Why is that?

Because until we become willing to risk losing all we have and all we are, well, all we’ll ever have is whoever it is that we already are.

And granted, judging from how common this kind of thing seems to be these days, perhaps you’re one of those many who seem entirely content with the current content of your existence. Maybe you are living your best life and within it find no room for improvement at all. And if that’s the case and you are perfect and your life is too, then, well, good for you.

Problem is that that’s not ever to be true for any of us here.

Rather what will prove true for all of us here is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us have messed up and made mistakes. All of us have chosen to run away from what’s, as of today, an entire life we’ve never lived thanks to the one we chose to live instead. And that’s because everything we do in life is a decision that we make determining it the best decision we can make.

That’s literally why we do everything.

It’s because everything we do is what seems like the thing we ought to do, ought to say, ought to think, ought to try, ought to believe.

But friends, inside every such decision exists at least two options, maybe more. And this means that whatever we choose is chosen at the other option going unchosen and thus unknown. And sure, we can sometimes become of the mind to sort of go back and try the other path. But even that can’t ever prove able to erase the fact that we’d chosen the other first. No matter what we do we will always have to live with the choices we make.

Question then becomes whether or not, in humility, we ever become of the ability to sit with our choices and prove of the audacity to reconsider them.

Is what we’re doing what we should be doing? Are our choices leading us toward wherever is it, whoever it is what we hope we’re becoming? Are our choices leading us anywhere at all?

And yeah, these are all hard questions.

But friends, the reality is that there’s a measure of determination to them whether or not we ask them.

We’re either determined to do as we’ve always done, which is the obviously more common option, or we become determined to do something different in the obviously rare audacity to imagine finding something better.

But the point is that whatever we try or however much we refuse to, we’re the ones who are choosing. And, as those choosing, we’re also the ones who will in fact face the consequences of those choices that we don’t choose, those paths we don’t take, those lives we don’t live thanks to the ones we do.

But again, my question in regard to that is are we living at all?

Or rather has fear, worry, doubt, laziness all but prevented us from trying anything else? Have the trials and torments we’ve already faced convinced our hearts to stop trying for anything more? Have we simply accepted that age-old lie that made all of us believe that any sign of struggle or strife is nothing more than evidence that we’re doing something wrong in life?

Sadly I fear we have.

Because the simple fact seems to be that all of us remain only determined to run away from all of life’s difficulties. We seem to even believe in this version of faith that causes us to think that since we’re sinners God must thus be entirely unhappy with us and, as such, we’re probably better off to leave Him alone and hope He returns the favor. After all, our every life’s flavor is already obviously one decidedly harder and scarier and thus often far more hopeless than we’d ever care for it to be.

After all, we’ve all seen and sadly continue to see entirely more struggle than we’d ever care to know.

So do we just give up then?

Do we take the struggles and storms we face and feel as nothing but proof of all we have to lose? Do we, as Jonah considered in his prayer read here in chapter two, consider just accepting that God has “hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas,” where “the currents swirled about me” and all of His “waves and breakers swept over me.”

In short, do we settle for staying inside the fish, determining to accept such an outcome as whatever this is that we know now? Or do we rather, from down here at rock bottom, determine to do something different in hopes of finding an outcome different too?

Sadly it’s again clear the choice that most around us continue to choose. Maybe they’re worn out from all the worry. Maybe they’re tired of feeling the pain. Maybe, again, maybe their lives are as good as they want them to be.

Can we say the same?

Or does not He send the rain and allow the pain so as to inspire us to try for more?

Fact is that in this life we’re all going to struggle, we’re all going to hurt, we’re all going to die.

Will we live before we do?

Answer’s determined by the kind of determination we have in life. Is it a determination to stay? To rest? To seek ease and thus avoid everything that doesn’t offer it? Or shall we instead become determined to grow? To hope? To know that there has to be more to life than whatever it is, whoever we are as where we are isn’t anything we could honestly say is anywhere close to anything best?

Look, I know that God’s path often makes no sense as, yeah, it is hard and it is heavy and it is quite often every form of scary. But friends, again, knowing something of determination thanks to our every past decision, truth is we all know something of fear too.

So what are we more afraid of: Risking the loss of whatever we already have, whoever we already are? Or risking missing the more we should be and the better life could be, would be because of it?

I understand that life often seems only to stand in our way. It’s obviously filled with fear and failure and our foolish ability to think we can maybe hide from it all. But in the end it’s our choice to either drown where we are or to at least try to swim for the shore we may not be able to reach.

Either way we’re daily determining to try one or the other.

And the fact is that we’re both risking something and losing something either way too.

It will sometimes feel like we’re so far from God having let Him down so very much that He probably wants nothing to do with us other than rid His sight of us. And, well, that may be the case as He’d be entirely justified if He did. And, well, I think we all know that. Do we settle for that? That we’ve let Him down, broke His heart, chosen the life that He never had in mind for us to choose as it’s been one only lived against Him?

Do we accept the miseries we know in exchange for missing here the hopes we don’t?

Or do we refuse to settle for what we see, how we feel and instead seek for something better in regard to both?

Yeah, our choices have left us quite far from God. Do we stay here? Or do we seek to believe that both we can get closer and that He won’t destroy us if we do?

That is a risk, and a rather large one at that. Friends, the only other choice is staying where we are as who we are.

Which of the two are you determined to do?

And please don’t make a fish decide.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold