Day 4099 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 38:17 NIV

What is deliverance?

Is it some mere transference unto an only slightly altered existence? Is it an instance in which another intends to intervene but only for that moment? Is it a degree of devotion displaying a daring degree of determination determined to render another devoid of danger? Is it a danger into which a stranger wades seeking to win freedom for another at the chosen risk of then their own? Is it something of a personal parceling, packing a person and shipping them to another location, vocation, installation installed there as another altogether?

Is it trying to help another keep it all together as from even the outside it seems as if all they are and thus probably too all they know is falling apart?

Is it the dedication unto a brand new start that can only ever be given unto someone who at first finally comes to terms with the understanding that where they’re standing is indeed in such need of said new beginning?

Does it not come always at the ending of something?

It should. For why else endure such danger, devotion, discipline as that given unto what is the setting free of another from what thus seems a matter from which they need freed? Why involve ourselves in another’s behalf, or expect another to involve themselves in ours, if neither is all that willing to be so moved as deliverance so seeks to do? Why waste the time, the effort, the hope in fact in the belief that there’s actually something so undeniably better than whatever it is that this other is going through if they themselves have no intention of trying to cease their going through it?

Makes no sense.

And yet so it seems that this is why so many alive have such a hard time with the sheer honesty of Scripture. It’s because it’s a book built upon a belief in deliverance as given unto those deemed God’s own children as was purchased on their part by He who played then and plays still the part of the only Savior ever offered. And yet, even though salvation is undeniably such an amazing opportunity as it seeks to set free forever those who are thus not free wherever they are, seems still that we still see that most here still seem entirely unchanged despite lives themselves obviously challenged.

How are we to make sense of that? The fact that everyone we know, and everyone we don’t, they’re all going through varied struggles and the vicious seasons which bring them and yet next to none of them seem all that interested in either their doing anything or even another offering to help them out of whatever it is that is apparently such the misery that they wear it as if a mask? Indeed, what sense are we to make of that?

Why is it that so many seem so willing to stay so miserable, so unhappy, so unhopeful, so unholy in what is a world in which those things are so common as they are when Christ stands, sadly afar, offering unto all the free gift of freedom?

Is this not possible only because most here apparently don’t understand their enslavement?

Because most here see not their confinement? That most here notice not the bars on the corners as being bad places to avoid nor those built around their hearts seeking to have at once kept the bad out but somehow now only there keeping the bad in? How did this happen? How did the inmates so come to run the asylum? What’s happened to us that caused us to trust so much in ourselves despite it being always our souls that are screaming at us to wake up and realize the death that is our surrounding?

Why don’t we want moved?

What it is of freedom that we’re convinced we just don’t need? Are we free? Are we happy? Are we able to hope anymore?

From where I stand it seems that most here are just languishing in lives oddly lived laughing as if it’s all okay. Is it? Is everything okay? Are you okay?

Truly, are you okay?

When’s the last time you actually took some time and sat with that question? Am I okay? Is the life I’m living alright to be living? Are the things I’m doing those which I should keep doing? Are the words I’m saying sending the messages that I hope others are hearing? Am I hearing the fullness of whatever it is that another is saying?

Are we maybe still not hearing some messages that have been resounding for centuries at this point, and that probably only because most people consider them either so antiquated that they’re not possibly helpful in our vastly advanced society or they’re rather simply so very offensive that it would prove a personal vilification even to hear them?

Honestly, it’s probably both.

Because the reality is that most folks here think that Scripture is just some really old book written a long time ago by a bunch of guys who had no way of knowing what the world would be like, what life would be like, what we would be like in what is now a time so far removed from their own that we have cars and phones and planes and plans that they’d have probably laughed even at the mere mention of them. And too it’s built atop a message so personally condemning that as a people standing always in such pride of life, well, we’ve just lost pretty much any and all interest in listening to any of it.

Rather we’ve gathered about ourselves a vast number of voices who are more than happy to be so near just to be heard, and we overjoyed to hear them as they exist only to say whatever it is that we make obvious we want to hear if they’re to continue being welcome so near.

For such is what’s bound to happen when, again, the inmates run the asylum.

Eventually everything and everyone is bound to become a friend, but that only when they agree to go along with what is our personally chosen brand or breed of maybe not so temporary insanity.

Granted, seems that that’s the verdict we were all kind of going with, that we were only slightly out of our minds and that for just that one period of time in which we were just kids who were ‘experimenting’ with different identities, trying them on to see which one fit and felt best. Kind of like this ai nonsense that’s presently luring everyone in to losing even more of themselves.

Indeed, as I’ve spoken of in posts past, it’s gotten to the point now that I’ve heard of folks who have, at least what they believe to be, actual relationships with ai partners who exist in their phones upon an app which allows people to create these artificial friends who basically ‘exist’ to do and say whatever they want them to. Literally gathering “around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Actually saw one dude talking to his phone, who is apparently now his girlfriend, who was telling him how nice his new haircut looked.

Telling you friends, we’re cooked!

We’re done. Done been burnt with no lesson learnt. It’s just over.

Why?

Because we’ve literally arrived at the time in which we've taken what was cute when you were five and had an imaginary friend who happened to be a rock and bumped it up to the point in which now you're 35 and have an imaginary girlfriend and you're dumb as a rock.

And yet most folks seem not only okay with this but many are actually overjoyed with it.

And yet can’t then seem to understand the Bible speaking of our all needing deliverance. Which, in case you thought it was just a really freaky old movie with banjos and a sudden fear of ever going into the woods, it’s actually a word that describes the act of being delivered, which itself isn’t something saved for all those packages we waste our lives buying on ebay or amazon, but also refers to being saved or rescued or elsewise set free from what’s then an obvious danger or harm.

Thus deliverance is the act of setting someone free from something that puts them at risk of something obviously detrimental.

Maybe something like nearing a mental collapse thanks to such things as another video I wish I could unsee in which this other guy, full grown guy, lives I guess at least part of his life as if a baby. Got an adult-sized crib, XXL size onesie, even has a girlfriend apparently who he’s somehow convinced to go along with all this who feeds him using bottles and stuff.

Again, we’re done!

Because we have gone fully mental. We’ve not only rounded the bend but it seems that now not even a round room would help all that much. I mean, we’re a people so far gone that honestly there’s no hope for this world. Thankfully there is hope for us because, well, that really old and vastly offensive book says there is as it says in Him there is freedom, there is mercy, there is healing and hope and literal restoration of all we’ve lost or given away.

Even our hearts and minds and, yes, our lives.

But said freedom is only to ever be found by those who lay their stupid on the ground and walk away.

Sadly as of today there seems a rapidly dwindling number of people willing to do that though.

Why?

Because we’ve all become so afraid of struggle, of trial, of torment and testing that we instantly run and hide anytime that life even pretends to become hard or heavy. We refuse to carry anything, most of all personal responsibility. And this reality has formed for us the bars of this prison that, being so cozy and comfortable, is one that very few ever find they’ve any interest in leaving behind.

Simply because many here are indeed enjoying their reward.

And what makes the message of the cross seem so foolish then to us is that it asks that we trade our reward, our enjoyment of this world and all the pleasing and pleasurable things herein for what is a life spent instead following Him who chose, yes, chose to endure such things as loneliness and opposition and in fact even a quite violent condemnation from those who thought, think still, that they’re the ones who run the nations.

Indeed, this world is filled with this pride that has folks convinced, absolutely certain that they’re the ones who call the shots right down to our now actually attempting to redefine such things as gender and the very starting point of life itself, not so that we can better uphold or otherwise show our appreciation of God’s definitions of such, no, but rather so that we can show our sense of superiority through such things as gender fluidity and even the audacity to think it’s okay to kill a baby.

Why?

Because we’ve become convinced that responsibility sucks so very much that we want no part of it and offer it no part of us.

Because we’ve become convinced that that’s what freedom is. That it’s nothing more than the opportunity to do whatever we want and to avoid whatever potential costs or consequences we don’t. And indeed, that message has even started to wind its way into our churches and other religious assemblages. That God just wants us to be happy.

No friends, He wants us to be holy.

Literally tells us such verbatim.

Granted, it’s found in that really old and highly offensive book that goes so far as to all but call us all crooks and thieves and sinners and things.

And, well, we can’t have that as that really doesn’t match what we’ve convinced so many others to say.

Leaving us then nowhere near any kind of crossroads as we all know what the cross says, and, well, it’s pretty much nothing we want to hear. I mean sure, the mercy and kindness and freedom and forgiveness all sound pretty nice. But it’s just what we have to go through to get them that contends against our trying to get them. And that’s because in order to be set free you have to admit that you do need mercy, which is itself a kindness offered only to those who are in fact crooks and thieves and sinners and things.

And willing to admit it at that.

Which is where it all falls apart. It’s because we’re not a people anymore even able to start wondering as to the reason He offers us salvation, let alone why He literally had to die for us to have it. Rather we see such things as that kind of humility as something of an affliction of which we’re utterly disinterested as it asks, right from the start, that our pride agree to fall apart and be left behind.

But pride has become our life and so we’ve now no idea even how to live without it.

Because again, to us, it’s affliction to be humble. It’s affliction to be content with what we have and wish for nothing more. It’s affliction to even dress ourselves appropriately and carry ourselves accordingly. It’s apparently affliction to ask us to behave as if adults in public. It’s apparently an affliction to ask that we stop hating those around us. It’s apparently afflicting that He keeps suggesting that true freedom isn’t actually proven in our doing whatever we want to do but is rather a gift only ever appreciated by those who’ve spent a lifetime doing just that only to find that they’re so unhappy and without hope that they, having arrived at the end of their rope, are finally willing to entertain the idea of doing something else.

Yes, to change is afflicting. To learn is afflicting. To try is afflicting.

And so most here have stopped doing all the above.

We’ve stopped trying and settled for a way of life spent dying. All because it’s considered easier and safer and that only because it feels better unto a people so vastly enslaved to themselves that we literally seem as if we actually believe that our feelings matter more than our lives.

That our opinions are truth. That our preferences should always be placated. That we should always be pleased. That we deserve only good things. That bad things only happen to bad people, but that somehow there are no bad people, just some who are maybe confused. That we exist only to do whatever it is that we want to do and, in that, don’t deserve to ever endure the warnings given against it nor the promises of consequences incurred because of it.

All of which are lies from which we all need be delivered.

Which is set free.

Which is rescued.

Yes, we need to be rescued from what has become, in every way possible, a life lived as spiritual and emotional and mental retards who haven’t the slightest care nor concern about anything but ourselves.

Proven in that we apparently see everything we don’t like as a matter of affliction that we both don’t deserve and thus are justified in seeking to avoid.

We’re not.

May want to be, but friends, reality is going to one day prove that our wants never mattered near as much as His desires.

And hell exists, with all its fires, because there are those who, knowing His are higher and thus apparently harder, have settled for the lower and that in lives lived doing things that ought not be done and that with absolutely no interest in ever being set free from their doing thereof. Why? Because it’s fun, it feels good, it looks good, sounds good, seems good. Again, nearly all of life is anymore lived based almost completely on feelings.

And everything that doesn’t make us feel the way we want to feel (safe, comfortable, rich, popular, powerful), it’s all something we refuse.

Leaving us then prisoners mocking the One who’s standing there handing us the keys, rejecting Him simply because He has the audacity to challenge our belief that we’re already free.

All because to admit we’re not is perhaps the greatest affliction of all as it asks that we embrace a humility that, tragically, has to ask for help. That causes us to confess that we’re the ones that got ourselves into this mess. That inspires us to conspire against ourselves and who we’ve been, seeking somehow to opt for so much change that some of us have even had names changed.

Granted, not many have, but friends, that any have just goes to show there is another life to know in which who we’ve been cannot go.

And yeah, maybe it’s not worth going as it’s apparently only found beyond our admitting freedom is something we know nothing about as is done only inside crosses taken up and pride killed upon.

But the cold hard truth is that destruction comes for all of us.

We’re just then the ones tasked with deciding both how and when.

Indeed, we will all be afflicted by such things as humility and honesty and modesty and, yes, morality. Will such torment be endured in this life or the next? Will we fight that battle against ourselves and who we’ve become in this world, or will we be left to wage it when this world is gone and all hope along with it? Will we ever dare to seek He who offers to save while that offer is still a chance we can take?

Or will we only awake to it having been an offer we didn’t when our lives here are ended and eternity has begun?

With sadly our being turned away because we’d failed to be anything He was willing to confess He knew?

Friends, it’s good for us to be afflicted, to be challenged, to be changed. Why? Because He was. He was beaten, He was broken, He was even betrayed by those closest to Him. And, well, we’re called to share in Him. In the brutality. In the humiliation.

In the humility.

Why?

Because as hard and miserable and, yes, even scary and immensely painful as those things may well prove to be, they’re all stepping stones which pave the narrow path which leads to life.

And so yes, it’s good for us to be afflicted as, well, He proved that the point of this life was never to be comfortable but rather for our to be changed.

Most here will never agree to that as rather most here are convinced that they’re free and that fun and pleasure are the points and purposes of life itself. But again, time will prove that we’ve each but one reward. Maybe we should be vastly more careful as to where we spend it and upon what it’s spent.

For yeah, fun and pleasure and riches and fame are all pretty enjoyable. But friends, everything here ends. So I contend that we’re better off to embrace the misery now so that we can meet with mercy later as opposed to enjoying our pleasure now and saving the pain for after.

May not make this life all that fun or enjoyable, but the cross proves it was never meant to be.

This life is our test that’s meant to become our testimony. Let it then be one told of triumph over tragedy and the audacity to keep going even through misery.

Because He who is our Savior knows far more of that kind of life here than that spent in luxury and fame and comfort.

So again, please choose wisely what you win and when you lose.

For in truth, there’s far more than comfort on the line.

There’s hope and joy and, yes, even life too.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold