Day 4132 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 14:33 NIV

welcomes the loss

Among the many oddities that are Christianity, which there are indeed many, one of the most glaring is this entirely unique feeling which I’ve felt along what’s been this walk that I’ve done my best to undertake behind He who undertook such a loss in order for my gain of everything. It’s this odd curiosity as to the necessity of changing the same: everything. And that’s because what we’ve all become is a people who neither change nor delight in curiosity, in wonder as rather the both seem matters of worry and woe.

At least as far as we know.

But that’s the oddity. It’s that this faith finds for us that we don’t. We don’t know. In fact, one of the strangest gifts given us in this faith spent behind He who gave His life in our place is that it brings with it this humility that all but violently inspires us to at the very least consider that we know less than we’ve long fought to suggest, and even then only agrees to ever there begin. Because the entirety of this experience that is salvation and the sanctification which comes only after, it proves forever, here at least, to be this thing ever-moving.

It does not stop. It does not finish. There is no line over which we’ll have perfected what is the Christian life. No, there’s always more to learn, thus more to know. There’s always something that we’ll come to know that takes the place of more we don’t. There’s even this kind of growth that comes at us only in those moments of such weakness and loss that we’re left finally holding nothing, which is basically where He needs us to be so that we can come to see that He is indeed all we need.

Just takes a while to get us there.

And that’s because, again, we’re a people who know not the value of change as we’ve spent a life learning the value of things. We don’t think in terms of what growth is worth because we know far better the worth of personal gain. And sure, growth is a gain of sorts, but we’re sadly of the sort that assume gain as something to be only measured in matters such as material or mammon. We don’t know how to add when the call is to subtract because, as far as we’ve come to understand, losing is the worst feasible way to gain anything.

Yet in Christianity we have this story of a Savior who came with the express intent to give everything, His very life, upon what was a sinner’s cross so as to pay the way, pave the way for all said lost to finally find that they’ve been found by He who again came down to give everything away inside of a grave into which He’s called us to come.

To many the whole deal seems dumb.

Technically the Scriptures posit that people consider it foolish. And true, from where we’re standing amongst our understanding, it is. For no, to a people who know only to seek in hopes of hoping to have, looking then for only ways to lose, leave behind, simply get rid of more and more things, it’s entirely too strange. It’s asinine even. For who in their right mind would want to find that said mind was willing to ever even consider the ridding one’s life of what said one has come to like so much as to have, house, hold in their life?

That’s how life works here!

It’s truly the only thing it seems as if we’re able to know, comprehend, understand or ever accept. For we’ve become of this opinion that where we are is always supposed to be the same as the place which holds then everything which would, could, maybe even should amount to life’s very meaning. I mean, this is where we are living what is in fact a life! And so it does just seem, feel entirely right to assume or believe that everything here that is either alive with us or aligned beside us is thus for us to have, to hold, to hope for the ability, the opportunity to enjoy.

For this is the only place we’ve ever been and there’s in fact so much here that we have come to enjoy so much that, to us, it’s anymore just hard to imagine that there could be anything else that could matter more.

I mean we’ve an entire globe to gain!

There is here a truly limitless amount of things we could have, that we could hear, that we could see, that we could be. Just for a quick example, there are so many restaurants in New York City alone that, were you to eat at a different place every single day, it would take you 48 years to try them all! 17,000 restaurants in one city alone. 48 years worth of eating at a new place every day. And the average life expectancy is somewhere between 75-80 years.

That’s over half of a person’s entire lifetime spent just eating different places!

There’s an endless amount of things we can do, see, be, try, learn, have, hold.

And yet here we have this Word which asks of us such questions as what would it profit a man to gain all the world and yet forfeit his soul in doing so.

It’s stuff like this that makes what His Word says seem so antithetical to life!

Because, having been always surrounded by more restaurants we can try in a lifetime, more things than we could ever possibly afford, more experiences than any of us have the time to experience in what are more places than we could ever possibly visit, this world is, to us, endless. There is always something else to want, always thus something more to have.

We cannot run out of things to do and places to go and even people to be inside this place.

And in this verse Jesus tells us plainly that whosoever won’t walk away from all of it, the same cannot be His disciples.

That those who don’t give away everything cannot learn from Him anything. Tells us in another place that those who either can’t or won’t agree to take up their crosses daily are not worthy of Him. Again, as we discuss all the time, told that one guy to go and sell all he had and give to the poor and then to come and follow Him.

Why?

Because what He has is more.

And that because what He’s done is more.

And He did it all because who He is is more.

Because He is the Way, the Truth, the Life and nobody goes unto the Father except through Him.

No exception. No other Name given under Heaven. No other gate but that which is the eye of the needle through which we camels are called.

Why camels?

Because we’re pack animals. We’re used to carry all for which we want and worry. Our lives are anymore lived as they always were by all of those before, just lost endlessly in what is this sea of so much to do, see, be that we cannot become anything but interested in having or experiencing more of this world’s seemingly having everything that anyone could ever want.

We are lost in a world in which everyone is lost wanting something else, chasing something else, holding something else that means so much to them that they can’t see Him. Because He’s not here. His Spirit is. His Word is. His truth is. But He’s already left everything here behind within that time in which He came and died. Which is, again, what He intended to do so as to both help us see the sins we’d been living in, the cost of them all, and, perhaps more importantly, show us how to be done with them ourselves and trade that way of life for one spent dying to this world so that we too might share in His new life not lived here.

Do you get that?

That He, Jesus, being the example we’re called to follow and the Teacher from whom we’re expected to learn as such is what disciples do, He came to this world to lose His life in this world. He came to teach us for a while so as to help us learn what it remains clear few if any know or care to understand, and all of that work only to finish it upon the cross that He took in our place.

A cross that emptied Him of His life here and thus too His chance to experience, enjoy, seek after and hopefully then have all that is here.

For one who isn’t here thus cannot have all that is.

Problem again is that we are here and we can.

Now granted, depending upon such things as location and vocation, we may not be able to find or afford everything here. Again, it would take us 48 years to eat at every stop in NYC, and, as for me, I can’t find any reason to want to visit New York anyway and so it would take me far longer! But the point is that it’s impossible for us to actually have or see everything that’s here for us to see and/or have.

There’s just too much.

And that is the problem because, to us, too much isn’t a thing. We know not limitations. We have no hindrances when it comes to certain things. All of us have those things inside our lives that we can’t seem to get enough of. Certain foods maybe. Or perhaps your favorite music and movies that you can watch or listen to over and over again without ever getting tired of them. Or maybe such things as sunsets, walks on the beach, the adventures taken through the stories told in old books, the learning of new skills or conspiracies.

All of us have an endless ability to prove fascinated by so many things that are here with us inside of this place.

And Jesus tells us that if we won’t walk away from all of it, literally to the very point of hating our own lives, that we cannot really be His disciples.

That we cannot follow Him if we don’t do as He told that rich guy to and get rid of all we have.

Why?

Because all we have here is but to us a reason to want to stay.

And this just isn’t the place we’re promised to stay.

Granted, for a while we will as for a while we have and, well, as of today here we still are. Indeed, all of us are going to live an entire lifetime inside this world. Now each of us will live different lives while we’re here. Some will experience more than others. Some will have more than others. Some will then lose more than others. But the overall promise is that which Job seems to have understood in the very first chapter of his book:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.”

We brought nothing with us and we’ll take nothing the same. We are all here literally aimed at what is, for now yes, an empty grave.

But friends, one day it will be filled with everything we ever were, our every hope for all we’d had, our every want for everything more that we didn’t by then get that chance to have. Psalm 146:4: “When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.”

To nothing.

Indeed, oddly enough I watched a short little video just the other night of this guy talking about this very promise. He said that, as it seems we either fail to understand or just fail to live as if we should, that very next second after we’ve here breathed our last, everything here won’t matter anymore. We’re all one breath away from everything in this place meaning nothing.

And yet we live as if it means everything.

We do this in the time we give to it. We do it in the importance we place upon it. We do it in the days, weeks, years even that we spend chasing it, craving it, carving it even. All of us, again, we have so many things inside this life lived inside this place that we enjoy, that we appreciate, that we hope to have the ability to enjoy and appreciate someday. For me I want so badly to have an older truck again so as to help my family more and do better with my little lawn care business too.

Because those things matter to me.

Bible says maybe they shouldn’t.

Jesus says that so long as they do I’m not able to be His disciple.

And the oddity that is this journey that I’ve come to realize is truly a most delightful decent into madness, it’s that I get it. I understand it.

I agree!

Because any moment spent thinking about what I have of what is here is a moment not spent thinking about what isn’t here that I thus don’t know how to want as much as what I give that moment to instead. Any time that I spend watching videos online about whatever rubbish I’ve grown to find of interest, it’s a moment not spent reading His Word and there better understanding His way, His will. Any hour that I spend working out, which I love to do as it helps me in so many ways, mentally, emotionally, physically obviously, it’s an hour that I could have spent doing something to strengthen my faith.

And indeed, I often find that the two seem at least plausibly capable of happening simultaneously.

But yet then too His Word reads that whilst physical training is of some value, training in the Spirit holds means for this life and the next.

Even these posts, something that has even caused me to wake up entirely too early, something I always hated having to do, even these are of but limited purpose.

That one hit me the other day in what is a thought that I’ve not thought enough about since it dawned on me.

It’s that even the things that we’re doing that do seem to matter, the things we do hope are right, the things that do improve us or better our lives, even they mean nothing!

It’s utterly mind-blowing!

The truck I’m trying to save for, it’s worthless. The stuff hanging on my wall that I’ve collected over the years, favorite music and such, it means nothing. The lawn mowing business is pointless. The plans I have are empty. The goals I have are hollow. The things I know don’t know anything about everything I don’t. Literally everything that I have or do or am in this world, it’s just that.

It’s in this world.

Jesus came to steal into the grave so as to call us all into the same so that we can share in His laying down and thus losing of a life.

And told us plainly that whoever won’t do it cannot then be His disciple. Can’t be His follower. Isn’t worthy of Him.

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27, same passage as this one.

One of the hardest messages in all of Scripture for us to understand.

Because I love my family. Hope we all do. But yet it kind of seems as if He’s telling us not to?

No. He’s telling us that this journey will cost us everything. And that, because of that, those who aren’t willing to welcome whatever the cost may prove to be, they’re the same as who won’t then be able to take it. Won’t be able to afford it. If we’re not willing to walk away from anything and everything that’s keeping us from walking with Him, then no, we’re neither worthy of Him nor do we seem as if we care to be.

And that’s the point.

It’s not that He literally wants us to walk around hating everything and everyone. He doesn’t ask us to run up and punch our dads in the face or stop talking to our mothers. No. In fact His Word demands the opposite, that we honor our parents, that we work hard to provide for our families, that we take pride in putting others ahead of ourselves and seek always for anything that may benefit those in the family of Christ.

But it’s all lower than Christ as He is the Head.

Thus it’s all about priorities. Nothing in this world nor within our lives lived herein, nothing can be allowed to become more important than Him. Why? Because if it does then all it’ll do is take time, effort, intention away from Him, thus preventing us from growing in Him.

And that is the only thing that will matter in that very next second after we’ve breathed here our very last breath:

Did we know Him?

Will He admit that He knows us?

Or did we spend our last days of our entire worldly lives focused on other things, worried over other things, wanting only other things?

I heard this little quote a long time ago, so long ago that I don’t know when I heard it, where to find it or even who said it. But it’s this:

God’s not against us having things. He’s against things having us.

And there’s such a life-changing difference defined in that. It’s a shift of perspective that achieves a radically altered understanding. One again which comes down to priorities. What matters most to us? What means most to us? Are there things here that do matter, that should matter? Yeah. Should they ever matter more than our walking with Christ and living the life He’s called us to live?

No.

And that’s the message that I believe He’s trying to help us see here. That those who aren’t willing to prove they’re ready to walk away from anything at any time, the same are then unable to offer unto Him all of them. We have to be willing to welcome the loss of whatever He helps us see that we need to lose, to let go of, to leave behind.

Why?

Because He will.

Trust me, I’ve spent days thinking back on some of the many things that I’ve changed or lost or given up on trying to have, see, be. I literally cannot count the ways that my life has changed, nor then how many things are in it now that weren’t years ago, nor the things that did make up my life that I haven’t even thought about in the same amount of time.

Because He’s always working, always doing a new thing, always helping us to see, through such sorrows as shame and regret, things that we need to get rid of.

Will we though?

For the simplicity of this faith is that if we don’t, then we’re clearly not learning what we need to be learning from He who came to teach us how to get ready to leave this world.

Make no mistake, there’s nothing about this that’s easy. In fact a lot of it won’t make sense. But that kind of proves the point in that even our understanding can get in the way of what He’s asking us to do.

Question is will we let it?

Or will we let it go?

My point is that Jesus came to show us the cost of the hope that is that home that is in Heaven. And He left this world through that grave that we will all enter one day to help us see that nobody gets out of here alive. Rather all of us will lose everything we have here, bodies included! So then what are we doing still worrying about anything here?

He came to turn our attention elsewhere and to help us realize the cost found in doing so.

And that cost is everything. And that’s because everything here is nothing but a risk of our being distracted. And eternal life should mean too much to allow that to happen.

Does it? Sure. But that again just serves the point.

We all have things to let go, to stop worrying about, to find that willingness to lose if and when He asks us to.

And the simple fact is that one day He will ask us all to lose everything here.

But are we yet ready, willing, able to offer the only answer that He should hear?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold