Day 4137 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 2:12 NIV

sees success inside surrender

Which is in every way possible nothing we’ve ever been able to see before. And that because for all our lives we’ve seen success inside only, well, success. And yet success has always, to us, meant something gained. It’s been a matter measured in material wealth or personal health or societal hope. It’s a dream for something more, usually something had that we had not before. Success has always been assumed within the substance of excess, of extra, of excitement and every outermost extremity of all the above that we could ever possibly come to assume we’d love.

And we so clearly love not losing for within the loss of something we see nothing of success.

Nor often of even reason.

Because, again to us, so too does reason usually rely upon our being rewarded as we’ll not do anything without ensuring that we achieve or obtain something within the doing thereof. We even have all these little cultural colloquialisms in which we all but constantly express such common configurations and figurings. Such as that well-heard and still often-used asking as to ‘what’s in it for me?’ Granted, we don’t come right out and always ask it necessarily.

But you can bet that we think it.

And we do because, well, I think deep down in those place that clearly don’t show our considerations through actions undertaken that so often speak only to their contrary, I think we know the value of such things as our time, effort and energy. I think we all know that whenever we give something of ourselves to something or someone else, it’s then something of us that can’t be given to another something or someone. Sure, take time for example. That’s a sample that’s always proven something we seem to easily assume we’ve always still plenty of.

A point proven in how much of it we still waste upon things that we know mean nothing and can only then ever hope to accomplish the same.

These days even this has names. We call it doom-scrolling, catfishing and even ghosting. All of which rely on us pouring effort into what’s basic fakery and distraction. And yet we do them because we’re now so used to them that we think them somehow evidence of our success.

Because at least we manage to not realize both how bored and boring we really are!

And that’s even enough to prove something of success unto us. Just not being bored. Not having to do something we don’t want to do, like think our own thoughts. Not having to embrace responsibility in something such as a relationship that we just disappear from without any reason or even response. For indeed, such is the people that we’ve all come to be. We just keep moving. Every single day finds us doing a million different things all in the effort to both look like our lives matter and to gather the gains that will help prove they do.

Such as fans and followers.

Truly, we’ve come to measure our reality in such gob-smacking ways!

And that mostly because most of them remain God-forsaking ways as well.

And, well, that’s basically what Christ came to so put an end to that He chose the tomb from which to ultimately finish His work. Which is itself then something that we so clearly do not understand and thus many here refuse to even attempt to comprehend. And that’s because, again, to us, the grave is the last place we’ll ever go in life. So final in fact that it’s the one place in which life ends and the rest of whatever we do or don’t believe in then begins.

Or doesn’t, depending again upon what you may or may not believe in.

But again, among all the issues facing our failed community, and we’ve of them more than plenty x3, we find perhaps most glaring of all that aforementioned affinity for finding something of gain or value within everything we agree to do, to try, to believe in.

Why?

Because we’ve become widely convinced, both as a culture and personally as well, that life itself may actually consist inside an abundance of possessions. Or an abundance of relationships. Or an abundance of experiences. Or an abundance of plans made to experience things with those relationships we don’t just disappear from. Indeed, some of our main hopes in life have become such things as taking trips with our friends, upon which we usually buy little knickknacks and souvenirs to remain us later of the fun we had once.

Because that’s what matters to us. Because fun itself is a gain of sorts to a people who enjoy such things as sports and movies and never moving on to seek for more than mere entertainment. Truly friends, it’ll one day be seen that amongst our greatest failures is found our astounding ability to stagnate and thus grow stagnant. We love nothing more than staying in place amongst all our possessions and gains.

And plans to gain more possessions as there just seems always some new something that we just can’t imagine the horror of our having to try to go on living without.

And that’s because we’ve forgotten what it is to do without. We don’t know what it is to refuse ourselves something we really think we’d like or enjoy. We probably can’t remember the last time we told ourselves ‘no’. Honestly, we all live like kids staring down the candy rack in the checkout line at the store. Daily we beg our wallets to agree to just let us have the very sum of everything we want.

Something we’ve done for so long now that we know not what no is.

We don’t understand how to deny ourselves. We don’t know what it means to restrain ourselves. We haven’t had any practice in controlling ourselves in perhaps years at this point. Rather we’re all those spoiled brats that we used to look at oddly wondering how their mom wasn’t beating the fire out of them for throwing their little tantrums because momma said no to that bag of m&m’s.

Yet we’re the ones who now throw the tantrums. And we do so whenever life goes even slightly out of tune. Just the other day I spent the better part of a couple hours all out of sorts over some passing remark made that I didn’t understand the basis of. Literally lost a portion of my life to all these negative thoughts I thought inside over something that someone said that I didn’t like the sound of or understand the need for.

That’s what we do!

We are so lost inside this personal estimation as to the necessity of our life’s perfection that we spend our every waking moment worried only about ensuring that everything plays accordingly.

And we freak whenever it inevitably doesn’t.

All because we think we’ve got it figured out and, more problematic to be sure, that within our figuring we’ve found no room for anything hard, anything scary, anything that even pretends to not offer us something or at the very least not ask something of us.

We basically just want to be left alone in our little worlds in which everything goes exactly how we want it to go.

Truly, we’ve become a people who seem ever-convinced that we’re owed something. That life should cater to our every desire. That other people should always do the same. That everyone should only say everything that we like to hear. That nobody and nothing should ever ask anything of us other than whatever little it is that we’ve already begrudgingly determined we’ll give.

And then comes along this Jesus fella asking us to basically, no, literally give all we have away and then spend out the rest of our days following Him, who in case we forgot, told that other dude that He had no place to lay His head. Yeah, He basically wants us to live as if already dead and that unto what’s apparently then entire substance of life here where we’ve already learned how to live one.

Quite successfully mind you.

And indeed, our success is anymore proven so easily as seeing all the things we have. Just look at all the trophies we’ve won and trinkets we’ve found and this awesome collection of tickets we bought for all the trips we took to all those place we’ve been! Truly, we have done some living and so we must thus know well how to do it!

Alas that’s but one side of but one version of it.

And that seen from always only our own perspectives and opinions.

Thus leading us right back to what’s pretty much our own little world in which everything revolves around us.

Problem is that that world doesn’t really exist. In fact, get this, I don’t think all we have nor all we want really exists. I don’t even think time is something that has to be whatever it is. Rather I think we’ve come to create all these ideas and ideals out of nothingness. Don’t get me wrong, I have stuff. And yeah, there’s other stuff I want. Want a truck really bad as I know it would both help with my lawn mowing business and too my motorcycle-riding dad whenever the weather turns bad and he needs a better/safer way to work.

But the point I’m trying to make comes down to perspective.

We’ve allowed so many things to come to mean so very much that our lives are destined to be perpetually unhappy, always perceived as empty, thus us left always wanting something, always thinking we need something, always insisting that we get something in return or response for everything we agree to do. It’s again all we know to do as this world has taken such hold of us that nearly our every hope is only to hold more of it.

And yet the grave tells us that our lives themselves were meant to fit within it but for a moment.

And maybe it’s the promised brevity or perhaps the gravity of knowing we’re leaving. But whatever the cause or confusion, the truth is that nearly everything we’re doing is being always done against the Son and the violent simplicity of His calling us to lay down what all is temporary as we instead turn our eyes and minds and hearts and lives unto seeking for life eternally.

Which is undeniably a greater gain than the sum of everything we could ever have here.

Issue is that seeking for that promise does demand our basically getting rid of everything we have had here, or hope to have here.

But where I think the request breaks down is inside our minds as are anymore so completely confused and uncertain about, well, everything if we were to ever be honest. And that’s because we can’t seem to separate His asking us to separate ourselves from wanting the world with our having still to actually live within the world. We seem to assume salvation as something that will just eventually lead us to sitting alone in a field in the middle of nowhere looking always at the sky with nothing around us and not even a sack lunch with which to feed ourselves.

That’s the extremes that we go to with pretty much everything.

But friends, it’s never been that He asks us to have nothing, to appreciate nothing. It’s that there needs to always remain this list of priorities from the top of which He never moves. Nothing here should ever be allowed to be seen of greater gain nor more importance than He is. And that’s because there is nothing here that is of greater gain nor more importance than salvation is!

Because we’re not getting out of here alive, our fear of death knows that full well. But so too we’re not getting into Heaven without His help and all He’s done to give it.

Problem is that all He’s done to give it asks that we make room for our to better understand what He did and why He did it.

And we simply cannot do that so long as we live in love with what is a world that we all have to leave behind.

That’s what I think we’re missing.

Because in a life in which we’re all of this mind that always thinks that we need more, we’re thus unsure as to how we’re supposed to uphold the call to take up crosses and start learning to consider things losses whenever compared to the surpassing glory of knowing He who is both God and Savior. We don’t know how to get rid of things. Don’t believe me? Tell me, why do we have so many storage lockers? Why can’t we get our cars in our garages? Why do our attics have more stuff inside them than we have inside our houses?

It’s because we’re hoarders!

We keep hold of everything, assuming always that we might need it someday.

What if we don’t?

What of all the things that we’re holding onto, even plans and dreams and things, what of them could we not only live without but honestly live better without? Again, I truly believe that that’s what we’re missing. We see His calling for the asking to walk away from everything we’ve ever liked or enjoyed or hoped so hard to finally have.

But friends, it’s more so walking away from every chain of slavery that’s held us in bondage to all that’s basically garbage.

Honestly, we take everything so very personally that we see His request to humbly follow Him for all that such a walk will ask we walk away from. What about everything we get to let go of? What about every weight that it means we don’t have to carry anymore? What about every worry that we can stop worrying about? What about all the fears we’ll start to forget? What about all the failures we both won’t have to feel ashamed of anymore and all those we may not even find going forward?

We think of repentance for the price of admission but never the amount of freedom that it affords!

And that’s why so many are so adamant to continue living lives that just absolutely refuse it.

We are convinced that we’ve entirely too much to lose, so convinced that we won’t even agree to let go of all the things that we don’t want anymore. No, we’ll pay actual money to drive across town and store the junk in a metal closet so that we can visit it whenever should we miss it.

Friends, what is there to miss of a life that’s been an absolute mess?

Granted, we probably can’t it for what it is as, well, we’ve also got this really big pride problem in which we’re always convinced that we do nothing wrong and thus make no messes nor mistakes. But what then of regret? What then of shame? If ever we’ve felt either of those things then it’s fair to say that we’ve not gotten everything right in life.

Wouldn’t that be a great feeling to walk away from?

That’s what He gives us the opportunity to do. To move. To change. To let go of everything that is in any way only holding us down or keeping us back from the freedom for which He shed His blood for our to have!

Do we still not get that?

That our salvation meant so much to Him that He suffered for us to have it? That the promise of Heaven is worth so very much that He endured crucifixion just so we might come upon the curiosity as the worth of it? That our forgiveness was so very needed thanks to what have been then lives that need it that He died for us to get it?

How then do we not get it if not because we just don’t want it nor think we need it?

Again, let’s approach it from one of our culture’s favorite questions:

‘What’s in it for me?’

Well, how about life eternally? How about grace and mercy overflowing? How about a love so miraculous that it did the impossible and left the grave empty? How about kindness and compassion and a kind of understanding that we sadly cannot anymore even begin to seem able to understand?

How about hearing Him say “well done”?

“Welcome home”?

“Enter your rest faithful servant”?

That’s just it though. What is it that we can rest from if we continue living lives in which we do nothing? What can the reward be in lives so filled with everything that we ever wanted? What more can we hope to gain if we’ve already gained everything that means anything to us?

He died on that cross to help us reconsider what does matter to us and why it means so much.

Again, it’s not that He wants us to spend out the rest of our days sitting naked in a field staring at the sky while starving and dehydrated.

He just wants us to reconsider what we’re eating and why.

What matters most in your life? What is it that means the most to you? What is honestly your greatest hope? What would amount to a life well-lived by the time this one’s run out?

Because one day it will.

Question is will it be by then filled with only everything we have to then leave behind? Or will it be filled instead with the joy we’ve found in Him, thanks to our letting go of everything else, felt alongside a sense of relief in knowing where we’re going?

Friends, my point is that He died that we might live a life. And yeah, that seems weird to us as we’re all pretty sure we’re already living one.

But are we?

Is this life really? All this wanting stuff and having stuff and loving it all so very much that we loathe the idea of losing it, letting it go, leaving it behind?

Again, one day we’ll all do all the above.

His obvious hope for us is that we have something else to move on to whenever we do.

Do we yet share that hope or rather is ours still held on this side of that hole?

Yes, He asks that we walk away from some things. Many of them may prove things we really, really like. But friends, in Him we also get to move on from all those things that we really don’t like. We get to leave fear behind and lose the arrogance that comes with pride. We get to live a hopeful life that’s filled with hope for unending life!

What could be better than that?

Look, I know that we’re all afraid of letting go of all the things we’ve learned to enjoy. But friends, in Him our understanding of enjoyment changes. Our understanding of meaning changes. Our understanding of life changes. It slowly becomes about what we have ahead rather than what we’ve held around.

And that’s a really big change. And yeah, that can be scary to a people who avoid all change at all costs. But friends, what if we thought about it not in terms of what we have to lose but rather what we get to lose? Little shift. Smaller change.

Same outcome.

And that’s freedom. Freedom from our mistakes. Freedom from our failures. Freedom from our fears.

Freedom to live a life that means more than just what we have inside of it.

All because if we share in His entering the grave, so too do we share in His walking out of it.

And again, what could be better than that? Does it ask surrender? Yeah. Does it require repentance? Yes. Are those things both incredibly hard? Absolutely.

But the promise wouldn’t be so amazing if it were easy.

So please stop looking at what He asks you leave behind and start considering life in terms of all you get to let go. May not help much at first. But while we may learn slow, even slow growth is better than what we’re used to!

Because while we may be used to winning the world, one day we’ll find that that only leaves us having to lose the same. Let us then lose it today so that we’re ready to go home whenever He says it’s time.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold