Day 4143 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:16 NIV

rejects the objectionable

Which is arguably the part which poses the most profound problem of all those waiting to be found within what is a faith that leads us forever away from everything that is objectionable as the same are what have long been quite possibly our greatest objects of affection. For the truth is that we haven’t merely come to somewhat enjoy some of the things that are only slightly displeasing to God. We’ve not sort of dipped the toe into sin, kind of just testing, playing around with it only now and then.

No.

We have all chosen to dive headfirst and headlong into what it is to die unto that life for which He created us to live, living then as if nothing at all of all that He intended and thus clearly desired for us to be. Indeed, as the Word puts it, we’ve all of us what is an obvious form of godliness having all of us been made in the image of the only God there is, but so too have we all denied the power, the purpose, the promise thereof in what’s been a direct rebuttal to everything He is and does and desires us to do and be.

Life here has found both you and me and everyone else that ever we’ll meet having done things, likely doing things still, that have what is a glaring sense of utter rejection of our Father, treating Him at best as if a stranger and at worst as our enemy.

And now we obviously may not see it that way as indeed the god of this age has blinded all such nonbelievers as all of us have indeed been, perhaps still are, so that we can’t see the obvious signs of God’s being alive and thus our being responsible unto Him for however we choose to live as will be weighed upon what He’s said a coming day in which, on which we’ll all be judged for all we’ve done. After all, we all seem to see that all we do is only everything we ought to because we’ve become entirely willing to measure what matters from what doesn’t via such emotions as fun or fear.

All of us always chasing endlessly the former as the latter seems only a ladder that leads us lower and lower away from the way of life we’ve come to love.

Which is the problem I mentioned above.

It’s that not merely have we come to like some things that God’s said aren’t right. We haven’t only barely become friends and fiends for blasphemy and disbelief. Our lives haven’t found us only slightly interested in learning to do wrong.

No. No, we’ve done so much so wrong that now wrong is in fact seen as right and our rights are only worried about how much wrong we can do without having someone or something there daring to tell us all we shouldn’t do.

These are our lives and we’re free to live them however we please.

Am I right?

Well, actually yeah.

At least kind of.

For indeed, we are living what are our lives to live and He’s seen fit to let us live them with what is a freedom that allows us to indeed do whatever it is that we see or deem or dream to be whatever it is that we want to do. We have the free will that all freedom is both founded on and fixated by. Problem is that, contrary to Scripture’s call, we’ve all used our freedom “to indulge the flesh”, and, in this, as too a “cover-up for evil”.

Something we can all hopefully see at least somewhat clearly within the many gruesome goings on going on around us every day anymore.

Alas it sadly seems as if such at least some cannot see as still we see that indeed we can still see that this world is in fact fulfilling Scripture itself in that many here are going from bad to worse in what is a world vastly deceived and practicing daily only the same: deceiving and being deceived. And what’s worse is that these days we see a world almost so enamored, enthralled, excited by it all that folks are welcoming the deception into their choice of life’s direction.

For at least some of the deception is now called ai and we’ve got folks even wearing sunglasses with this nonsense programmed in so that they can, I don’t really understand why, but apparently record their lives or use them to make note of what they need from the grocery store?

Indeed, to us it seems that even something such as thinking has become a bit too boring and so we’ve outsourced that kind of thing to they who happen to be the lowest bidder.

All because they’re apparently considered closer?

Probably because most of us seem to have yet accepted His death, burial and resurrection which were all undertaken so as to send forth the Holy Spirit as was meant to be sent to guide us into an ever-deepening understanding of all He’d said and all He did and all He says and does still through what is, at the very least, a Bible that proves endlessly alive and active even all these centuries after it was first written as it continues to change lives for the better.

How?

By opening our eyes to seeing all that’s objectionable both in this world and thus too in our lives thanks to our having lived them walking in step with them who still vastly deny Him who calls them to stop being fools and start walking by faith instead.

Something most consider akin to being basically dead as we’ve become so reliant upon our sense of sight that we can’t see that we’ve gone blind trying to find more of that life that’s lived running away from only the Light that seeks only to set us free from a life of darkness and captivity.

Yeah, oh the humanity!

No friends, oh the insanity.

Because the fact is that you’ve got to be so far from reality, from responsibility, from reason even to honestly see anything in or of this world that is worth anything at all. And yet, such is what it seems the vast majority still seem to see. And this has started becoming such a heartbreaking confusion for me that I find myself increasingly withdrawn from the world around me. Because I just don’t get it anymore.

Not any of it.

And what’s strange is that I know I once did as I once did all the normal things that most folks still do. I watched all the popular movies. I tuned in to see all the newest TV shows. I got all excited to run to the store and buy the new albums on release day. I did all the things! I even watched sports!

I hate sports.

I loathe professional athletic competitions as all I can now see within them is Rome.

Truly, “are you not entertained?”

No!

I’m not!

I’m not entertained by all this world finds entertaining. I’m not excited by all the junk this world is excited by. I just can’t bring myself to see any point or purpose in what seems a world pointed in the wrong direction on purpose.

All I see are distractions. All I recognize are the disasters. I see nothing but a world that flatters with fakery and loves still the same old mockery of everything good and decent.

Yes, I see a world picking up speed in their chosen descent away from everything holy and good and upright and honest and modest and meaningful.

And it sucks to watch!

Because every day it’s becoming more and more obvious where it leads as every day we’re shown more vile things that are being done, wanted or won by what is a world that thinks it’s winning a war simply because so many are losing the battle we’re supposed to fight against the flesh.

All because so many are still convinced that to deny the flesh is the only certain death.

Indeed, so many in this place are lost living this life in which all that matters in life is their feeling good or having fun or doing whatever else it takes to please the flesh. The flesh will in fact be the very last thing that the vast majority ever put to death as it will become a matter forced upon them at the end of what is this life in which we’ve all heard that call to come unto Him and take up our crosses.

Seeking to find with them and then nail upon them the losses we’ve lived for.

Such things as lust, pride, vanity, popularity even. For all of these things only keep us focused here, and that usually only on us or those who too cannot save us. And that’s something that all of us have done because, well, it’s what everyone else does and says too that we too should do. This world is absolutely certain that our lives are to be forever spent doing only whatever makes us feel good or look good or seem good and sound good to all those who also can’t tell anymore the difference between good and evil because they’ve allowed their lives to be played into the hand of the evil one.

Who, considering how it seems most have forgotten or simply chosen to live as if they never knew they always knew, seeks only to steal and kill and destroy and that whatever he can from whomever will allow him to all but utterly devour the entire outlook and purpose of their lives.

Both of which have been roaringly replaced with lies we know of as lust and greed and gluttony.

Or at least some know them as such things.

Alas, what seems to perhaps be the most heartbreaking of all realizations found by these eyes that He’s pried finally open is just how exceedingly narrow the path is that leads unto life and, yeah, just how few there are who seem to have even any hint of any interest in following it.

Because the simple fact of life down here is that most are living it for everything listed in lists like this.

To most all that seems to matter is, yeah, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and, oddly enough being June, the pride of life.

We literally have a month in which people celebrate pride!

And they do it having stolen God’s rainbow!!

Which seems an almost perfect illustration of just how low we can and will go in what is a life in which we seek only to know only ourselves and them pleased.

But friends, those were never the things that He called us to seek the pleasure of. In fact, He calls us to deny ourselves. To control ourselves. To hold ourselves to a higher standard. To embrace responsibility. To seek endlessly after modesty. To desire only honesty and to honestly hate all that isn’t any of the above. Yes, He tells us to hate that which is evil and to hold fast that which is good.

But again, this world clearly can’t tell the difference anymore having so blurred the line that once defined the difference.

And that line is the one drawn by that cross that He dragged along this ground up that hill toward His death.

Which is the narrow path that we’re called to follow if we hope to share in His finding of life everlasting.

We’ve just lost the patience for that. We’ve lost the courage for that. We’ve lost the humility that asks that we do indeed wait, that we do indeed suffer, that we really do embrace the change that we need to make inside our lives if our lives are to ever be welcome inside those gates.

What gates?

Those He created to sin and filth out of Heaven.

Problem then proven in that our lives down here are being lived currently still vastly in love with sin and filth.

Don’t believe me?

Turn on your tv. Go to the theater and watch a new movie. Hop in the car and give the radio a listen.

Know what you’ll hear, what you’ll see?

More than plenty of things that simply should not be.

You know, just the other night I saw this little video of this soccer coach passionately fighting to nip the bud of something his team of kids had done. I mean this guy was laying it down! And the topic of his talk was cursing, foul language. His point to them was that foul language is one of the laziest choices that a person can choose as we’ve all access to plenty of words that can convey the same meaning and message without being considered foul or offensive.

And with God’s incredibly patient help I’ve myself made great progress in what’s become a life in which I do agree.

I still slip up from time to time whenever I get frustrated or angry. I still let shamefully a bomb drop every distant now and then whenever life gets the better of me.

But, as you can tell hopefully, I have a high appreciation of the gift that is language and find that it’s worth the work and worry to always try and say something that isn’t so worldly.

In fact I hate foul language. It literally makes me cringe whenever I hear it.

And yet it’s increasingly accepted. Again, it’s in movies and tv shows. It’s included in the lyrics of songs trying to sound funny or seem hard. Truly, course language and filthy jokes and barroom humor and innuendo, they’re everywhere that we go.

And that’s just one example of how the world is so vastly different from what God intended for it to be, a fact proven in such places as Ephesians 4:29 which explicitly calls us to let no perverse speech pour from our lips but rather only that which is useful for the building up of those who hear it.

Same goes for our thoughts, our actions. Indeed, have you ever noticed how increasingly desensitized our culture has become to violence? That too is something that’s everywhere we look. Just a week or so ago the white house had a bunch of dudes punching each other in the face as part of a celebration of our nation!

We can’t get enough of the blood and gore!

What makes us think that God’s all excited to welcome us through those doors?

For He’s not a God of such chaos and confusion and delusion and destruction as we’ve become a people of. He isn’t given to perversity or immodesty or dishonesty. Rather He is honestly only everything holy, everything righteous, everything good and all that is decent.

We aren’t.

This world’s crumbling my friends. And not just structurally, though we can all drive through our every town and city and see more than plenty of signs of that kind of neglect too. But the most glaring issue is the neglect we’ve all chosen to elect out of everything from enjoyment to excitement. Indeed, we’ve willfully discounted God’s design for our lives and given them instead to living as if He’s dead and thus can’t possibly care as to what all we do.

For every day we all do things that I truly hope we know better than to do.

Problem is that it’s starting to seem as if knowing better either isn’t a thing or just still nothing that anyone cares about anymore.

And that’s why this world is passing away. That’s what we talked about a bit just yesterday. It’s that things have gotten so bad down here that God’s just had enough. Honestly, I truly don’t know how much more He’s going to prove willing to take. In fact, it’s pretty much to the point that every single morning I’m both surprised and disappointed to be here still. And that’s because I cannot believe that He’s still willing to give us another day in which we’ve all another chance to deny ourselves, turn from our sins and finally seek Him for a change.

And disappointed because, though it may sound and seem more than a little strange, I don’t like being here anymore.

Again, as I said earlier, all I see anymore are the heartbreaks and horrors of a way of life lived as if God isn’t there.

And I don’t care to see any more.

I’ve seen enough. I’ve had enough. I’ve done enough of all that’s wrong and though I daily try harder and harder to do better and better, still I fail. Still I fall short. Still I sin.

And I’m just tired of doing that to Him.

I’m tired of watching a world tear itself to pieces. I’m tired of finding peace only in pieces. I’m tired of the fighting, the filth, the foul language and fornication. I’m just sick to my stomach at what this world finds of enjoyment. And I know this because I feel it every single day. In fact, every single day it seems that He helps me to see something else that shouldn’t be whatever it sadly is. Every day I walk away from something else. Every day I leave behind something that I’d allowed into my life.

And I mind not the losses. I don’t care what I lose. I want only to lose all that I can so that I can fit through the eye of that needle having hopefully done well enough at walking at least somewhat close to in His shoes.

Not that I can as we’re not supposed to as He alone is the Savior.

But friends, we can at the very least endeavor to live out the rest of our days as those saved by the Savior. And we do that in being changed. In walking away from the world. In “coming out from among them”, or as Revelation puts it in one of God’s final requests, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.”

Because as bad as things are, they’re only going to get worse as this world willfully, excitedly drifts only further away from the Father.

We’re called to seek shelter under the wings of the same.

And, well, hopefully we can all tell that in this world there is already more than plenty from which we should be screaming, streaming, stealing into His shelter and unto His will.

Not many will.

But the things this world does because most won’t are all we should need to hear and see to know that the difference between both good and evil and thus here and Him is only increasing by the day.

Time to walk away from all that’s only falling away.

Because I just don’t know how much time we have left to do so.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold