Day 4145 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 15:19 NIV

hears healing in their hatred

Because it’s entirely easy to see what makes this world happy. For indeed, down here such things as happiness, agreement, interest and acceptance are anymore so flimsy and faked that it feels as if they no longer mean a thing. And that’s simply because they’ve been allowed to become matters that mean something different to everyone. All of us have taken it upon ourselves to define a life that always sells only this idea of our being the ones who determine alone what’s good and what’s not, what right is and what it isn’t, even going so far as to mix up our own version of truth served with a side of insisting others just play along.

And we have.

And we did because we thought that that’s what love would do. That it was supposed to seek of highest priority the comfort, the enjoyment, the approval that we know so well that everyone in this world wants so much. And that’s something that’s been made dangerously clear to us. Indeed, this society tells us all of us every single day of all the things that everyone seems to want and wishes always to hear. The world has made it perfectly clear what all is to be considered acceptable and, in this, what more simply isn’t.

Problem is that we follow the One who never was, presently isn’t and honestly never will be.

All because of all He said.

Indeed, this world has become so fond of these little wars of words won in worry and want that we wanted only to concern ourselves with the many perfect offenses found within the messages He brought. Didn’t really mind the things He did as, well, healing makes a lot of sense in what is a world that cannot deny the hurting. We can see people suffering in the midst of such miseries as physical maladies and mental unravelings. We can witness with our own eyes what it is like inside those lives of those who are blind, those who are deaf, those who are weak, those who are lost.

This world carries its wounds clearly.

And so we hate not the actions that Christ undertook in such outcomes of the blind seeing again and the deaf being able to listen in to conversations to which they’d been strangers and aliens just seconds before. In fact, many here still seek fervently for such healing as is hoped for in such miracles needed as the curing of cancer and the setting free of addicts from their addictions.

No, no the greatest of His afflictions as was, is afflicted upon us, insisted upon is, it’s the brutality of the message He brought as it bought not any concern as to what our spiritual laxity and laziness wanted to hear. Rather He told us what He knew we needed to hear as, well, freedom doesn’t wait within making someone comfortable in their lives lived as slaves!

Freedom is instead only held in helping someone to see the chains they wear and where chains have kept them held, from whom said chains have hindered them become.

We don’t like that because we’ve become slaves who love our chains. We love the many comforts we find in a way of life that we can’t see as going all that bad. We adore our many appreciations for the many more things for which we’ve come to such an affinity. Indeed, we find daily some new something or someone that says or does something that offers us the chance to become someone happier where we are as whoever we’ve become than we’d become the day prior.

This world daily stokes the fire that inspires us to stay only where and who we are.

And we all welcome that wanting of such little movement because movement is hard and that which is hard invites risk. And we’re anymore so adverse to risk that we’d rather reverse course and flee from change than to endure that life lived without chains. In fact I am roundly convinced that the vast majority of people alive would honestly rather die doing what they’re doing than to do something new and live longer.

A fact soon to be proven when the clouds part and forever starts.

For the fact is that unto anyone who has heard of Christ, the same then knows the change that He came to make in our lives. And no, it’s not fun to hear. Doesn’t make us feel very good. Definitely doesn’t do anything in the way of inspiring us to stay who we are as He tells us we are sinners who’ve thus opted for a life earning the living that is death as is defined as the wage that all sin wins. Yes, He tells us that we’re going to die and spend forever not merely dead but wishing we were.

That’s what the whole “weeping and gnashing of teeth” thing is talking about.

It’s that the decidedly more detrimental outcome of this existence as is held in hell’s eternal punishment will find, according to another promise that most probably aren’t very fond of, many in such misery over opportunities missed to miss the misery that they’ll rather spend eternity basting in that is the endless realization as to the stupidity of not only their chosen rebellions but even more so their audacity to refuse to turn from them and accept simply His free gift of mercy.

Yes, hell will be so brutal not because of the heat or the pain but rather because of the internal torment met in realizing that all Christ was trying to do was to help us find such gifts as peace and freedom and comfort and healing but that it was chosen to hate Him simply because He gave them in between words that didn’t sound right to lives being lived wrong.

Lives in which most are still asking God only to leave them alone.

Hell the home of everything then that everyone who so asks is asking for as God will indeed remove Himself from the vicinity and allow folks to spend forever, all of eternity, as far as they long wanted to be, asked to be, begged to be from Him and all He is and is still offering.

Things people refuse to understand because, again, He says mean things.

And, well, we know what this world insisted upon Him because of all He did.

And, well, yet another promise He chose to deposit in His Word is that one which reads that since this world hated Him, so too shall they hate those who do as He’s called us all to. For if we chase behind the line of Christ, taking up daily our crosses and plastering them with all the losses of the lost life He helps us to see that we had come to live, we will then become what are but reflections of all the inspections that His promises and parables presented unto a people who now, as then, hate more than anything having to hear.

No, tell us pleasant things. Tell us that we’re doing good. Tell us only about how brave we are to live our lives according to our truth. Tell us that good things await us in what is a life that we’ve designed to go always only our way. Yes, tell us only those things which make us happy, help us feel good, convince us that we are good.

That’s all this world wants. To be coddled. To be commended. To be rewarded in the form of praise and applause for what are, again, lives being lived lost unto the power and dominion of the devil and the doing then of his bidding, which if you didn’t know and haven’t heard, is to steal and kill and destroy. Yes, our adversary prowls still around seeking anyone whom he’s yet to have devoured.

But to tell this world that he does so in the form of comfort, of enjoyment, of pleasure and popularity, you be better served to sever your own head as this world will, as Calvary contends, insist you dead.

Yes, this world hates the truth which the Bible speaks. This world hates the message that the Gospel brings. This world hates then anyone and everyone who lives accordingly thus doing according to all that's written within! And, well, that’s a pretty big problem then because part of the purpose is for all of us who have been saved to go into all the world and tell everyone else that we have been saved in what is a testimony complete with tales of all from which we had been saved, what it took to secure said salvation, who saved us via the doing of what needed done to win such freedom, and, yeah, suggestions as to their personal consideration as to the widespread need thereof of all the above.

And that held by all.

Indeed, we are here to speak unto the truth which sets captives free.

Problem is that captives can only become interested in their being set free if at first they’re able to see their captivity.

And that’s the issue!

People don’t want to hear that they’re slaves. People don’t want to be told of their mistakes. People live entire lives thinking mostly that they don’t make any mistakes and so whenever this Word comes along which takes that idea and flips it on its head, telling them plain that if they don’t change then they’ll end up dead and that forever, that is just a nonstarter for most. Rather the message of the cross remains foolishness to those who are perishing because, well, this world has people convinced that either they don’t have to perish or, at the very least, nothing much really happens when they do.

No, most people are still at least fairly certain that upon the final close of their life’s curtain, they just slowly disintegrate into dust.

That’s the grand hope of most!

That when they die they’re just dead.

Makes it easy to see then why so many live this life trying to have as much fun and friendship, hope and happiness as they possibly can, and that then within whatever they possibly can. Yes, this world runs on this drug of doing whatever may please someone. If it makes you feel good, do it until it doesn’t! And then do something else that does. That is literally the overall approach to life being undertaken by almost the entirety of humanity. Just a nonstop seeking for the sum or substance of something that makes someone feel good.

Leaving then our feelings to be our gods and our lives then offered as daily sacrifices unto the idea that we needn’t sacrifice anything, deny ourselves anything, miss out on anything that the masses are more than willing to say and show that we too should approve and enjoy.

Yes, keeping up with the Joneses means more to most than keeping up with the Jesus.

Because the Joneses have a nice house, a fancy car, a trip planned for this fall and the money to afford it all. They’re living the “American Dream”. A dream dreamed for things that exist only inside this world and that only because so too do we and, well, why not agree to a dream for a thing that can be found where we are? Why not seek for ways to convince ourselves that the best of life is within sight? Why not rewrite our plans whenever things go wrong? Why not come up with our own truth so that we needn’t suffer through the humility offered us by the real one?

Indeed, why not find so much enjoyment in our ability to deny that we’re living wasted, worthless, worldly lives that we seek then only to keep living these wasted, worthless, worldly lives?

After all, not only is nearly everyone else doing it but they straight up hate with a vengeance anyone who isn’t. They hate anyone who dares say anything derogatory about it. They will literally kill anyone who offers any evidence as to the worthlessness of it!

Again, we all know what they did to Jesus!

And yet we still somehow seem to think that we can follow Him, learn from Him, lean on Him and not be hated by them who won’t.

How is that supposed to work?

Look, I get that we’re all pretty new to this whole idea of being hated. I mean I personally remember my younger years spent doing the things, saying the things, believing the things that everyone around me did so that I felt that I better fit in. Because we don’t want to be alone. We don’t want to be left out. We don’t wish to be the ones who aren’t wanted or welcome.

Problem is that we’re seeking for such things as acceptance and the approval upon which it’s based within the wants and wishes of a world which remains locked in enmity against the God who holds the keys to eternity.

Drawing then the line that we ourselves determine upon which side we’ll live our lives.

Sadly most choosing to stand with the world as doing so is sure to bring the best of life here. For going along with the world and doing all they do, saying all they make clear they all want to hear, it will win the welcome. It will find the friendships. It will achieve the affluence and influence that all of us want so deeply to have. But why do we want it all so very bad? Why do these things mean so much to us?

Is it not because we all want our lives to matter? To know that our being here meant something? That we accomplished something worth accomplishing while here we were?

And, well, what’s of apparently more worth than social acceptance and worldly applause? What feels better than our joining together with those who tell us that our pleasure is all that matters? What could accomplish quicker our feeling better about ourselves than our staying exactly who we’ve become?

That’s why we all hate change so much.

And, well, that’s why this world hates Christ so much. It’s because He came to tell us that not only do we need to change but in fact that if we don’t we’re going to not only die but we’ll do it twice! And, even worse, that the second death will last forever.

No ending. No finish. No slow disintegration back into nothing but the dirt of this earth.

Because He also tells us that this world and its passions, its pursuits, its prizes and promotions and power and popularity and pride and production and progression, it’s all ending!

He told us that life as we know it is to be changing whether we like it or not, whether then we’re ready or not. And yet, rather than getting ready, no, no most are only staying rather busy doing still all they were doing before He came along to point out the pitiability of it all. And indeed, there are so many things in this world that are utterly pitiable. So many things that are obviously pathetic. So many people who simply can’t see it because they just don’t want to see it.

Because they don’t want to change it.

A decision so final that they’ll become increasingly violent whenever anyone dares say or do anything that doesn’t match or mesh with their version of what’s best.

Which is where the problem again becomes personal for us because, well, He’s called us to go into all the world and make disciples through the spreading of the Good News of the Kingdom having come near. Yes, we’re here still to tell someone else about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, why Jesus did it and that it’s because we’re all sinners who have failed God and thus earned His wrath.

And no, the world won’t like that. And yeah, we know that because they killed the One we’re called to follow, to serve, to honor and uphold.

Issue is that we can’t then follow, serve, honor nor uphold both the world and the One who’s defined all of mankind as now deserving of eternal damnation deemed due in light of all He’s seen and heard us do as has been mostly only against Him.

Can’t serve two masters.

And yet this world clearly insists that we just go along with everything they tell us and never once dare to step out of line.

Jesus came to draw a vastly different line that He too calls us to follow.

And His leads us only away from the world with hopes finally placed outside of the same.

Pretty easy to see then both how His path will cause us to become different from the world and why the world will then eventually come to hate us. And no, that won’t be fun. That won’t feel good to a people who’ve long chased after acceptance and approval. It won’t find us having many, if any, friends. May even cost us jobs, possessions, people who walk away because they just don’t understand the way we come to live following behind the Way who is the Life.

Because He calls us to come out of this world. To leave everything here behind. To give up on caring for the things of this earth and to rather turn our attentions to storing our treasures in Heaven.

Something most folks will never be found doing and nor then able understand why we do.

And this world can’t stand that kind of difference because it stands as indisputable evidence that so too could they be doing the same. Indeed, our choosing to try and live better lives, even though we’ll all still fail at times, our trying proves that everyone else could too. And to a world that thinks they’re here only to try only to find all they want to in this life as is lived in this world, we’ll then take on the aroma of death. And the world doesn’t want that.

Thus this world won’t want us nor then anything to do with us.

This world will hate us!

But friends, in this we can find hope! Why? Because we know what this world likes. We can see what this world enjoys. We can hear what makes this world cheer. And so we should know that our becoming so different as to be hated by this world, such only means that we’re nothing like this world. And considering what all this world likes, loves, lives in approval of, yeah, I think that’s a very good thing.

Indeed, I pray every day to be a little more different from the world. I want to seem and feel so out of place here that, like Jesus, I too come eventually to a mutual separation between this place and me. No hard feelings. No grudges. No regret.

Just a realization that this world isn’t my life’s destination.

Most here can’t say the same and sadly many never will.

Which is only all the more reason to stop seeking our welcome amongst the many!

And, well, what better way to know we’re headed elsewhere toward something better than to endure a life lived amongst those angry and bitter about the mere fact that we’re here?

Yes, let us become so bold as to become only hated by the world. Not because it will help us feel great while we’re here. But simply because our feeling out of place while we’re here will only serve to remind us that we’ve somewhere else that we do belong, where we will feel great, where we will be welcome, accepted, wanted maybe.

Seek for nothing in nor of nor from this world.

Because you’ll have become like this world to be liked by this world.

And considering where this world’s heading, yeah, not worth the welcome!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold