Day 4147 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 35:20 NIV

dams the disquiet

Because there comes hopefully a day inside of our every life in which we look up with our own eyes and determine that our lives are not going to be lived locked in step with those who will continue to insist that we join always the consist of what is a culture given unto the cancer that is caring as to what others want us to do, to say, to be, to become. No, there has to come a time in which we take control of our lives back from those to whom we’d sheepishly given it, playing ever since the victim of what is the venom that rules this world in vengeance.

We should want more than this, and yet to find more than this we need then to allow only less of it.

And that is everything that this world insists upon us. Every headline that the media asks us to become angry about. Every post that some stranger shares seeking to ruffle feathers and start comment section arguments. Every new technological advancement that we hopefully know deep down that we don’t really need. Every social progression that’s been aimed only away from God. Every idol carved by human hands or in human heads. Every worry won within something that doesn’t matter.

Every matter that means nothing more than some measure of mankind’s pleasure and our being always implored to explore the many pastures of this place seeking only to find it for ourselves and offer unto others.

We are here for more than whatever people are focused on here.

The problem is that we’ve allowed our eyes and ears and hearts and minds to allow our lives to live as if here does matter. As if the rules do apply. As if the lies told about us, our faith, our hope, His promise, His path, His plan, as if they’re all things that we need to challenge, to fix, to overcome. As if humanity has the authority to determine what we do, when we do it, why it’s done and what all then isn’t. Indeed, we’ve let society scare us into playing along with their every wicked intent and wayward want.

Never once caring to consider whether or not we’ve the power, the ability, the audacity to put our foot down, draw a line in this sand and say, “No. Nothing more comes into my life from what is a world that is living a version of it that I want nothing to do with.”

Instead we just awake into every new day entirely defeated already.

We’ve all become so convinced that in this world there’s always something of risk. That we stand to lose something if we don’t please or appease someone. That we’re supposed to show love unto those around within only the ways in which they want it. That love itself is nothing more than a measure of praise or applause or public appreciation given unto those who are lost living their lives as if they need no help, do no wrong, have no struggles.

But we all do!

Problem’s becoming that we’re all essentially dumbing unto the opportunities and abilities we’re daily given to work on them, to challenge them in return, to fix them and become better for having done so. All because anymore all but all of our time and effort and intention is being given only unto worrying always only about what the world wants from us or wishes for us to be. Indeed, life here has devolved into a continuing devaluing of itself as daily we set our souls to sell what is our every chance at peace.

All so that we can feel some temporary modicum of what will be proven only a fake replication.

Yeah, every day we watch the world trade away such things as confidence, individuality, personal responsibility, even simple accountability all in exchange for just seeking safe passage through a place that it thus seems as if we still care to belong.

And that despite how much here is going so clearly wrong.

Doesn’t seem to matter to anyone anymore. Rather it feels as if nearly everyone is always willing to play right along. To do the utter opposite from what the Psalmist penned:

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

Seems pretty hard then to consider blessed any of us who are instead so always stressed as is seen inside the scene in which it’s shown that we all spend all day and every night worried only about getting it right within only the eyes of those who, as we discussed yesterday, hate peace and deny faith and reject Christ and waste then their every life as there is simply no life to be lived without those things, without Him!

And yet we spend so much more of our time listening to them, learning from them, looking toward them who deny Him, who do refuse Him, who do still mock and belittle and straight up blaspheme the Name of our King.

Why do we do it this way? Why do we care so much about what other people say? Why do we still place so much hope, so much faith in the actions that other humans undertake?

Why is politics so popular if not because it makes us feel as if we have some sort of power to determine the direction of life in whatever place we live? Why is social media so powerful if not because it magnifies our voice and gives us both the freedom to say whatever we want but also a screen to hide behind so that nobody knows who we really are? Why do we hide who we really are, opting every single day to do only whatever someone else tells us to, saying only whatever we’ve been insisted to, if not because we still believe that man both giveth but so too then can taketh away?

What can man give us but heartbreak and horror? What can this world offer but angst and animosity? What can we benefit from such a broken society as this but just a share of the mess we’ve come to make, and that in a deeper measure by the day as most folks just continue to make a mockery of every reason that we’re here?

Why are we here? What are we doing here? What’s the goal of our being here? How long do we honestly expect to go on staying here? Why have we all these plans and preferences and pursuits we pursue if not because we’re a people who haven’t yet had our fill of all that is here and how it makes us feel?

Do we even feel anything at all anymore?

For the truth is that the world doesn’t want us to. Society doesn’t benefit if we do. The devil, who runs this world within all of this deception and being deceived, he definitely doesn’t want us to feel anything as to just how off everything here is. Rather the devil wants us comfortable, successful, feeling then always as if we’ve truly accomplished the widely accepted understanding of life.

What have we accomplished? What have we done?

Who are we?

The sad reality is that we’re but ghosts rushing about heaping up worldly wealth without knowing either whose it will be nor why we don’t yet realize that it won’t be ours. A realization that most here continue to refuse because it would instantly speak to all we stand to lose having come to live this life looking for only our every prize within and among and for and from mankind.

Yes, we’ve become but puppets held dangling from the strings of those who we’ve allowed to call the shots in what then are lives in which we play the fool to anyone and everyone who insists they know what we should do, ought to say, should stay away from or should buy in bulk. And indeed, there’s by the day anymore some new suggestion as to how we’re supposed to be living. Some word we’ve always said that we shouldn’t say anymore. Some work we’ve done that’s not considered helpful anymore.

Some part of our very identity, our literal genetic makeup that’s instead become only but one more measure as to whether we’re what the world wants us to be.

And again, we just play along.

We let the suggestions roll in like waves we’re supposed to always welcome. We allow the inspections to continue as if we’re here to be only judged by man and never say anything as to everything we see everyone else doing wrong. We invite the fright of fearing we’ll lose friends if we say the wrong things. We worry that we’ll lose jobs if we don’t wear pride logos. We have to wrestle with all this testing of our mettle as if pleasing man is a trophy fit for our mantle.

Is it?

Is pleasing people truly why we’re here? Are we here to accomplish never anything more than just rolling over and allowing humanity to infest us with its insanity?

Or are there supposed to perhaps be some lines that we draw? Are there some dams that we should maybe build so as to keep our lives from being flooded by this world’s foolishness and filth? Are we perhaps endowed by our Creator with the personal responsibility to test everything to see what little is and what more isn’t done in line with the Word of Truth?

Seems as though I’ve read something to that end.

Indeed, it’s in Ephesians 6. “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

A passage ending with this:

“In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Why?

Because this life is a fight and that because this world will never agree to live it right. And we should see this by now! We should realize that there is a way of life that most men live that has nothing to do with any outward awareness to be seen as to the reality that He does. No, most people here are lost living their lives as if all that matters is this world, going always along with everything going on, delving daily into the darkness and division simply because they’ve never learned to do anything but play into the devil’s hand.

An outcome which the Word of God is aching to help us avoid. And that by acting as if a shield in our lives, our hearts, our minds that refuses then to allow in anything that is everything that He’s called us clearly to come out of, walk away from, have nothing to do with.

An outcome on which we’ve all fallen sadly unto the wrong side of more often than we haven’t simply because we haven’t learned well enough yet how to say no. How to walk away. How to not merely say we’re not interested in hearing the world out but not even listening to world at all anymore.

Because what do they have to say?

It’s clearly nothing about peace. It’s nothing about responsibility. It’s definitely nothing about righteousness. No, instead this world has clearly a somehow always decreasing interest in such things. This world doesn’t want peace but rather argument. This world loathes responsibility as we’ve rather been taught to see only indulgence. This place knows so little of righteousness as is proven in nearly everything that nearly everyone is doing anymore.

So many things should not be happening, shouldn’t be what they’ve become. We shouldn’t be who we’ve become who are, again, but puppets hanging from strings held by the hands of those who clearly wish only to lead us all forever away from He who is our Father, our Savior, our One and only hope of ever finding anything better than everywhere we’ve been and everything we became while we stayed there.

That’s why there has to be a line drawn. That’s why we can’t continue to just blindly go along. That’s why we’re honestly perhaps sometimes better to just go alone.

It’s because this world is filled and yet filling only further with those who refuse the faith, who reject our Savior, who deny our Father in favor of having fun and making friends with a world still so clearly lost so fully in their every chosen enmity in what is a life being lived as if He’s our main enemy.

Why go along with that? Why allow any of this world input? Why worry about doing as this world at first suggests we do and will eventually threaten to destroy us if we continue not to?

You see, that’s the thing that it seems so many continue ahead missing. It’s that this world garners support, agreement, acceptance then of its every way, want, wish through means of force, coercion, threats of violence even. Yes, this place let’s say ‘encourages’ us to play along via the more fear-based kind of inspiration.

God on the other hand seeks to inspire us via love and mercy and patience and peace.

Indeed, when’s the last time we felt any of those things within this place?

No, again as I said above, this world doesn’t want those things. Why? Because there’s no power in them. And where there’s no power, there’s no profit. And where people see no profit, they see no point. Yeah, this world sees no point in seeking for peace, for kindness, for compassion as to a people of such pride and the power it helps us feel as it leaves us feeling more important than others, peace and kindness and compassion are all weakness.

They’re considered beneath us.

Thus we hate them. And this is, again, this is clear to see inside every single day!

And yet we don’t see it. Rather we go along with a way of life that’s all but being forced upon us in which all of us just bow our heads and bend the knee before those seeking only to keep us living as slaves to their every desire. But what does our enemy desire? To steal. To kill. To destroy. To devour those who he can get to let down their guard and live that life in which they too welcome anything and everything that anyone and everyone may say is worth considering.

But friends, what’s worth considering in regard to the way of life this world’s chosen to live?

What benefit is there for us to find in that kind of life in which all we do is argue and fight? What gain is there to be gained in our walking the way that sinners take and standing in the company of mockers and listening always to the counsel of the wicked?

What do the wicked know that we think we need to know?

What more might we know if we became willing fools to everything this wicked world considers wise? How much better might be our lives if we started living them according to what He says is right instead of what this world says is okay? To what level of peace might we finally ascend if we stopped holding the hand of those pushing the handcart that’s leading this world to hell?

As you may have guessed, yes, I am a little angry this morning. Forced awake by a nightmare brought about by my old life in which I listened so fully to the world that I chose to live like the world and now bear scars that simply won’t heal because apparently time doesn’t really heal all wounds. Or maybe it just can’t heal all wrongs. Either way the fact of what I’m trying to say is that this world sells us one way to live this life and it’s sold in packaging that’s all colorful and bright and inside is everything that makes us feel good, feel powerful, feel as if we’re in control.

And we welcome it because that’s exactly what our flesh wants. Those are the things this world wants. But friends, having each of us danced with guilt and watched the world do wrong without seemingly feeling the same shame, what makes us continue to care as to what the flesh wants, what the world wants?

Can’t we see what the world is winning in light of the wickedness welcomed into their way of life?

Did not regret help us to see the penalty of our having chosen to do wrong?

Why then continue to go along when we all know that sin makes us feel horrible and we can watch in real-time the world’s continued decline because of the widespread acceptance of it?

My point is that this world will continue to do whatever it takes to inspire, encourage, insist that we go along with everything it has going on. They’ve even proven willing to both threaten the lives of those who won’t, going so far as to act upon those threats.

But the cross reminds us that there’s now no reason to fear those who can kill the body as the empty grave proves they can’t kill the soul.

So why then continue to live our lives worried about what this world wants?

After all, again, it’s pretty clear what this world wants. And, well, such things as peace, hope, improvement, holiness, righteousness, even eternal life are not on that list.

So build a dam and do your best to keep this world out.

For nothing good has ever come from letting it in.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold