Day 4160 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 11:15 NIV

ignites the invites

Because, well, we’re gonna have to find something to do with them! And that simply because the truth is that they’ll just keep on coming. And that because what this world clearly wants is for us, all of us, to stay more or less who and what and where we are. That is by far the biggest goal of this globe, to just stay put and find contentment within that existence in which so little changes that nothing is ever hard again. Yes, this world is so desperate for that which is safe and easy and simple that we’ve learned to live only for today, but that mostly by repeating yesterday.

And yet, as far as I’m concerned, there is no part of this where I go back.

For I know where I’ve been. I know what I’ve done. I know who I’d become because of what I’d done where and when I did it. I remember so many moments in what has been a great life in which I do delight inside many the memory as they’re of times that made me happy, made me better, gave me hope in that there is still good out there. And indeed, I will carry those good memories with me for the rest of however long this journey is.

But so too have I plenty of not so good memories of times that I would not delight in so repeating. I’ve again, as confessed many times before, done more than plenty of things that I would never do again. I’ve in fact been a man who I cannot stand the thought of now. And no, I’m not just talking about sin. That is obviously a massive part of it as it was a massive part of my past. But you see, that’s the whole point of our having a past!

It’s to give us an awareness of things that have passed which should serve to help us see that so too shall everything.

Everything in this world needs to have an ending, not because we always want it to, but simply because something better cannot begin unless and until it does.

And that just so happens to be the issue for me.

It’s that something better has begun. Someone better I have become. Somewhere better has became where I place more and more of my treasure and seek more and more of my fame. Why? It’s not because it’s easy as I can assure you that most days it isn’t. It’s not because it’s normal as rather most days I feel as if I’m the only one trying it. It isn’t because it’s safe as instead I know for a fact that it costs us everything we have.

No, it’s because it costs us everything. It’s because it’s absolutely abnormal. It’s because it’s sometimes so very hard that I find myself stood silently still just wondering how anything of everything I face and feel could ever possibly go well.

And, well, I’ve just grown quite fond of those moments in which all I have left is the faith that asks that I keep walking without the ability to start seeing how things are going to work out.

Because there’s not many blessings greater than God getting you where He was taking you and having there the opportunity to look back upon all the trials and torments that littered the road along the way as finally indeed necessary things that did truly serve a purpose in regard to His yet again having fulfilled His promise to go behind and before us so as to guide us toward that place where hope finally finds us.

It’s amazing to finally see clearly all that our eyes couldn’t along the way.

Wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Definitely wouldn’t trade it for going back to who I was before the journey began.

Why?

Because, again, I know who I’ve been. I know where all I’ve gone and that most of it was only astray, off-course, out of my mind to have apparently felt as if I’d find some reward waiting within some of the absolutely ridiculous, revolting, simply retarded things that I’ve done. And that having found the reward that I thought was there! Yep, I’ve indeed crossed so many finish lines within this lifetime only to find everything that I hoped I would.

And sure, some of it was good. Some of it was fun. Some of it made me popular and thus made me friends. Some of it made me money or helped to find things I’d learned to want that I used the money to buy. Again, I have had a really great life filled with entirely more blessings and opportunities and simply amazing experiences than I could have ever deserved.

Problem is that I had it all, felt it all, experienced every bit it as someone who became someone I didn’t want to be.

And, well, within all of that is a point of breaking in which you come to this fork in the road as is made of a decision to make in regard to whether you continue getting what you’ve always gotten but only by continuing to do as you’ve been doing or you agree to literally risk everything you’ve ever known on the hope that there’s something better still out there somewhere that can only be found by the person you aren’t who lives the life you’re not.

Sad truth is that we’ve within this world so very many entirely amazing blessings and gifts and abilities and opportunities that most folks take the first option. They choose to continue ahead receiving more of the things that they’ve grown accustomed to, attached to and that by agreeing to continue to do as they’ve had to in order to have had whatever it is that they do have that is to them everything they now know to want, to be, to believe they’ve the opportunity to see or even become.

But there be a few who choose to do something new alongside what is a clear agreement that doing different means that things will change. That things will be lost. That certain things may lose their importance. That others will lose their worth. That even we ourselves may wrestle more times than we’d ever wish to imagine with the reality that we are not who we ought to be.

But you have to admit you’re not who you want to be, where you want to be before you can be and become who you want to be wherever it is that you hope to do so.

And sure, like most I’ve again had such a great life that’s left me with so many amazing memories that I find a fondness in the past that feels often to welcome me back. Not that we can go back as I know we can’t. But still, we can live a great deal of time in the past through thinking back on what once was. We can spend our efforts reliving those old movies that play still inside our minds. We can give nostalgia as much of us as it may want.

I do it quite often in fact.

But the issue is that, again, while I have had an incredible life in the past, I lived it as someone that who I am now wasn’t. And I am who I am now because I wasn’t good with who I was. I wasn’t happy with the person I’d become. I wasn’t at peace with the things I’d done. I couldn’t find contentment within the context of my choices and the reasons they were made.

Rather I found only entirely too many mistakes to in any way warrant my staying the way I was.

And while it’s been a long, hard ride to find this life that I live now as the person I am now, I am so thankful for the changes that God’s helped me to make that I tell Him all the time that I will die before I go back to my old life.

Because it wasn’t a life.

Granted, I was alive. And in fact I was alive in a life in which I did thrive in what were ways that I don’t today. So much of my past was easier, felt safer, seemed more normal than my new normal has become. But even still, as easy and safe and simple as my old life was, didn’t like who I’d become. Didn’t like where I was. Didn’t like the words I said, the jokes I told, the lies I believed. In fact, looking back, it’s hard for me to find any good memories in which I was the star of the show.

Instead all I see of me back then was just the enemy keeping me from who I am now.

And, well, having gone to battle seeking to overcome who I’d become, going back just isn’t an option anymore.

No, though the way of life I used to live still sometimes calls my name and invites me to come back again, I can’t. I’ve simply made too many changes that have helped me to find who I feel I’m supposed to be, or at least a person who’s trying every day to get closer to who I’m supposed to become, that I can’t now justify answering those calls.

Rather these days I’m burning everything from bridges to boats!

Why not then any invitation that anything and anyone may send me that asks me to look behind me as I look for what’s better for me?

Indeed, this is why, or at least part of the why, that Solomon writes to us in Ecclesiastes that verse which tells us that it’s not wise to ask why the old days were better. It’s because no matter how good they may have been, no matter then how great our lives may have seemed then to be, if we believe that the best is already behind us then we’ll only be begrudgingly moved forward into everything that’s still to come discounting everything that does come simply because we refuse to believe that it could ever possibly be in any way better than all of whatever already was.

And while those moments lost in nostalgia’s best memories remind us always of a life that was pretty great, I’ve found that we need those memories to act as inspiration to move forward rather than invitations to spend the rest of our lives only wishing we could go back to a place that is gone.

Gone because we can’t go back.

And, well, if we can’t go back then why not so fully, intentionally, intensely embrace that fact that we find within this burning audacity to refuse our flesh’s desire to? Why not allow God to begin such a work in making us new that we do so much so new that everything old seems only everything dead? Yes, why not invite Him to lead us unto a belief in something so impossibly good that our settling for anything else, even the past’s very best, seems only a failure?

I think of this all the time within the new lease on life that He signed in His blood. And that simply because He’s again helped me to make so many changes that have proven far more amazing than they seemed back in the dreams they were within that life I lived.

For example, back when I was a kid I was fairly hefty. Got bigger as I got older, but not only the height department. No, I got bigger to the point in which I, as a teen, had to shop in the big and tall department. And again, not because I was really tall! No, I was rather rotund and that was something that I always struggled with. I hated being the fat kid who wasn’t able to wear the cool clothes or feel as if I could talk to the pretty girls or be considered for any position on the football team other than lineman.

Eventually got to the point in which I stepped on the scale and while the dial inside stopped at 300, whenever I stepped on it it kept going past that.

Yeah, it got pretty bad.

I was sick all the time. My knees hurt constantly. I’d lose by breath whenever faced with such arduous obstacles as a flight of stairs. Got rejected pretty much every time I ever asked anyone out on a date. Even grew a massive beard that stretched down to my chest trying to hide my having more chins than a phonebook in China.

And I remember always wishing it was different, that I was different. I always wanted to feel better, look better, just live better.

Unfortunately I also wanted always that which was easier, safer, most comfortable.

And nothing changed until that did.

I was just talking with my sister as we took a walk together the other day and I told her that I’ve realized that I’m not at peace anymore unless I’m struggling for something. That I’m now only comfortable being uncomfortable. That all that makes sense to me anymore is everything that seems to make little sense to anyone else. I like the sweat, the soreness, the suffering of trying for something. I like the challenge of denying myself the acceptance of those thoughts asking me to let up, calm down, go easy.

No.

Because I’ve been there before.

That’s the land where I used to live.

And yeah, I could choose to go back anytime I wanted. I could stop doing everything I’m trying to do now. I could easily gain all the weight back, eat all the junk food and snacks that I used to love, drink nothing but soda, sit for hours on a sofa and retrace every step that I’ve come to take back into that way in which I always thought that I could only dream of getting to be who I am now and living the way I now am.

Why do that?

Why go back to what personal growth has gotten us out of? And by personal I don’t mean we did it alone. No, in fact I’ll be the very first to admit that from everything from Pringles to porn, God has been the One who has helped me to break what were habits so bad that my life even had me convinced that I’d be far better off dead!

Again, why go back to feeling that way?

No. There is no version of this where going back is an option. There is no version of this where what’s behind is welcomed back. There’s no version of this in which who I was is ever again allowed to be who I again become.

I’ve been there. And sure, just like those people in that desert sometimes longing for all the food and comfort they had in Egypt compared to the manna and misery they met on their way out, yeah, sometimes that weak part of me wants to go back. Sometimes I think about the life I’ve had. Sometimes I long for the things I used to enjoy. Sometimes I walk past something in the store and find myself second-guessing why I won’t agree to enjoy it anymore.

It’s because I know that while my Egypt had plenty of food (far more than I eat now with this vastly controlled diet I’ve grown to enjoy) and far more comfort than I feel when I’m tired (and frustrated that my pushups aren’t getting better as fast as I’d like) and far more simplicity than getting up every morning far earlier than I ever wanted to to write these posts that very few ever read, I know my Egypt also held me in slavery. It held me in captivity. My Egypt was a cage that I prayed so many times for God to get me out of that, since His having gotten me out of it, I’d be slapping both our faces should I turn back to it.

Ain’t doing it.

Not because I don’t have the chance. Not because I don’t remember how to get there. Not because I don’t have the desire to go back sometimes.

I do.

Only difference is that He’s helped me to see the chains of my old life’s captivity.

And while some of the memories I made back then were amazing, feeling the way I did as the person that I’d become wasn’t. It was miserable. It was embarrassing. It was disgusting.

It just plain sucked!

Why go back?

No, because as we’ve been talking, I think we need to feel uncomfortable. I think we need to feel out of place. I think we need to feel as if we’re missing something still, as if there’s still something better out there somewhere for us to be or become. I think we need to hurt, to be scared, to feel alone. I think we need to be bored, to be broken, to feel betrayed. I think we need to be helped to see all the chains we’ve carried if we’re ever to understand the cross offering to give us new ones.

Yes, I think we need to take up our crosses and learn to daily deny ourselves comfort and complacency upon them.

Why?

Because if we become comfortable then we’ll not move. And if we don’t move then we’ll stay right where we are. And if we stay right where we are then all we can ever know of life is only that which is close enough around us and thus easy enough to find that we can feel as if we’re living a life.

But life doesn’t have borders my friends. Life doesn’t have city limits. Life doesn’t have finish lines.

Life lives. Life moves. Life wins and sometimes in life you lose.

We’ve just forgotten that losing all we have is the only way to ever find all we don’t.

And sure, while what we have and where we are, who we are may be pretty awesome, how can we say for sure that it’s better than what, where, who we’re not?

After all, we all have dreams don’t we? We all have goals, plans, hopes do we not?

Why?

Are not all the above there only because we know there is something better?

Guess it just comes down to how strongly we believe in better being something that we can be and someplace that we can go. As for me, I’ve seen enough to know that better is something that we can always be, and yeah, within this world I daily see plenty more evidence that this isn’t where we should want to be nor then agree to stay. Doesn’t mean that many won’t as sadly most will. And that’s because we all have the opportunity to always go back to whoever we’ve always been doing then only everything we’ve already done.

Yes, every single day we can indeed decide to do only whatever we did yesterday.

But before you do that again today, please ask yourself if who you were then is the same person you want to be now. If it is then feel free to live the rest of your life on repeat.

I just don’t think that any of us could honestly say that we really believe that our best was found yesterday. For if it was, then what are we supposed to look for today?

And what more might we look forward to tomorrow?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold