Day 4169 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:23 NIV

runs the length of redemption

Even though it starts at regret, takes a right through wrongs, crawls through remorse over choices made in foolishness, continues through what eventually becomes the reconsideration of basically everything, takes another right through leaving things behind and inevitably leads right unto what is nothing short of utter ruination. It is in every way a truly strange vocation, this working out with fear and trembling our salvation. For it asks that we ask questions that we either know the answers to and too that they’re probably not good ones or rather those that we simply know we don’t want to know the answers to as we know they’re not good ones.

Because this faith slowly opens our eyes to see the blinding stupidity hidden poorly underneath every poor choice we’ve ever made and the vast weakness in which we’ve made the anyway.

Yes, though it be a path paved in strangeness as it’s poured in the substance of everything that everyone else seeks only in avoidance, and quite successfully mind you as it’s pretty clear to see that not too many are too tore up about the lives they’ve torn up, it takes on this odd kindness to it as you continue along being changed by it. In fact, of course I may be crazy seeing as this is, after all, a now weeks-long discussion of what probably appears to many as being a descent in madness, this whole process sort of becomes kind of fun.

Just in the most backward and upside down way possible.

And that in that it, as He does, turns over our lives lived as if tables upon which we’ve welcomed sit every course of choice and coercion that this culture has insisted we at least try and see if we like the taste of. And indeed, we have and, well, we have. We’ve tasted so much of all this world has to offer and insists then we need and indeed seem to have seen, at least apparently, what’s amounted almost entirely to what has been basically our entire understanding of life.

It’s all been allowed to all but become defined by all that’s here.

This is what we’ve sort of been dancing around for a while. In fact, that’s kind of what the Gospel’s point is too. It’s that we’ve become such a people of fleshly pursuits that it seems as though all we really know how to do is whatever the flesh may or may not want us to. We spend our every waking moment wondering through what all we still think we need, what more than that we’d still like to have, what all we’re dealing with that we no longer want to deal with, however we’re feeling about whatever with which we’re dealing.

It all comes always back to how we’re feeling in what are then lives in which how we feel is basically our god and thus our ever even accidentally approaching a truth such as this left to continually be instead only the purpose of life we continue to miss.

Because, again, we don’t want the questions asked. We don’t want to sit and get to the bottom of how it all got so bad. We don’t even seem to be interested in admitting that things are bad!

Rather we’ve now entered those last times in which, to suit their (our) own desires, people have not only gathered about themselves an ever-growing number of “teachers” who will go on telling them only everything they want to hear, but so too have people become willing participants (“teachers”) who, due to waking and walking in fear of man every single day anymore, are more than happy to literally take to stages and podiums and podcasts to tell people what they know people want to hear.

Messages such as how God loves us and, more importantly apparently, that because He does He only want us to be happy and feel good and preferably become independently wealthy so that we can contribute to the nice man, who sounds like a servant of God and sure looks the part too, eventually adding another private jet to his retinue. Yes, God wants us wealthy, healthy, happy and holy.

Problem being that whilst we’ve a glaringly impressive understanding as to the first three, though maybe not healthy quite so much, we don’t really seem to know much if anything of anything regarding the fourth.

A problem proven in that some have taken, and by some I mean many, that world ‘holy’ to mean self-righteous as in that whole ‘holier-than-thou’ thing that more than many have going on these days.

Some call it pride. Others vanity. To many it’s greed, to even more it’s gluttony. It simply shows itself in what are so many weaknesses and worries that truly need some help but that, not ironically at all, don’t really seem to really be able to see just how much help they really need.

Perhaps because we’ve everyone from politicians to preachers telling us all how awesome we’re doing so long as we’re doing whatever they tell us we should be.

All reasons that speak only a further validation to the legitimacy of Scripture having a really good point in asking that we place no trust in man who has but breath in their lungs and more often than not uses it only to speak death through lies in regard to how best to live these lives.

I think God has given us plenty of hints in regard to how best to do this. Don’t think we need so much help or inspiration or encouragement or instruction from man. And yet we all seek for it incessantly anyway because, again, the flesh has long been our god and we know now only to bow continuously before alters made of either we or another who both looks like us and thus lives here too, just like us.

In what is a way of life that has so little evidence of their being a true God above that we should all be utterly ashamed to even pretend we know His Name.

No, this world knows somehow increasingly little of Christ, obviously by choice seeing as He’s been around forever and His Word’s been with us for centuries at this point, unchanged mind you. Yeah, as much as there’s so clearly nothing new under the sun, nor is there is anything that’s changed about the Son and what all He asks us to do in order for us to prove that we really do prefer the all-things-made-new kind of new He came to do.

Rather we just continue to live in obvious rejection of His call for all to come unto repentance.

And why?

Because I think we all know deep down where that road leads.

Well, maybe not where it leads necessarily but at least what it all probably leads through. And while there’s really nothing to argue about or feel as though we need to negotiate in regard to Heaven’s promised perfection, it’s the exceedingly narrow path there that continues to trip most of us up. And that’s simply because it doesn’t really work like we expect it to. Doesn’t go as smoothly as we’d like it to. We don’t just wake up one day to finally find all of our problems and worries and illnesses are gone.

If anything, we kind of seem to find only more of them.

Indeed, the life of a Christian who thus seeks to follow He who is the Christ is the same as the kind of life that He lived here. I mean the whole call is to share in Him in as full a measure as we’re meant to. In fact, the Bible tells us plainly that whoever wants to share in His resurrection unto an eternal life lived forever in Heaven must first share in His suffering which led to what is as complete a surrender as any could ever offer.

He literally hung on a cross and, as the Bible puts it, gave up the Spirit!

Jesus surrendered not only His flesh to the agonizing death of crucifixion but that gruesome scene ended with Him also giving away His ghost!!

Why?

So that we could all share in it as the Spirit was meant to live in us so as to help lead all of us to that place in which we finally realize the reward in this life is the repentance here from!

Problem then is that we don’t see such losses as what basically becomes the walking away from everything you’ve ever know as anything to be gained. We don’t see suffering as something to look forward to on a Saturday. We don’t make plans to be crucified. None of us are looking to add any more shame, misery, uncertainty to our lives. No, we just want to chase our dreams and make our plans and have our goals and they all amount to only our having fun and feeling good and living such good lives as one of the pagans that we’ll not know what to say on the day when He visits us as none of us seem to have any real recollection that He’s even there at all.

Rather we just continue to live our lives as if all that’s here is all that matters.

Friends, all that’s here is only all that we’re leaving behind someday.

Jesus came to show us how to lay it down.

Issue is that He’s coming again, potentially pretty soon, to just simply take it away from those who continue to refuse to do what He’s asked us to. Yes, He basically came the first time to ask us to help Him help us by turning away from our every sinfulness toward living a life in which we come increasingly to terms with the fact that in this world we should go ahead and have our trouble and face our torment and embrace our torture so as to get all of that out of the way before the rest of forever gets underway.

This next time, which will be the last time, it will Him coming back to separate those who are His from those who didn’t want to be.

And, well, the difference is becoming easier and easier to see.

It’s one seen inside this strangely hopeful dejection. It’s an oddly joyous agony. It’s a smile painted on the face of someone clearly in pain. It’s felt inside this storm of thoughts we think that we don’t tell anyone about. It’s in the weight of the cross we carry that nobody can see. It’s met in looking around at all we have that we once really liked and seeing the meaning fade more and more as time goes by.

It’s the laying down of a life whilst still having to live one, a strange blend of increasing humility and that causing an equal increase in the horror we see.

And that mostly inside ourselves.

Sure, our eyes are opening to see all sorts of things in this world that truly should not be. We could literally spend the rest of the week talking about them all. But that’s not really why we’re here, and perhaps that’s the thing that changes the most. It’s that we take on a different understanding of judgement. One in which, yeah we still pay attention to the world around us and walk in the discernment that helps us to determine that which is good fruit from the rest which is only increasingly rotten, but more than anything it causes us to judge ourselves more harshly.

All because He helps us see that we’ve lived wrongly and thus have an overwhelming ability to keep doing so.

And so He continues to show all the things that we do that we shouldn’t.

And no, it’s not fun. It does not feel good. It’s nothing of a game you’d ever think to play at a party. If anything, it’s days and nights spent in the most utterly ashamed agony that you’d never imagine kind of enjoying. And why do we enjoy it, this road of redemption that first leads us through such things as regret, remorse, sorrow and shame?

Because we know that we feel all of those things because many of the things that we’ve done have caused us to become someone that we didn’t want to be so very badly that we actually hit our knees and asked Him to step in and help us change, to save our lives, to turn the tides of our eternity so that we’d not spend the rest of forever sinking inside every stinking mistake we’ve made.

Because we wanted something better than shame and guilt and regret.

And we happen to have met a Savior who said that He came to save us from all things that cause those things.

And when you’re broken to the point in which you literally hate yourself and the way of life you live, you find it doesn’t really matter whatever He might ask you to do or endure as staying in a place in which yourself you hate, it’s not an option anymore.

And that’s what He gave up the Spirit for!

It was to give us the Spirit. It was send forth the firstfruits of our eternal salvation as are given in a Ghost that grows to help us come to know what it is to die unto the flesh. It was to open our eyes to see our ongoing need for repentance. It was to help us understand that who we are standing where we have isn’t anything that any of this nor any of us was ever meant to be.

All so that we can maybe, just maybe, finally understand that there really is something out there for us that is in fact so much better that we come unto a belief, however fragile, in His ability to lead us up and out of the pits we’ve carved to be our homes.

Homes from which redemption’s road runs.

And yeah, this life is however long it ends up proving to be because He knows exactly how much time we need to undergo all the work that we probably don’t know we need.

A work mostly done in our waiting, our sitting quietly with all the thoughts He causes us to think, all the losses we come to be excited to lose, all the lessons He helps us learn and the humility He helps us find. A work that takes time because it is literally the entire rewriting of a life as can only be done by His taking the pen away from us and helping us to close the chapters we’ve lived in what’s long been a life that He didn’t create us to live.

I think it all comes down to that groaning part. That’s the one that I feel every single day anymore. And that’s because there’s daily something that I do or say that just doesn’t sound or seem quite right. There’s always this whisper of a mistake that I’ve made. Always something that I just feel this reactionary need to apologize for.

Indeed, I don’t know what I get right as all I keep track of are the wrongs.

Why?

Because they serve as mile markers that help me to keep track of how far I’ve come from who I know I used to be.

And that’s all I want to be now.

Nothing that I used to be.

Does it hurt to walk away from some things sometimes? Yeah. Do I sometimes miss some of the things that I used to enjoy? Yep. Do I sometimes wish all of this were easier? Yes. Do I understand why it can’t be?

Absolutely.

And that’s because we’re talking about the eternal salvation of our souls. This isn’t some light matter that can be accomplished in a weekend. Well, technically it was on His end but the problem is that even since then we continue getting in the way. No, what I’m trying to say is that it takes time for us to learn how to live a different life. Depending upon whenever it was that someone first heard of Christ, he or she may have spent 30, 40, 60 years living in sin.

That’s a lot of mistakes that they probably didn’t know they continued to make.

Thankfully He is patient with us. Unfortunately we’re not patient with Him. And that’s because the flesh wants always now its every reward. We don’t want to wait. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel afraid or ashamed or unworthy. We want everyone to just tell us how good we’re doing, how brave we are, how welcome we’ll always be just as we are.

That’s why all these false gospels continue to prove so popular!

It’s because the real one, the only one, it asks that we actually take part in our salvation. That we work it out in fear and trembling. That we welcome His constant rebuking knowing that He’s doing it in love as any Good Father would. That we endure sound doctrine, the kind that tells us what we need to hear rather than what we’d prefer be told. That we turn from our sins, lay down our lives, take up our crosses and count everything as loss compared to the surpassing glory of knowing Christ as our Savior.

A work that He will carry on until its promised completion at the day of our redemption.

A work we’re supposed to play at least some part in by showing Him that we wish to be saved, to be redeemed, to leave behind literally everything and spend out the rest of our days groaning over the failures He helps us see inside ourselves.

None of this is supposed to be easy or even feel good. He told us that we’d have trouble here. That anyone who wished to follow Him would be persecuted. That He Himself would lead us into the fire so as to refine us therein via the burning away of the dross and doubt that’s been allowed to accumulate on hearts that haven’t worked right for our entire lives.

He told us He intends to give us a new heart!

And, well, we’ve only room for one and so I reckon that means He’s going rip the other out of our chests!

And yes, that is miserable. It’s horrific to be shown all the things you’ve done which have left you in such need of such mercy.

But our seeing it all, hearing it all, it all inspires us unto patience ourselves wherein we learn to allow repentance to take its time so as to ensure our lives are ready to be judged by He who holds the keys to life eternally.

The point is that yeah, we walk amongst many who are enjoying their rewards here. And yes, that will make us wonder what we’re doing enduring His call to lay it all down and deny ourselves what so many others so clearly aren’t. But the point is that a promise is always made for a later date. And there is a coming day when everything we have here, feel here, know here will be gone.

Why not then have here, know here, feel here the pain, the suffering, the agony, the sheer unmitigated misery of coming to see just how weak and foolishly we’ve been living?

For after all, only those can be saved who come to accept that they need to be saved.

And there’s nothing to save anyone from in lives that are endlessly fun.

Wait for your reward and let redemption do its work. May not feel good but, considering the cross, that was never the point of this part anyway.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold