Day 4186 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Acts 2:33 NIV

A gift from home

And as it’s the most expensive ever known, proven only in the Son showing that this life we live is ours on loan, it’s also to become the most priceless of all possible possession as it proves the very start of what begins a progression from what’s been our every broken part in our every broken past that continues on from all of that toward all that He said is waiting at the end of all that is. An end itself seen and shown inside so very much within this rental home in which we live on loan these lives we hold.

Seen and shown inside the sights and sounds we somehow come to see and say as are spoken and known of a love that’s grown inside our hearts by at first tearing them all apart.

All to begin in us the brand new start that He said He had to reach His end here only to leave and send back that which He knew we’d need to find success along this journey.

What journey?

The descent into madness that we’ve been talking about for I believe over two months now. Indeed, if you’d care to go back to nearly the beginning of June you’ll notice that there’s been something new I’ve felt the need to do within this thing I do everyday. The whole idea started with my realizing just how strange our faith must seem to those many around us who share it not. Everything from the thoughts we think to the words said thoughts inspire us to say, it seems as though this faith changes the entire way in which we live.

So much becoming eventually so different about us that both those who don’t know us and likely even those who did will come to become quite confused as to who we are based on what we do.

Why?

Because He came to do a new thing and, having done it by dying on a sinner’s cross so as to cover the cost that all sin wins, He left here only to be raised again and that not back to this life we’ve all known but rather to that which is waiting still for us too to come home.

Yes, Jesus came on this earth to offer Himself as ransom for our rebellions and, having perfectly succeeded thanks to His having lived a perfect life as is one we’ve all known not as was lived without sin, He was thus the final spotless Lamb that was given in sacrifice so as to atone to for the sins and stumblings of every single life that all the rest of us have lived in sin.

Indeed, we have lived nothing like Him but He yet loved us so much anyway that He gave Himself to make the way for us to have what is the hope that we have a home to which we can hope.

By refusing Himself the pleasure of flesh, something clearly missed as He hung in our place, He achieved for us a place to store our treasure that relies not upon pleasure or even our pursuit thereof. In fact, He blatantly asks that we, as He showed how, learn from Him now to deny ourselves so that we can share in the life He lived unto the promise that should we inevitably then share in a death like His (a death to the flesh and thus a death to sin) we too would share in a resurrection like His.

One spoken of here by they who here all but began the concept of church that we now know as being a resurrection unto the Father from whom and in whom all things hold together.

A truth we can only learn as all we know finally starts to fall apart.

Thus the descent into madness that I believe this faith is meant to bring us.

Truly, I am convinced that this belief we have should cause us to become so strange, so odd, so confusing and perhaps even worrisome to both ourselves and likely more so those around that, well, not much of all we’ve known nor all who’ve known us are promised to stick around. Rather I consider that our chasing after Christ within this life in which it’s clarifying daily that the vast majority aren’t, I think that should cause us to become all but caustic to those who won’t.

Why?

Because what fellowship has light with darkness?

What friendship might there exist between good and evil?

How long can righteousness and wickedness walk together before they just realize they’ve absolutely nothing in common whatever and agree to part company?

Indeed, what part have we in the company of mockers who sit still in the seats of sinners and walk still within the way of the wicked?

We see these very thoughts and their questions considered in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 6:14-17 specifically:

“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?”

A question asked unto the point made there in the middle of verse 16 which reminds us that in Christ “we are the temple of the living God.” For, as 17 goes on to consider, “as God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” Therefore we’re to do indeed as verse 17 suggests as it concludes and “come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

The whole point there being that if we’re to be received by God, as Christ is spoken of being here from whom, once He had been received, sent forth unto those who are His the promise for which He left to give: The Holy Spirit which should make things in us and of us so continually different that, again, even our friends will likely come to find us entirely too strange to be around.

Because the new thing that He came to do was to make those who are His so very new that some of us have even had our names changed!

For, again, what fellowship has light with darkness?

Or, as posited for our pondering in the Psalm to begin all Psalms, “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.”

A passage entirely similar to the warning written in Proverbs 13:20 which says that we’re to walk with the wise as the point of our growth in truth is one which can only be found in lives in which we “walk with the wise and become wise.” Why? “For a companion of fools suffers harm.”

Which was the point of Paul’s giving us this well-known nugget in his first letter to Corinth:

“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” 1 Corinthians 15:33

Something he elsewhere attempts to make even clearer where in 1 Corinthians 5:11 he tells us that we “must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.”

Kind of clears up just how lonely and strange and different and likely then unwelcoming our way of life lived within the Way that is Christ will come to be.

Something Jesus Himself mentions in Matthew 10:36 in which it’s read that “a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

Yeah, so much will change so much about us that even those who are all but programmed to love us will perhaps become our enemies!

All because the Spirit He left to send will cause us to see things differently, to hear things differently, to do things differently, to say things which are different and do things that are different and become people who are then so different that whomever has known us will at least potentially claim that they both don’t know us anymore and perhaps don’t want to either.

Because this faith that’s growing in us as we begin to grow our trust in all that He is and all that He did, it will lead us to open eyes and open minds and hearts all but literally ripped apart as they’re all but physically torn out of our chests over the absolute mess that so very much of life here has become. So much sadness and disappointment and full-on fear will be found in His helping us to realize what all’s going on down here that we may well begin to stand against it and speak the same.

And this world doesn’t like those who do such different things as refuse to agree that everything that everyone does is just fine to do. They hate those who proclaim this message that says we all could and thus should be doing better. They despise those who live lives that don’t walk in step with those marching toward eternal destruction.

Many still loathe the mere mention of Jesus Christ in any context other than using His Name as some sort of exclamatory remark.

Indeed, we’ve become a world in which the very Name of our Savior is used in jokes and to denote shock and surprise.

Easy then to see both why and how and where so much should change in our lives that those around us may well begin to believe that we’ve perhaps gone mad.

IT’S BECAUSE WE HAVE!

Indeed, as Paul again mentions in 2 Corinthians, 5:33 this time around, “If we are ‘out of our mind,’ as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.”

Many in this place will think that we’re crazy! They’ll consider that we’ve lost all sense of reason and rationality. They’ll think that we’ve lost our minds in what they come to find these kinds of lives that look nothing like that commonest of all version still being lived amongst the common. A verdict passed as Proverbs 1:22 asks, “how long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?”

The sad answer being, well, perhaps forever!

For in truth there are those, and many of them, who are so fond of their simple ways that they have every intention of living within them forever.

And the promise is that God will let them!

But that’s where our sadness comes in. It’s won within the realizing that every single day more and more leave this place perhaps without the faith that would secure them a place inside the place that He left here to go and prepare. It’s seen inside the shows people watch that lead them on a walk only closer to His wrath. It’s heard inside those conversations considered above where the Name which is above all names is used as a punchline.

It’s felt in the “normal” way of life that’s being here lived by most in which most so clearly know so little of Christ that odds are when they get to Heaven they’ll be sadly amongst those who He claims too that He didn’t know.

And the thought of any being turned away from Heaven toward what waits at the other end of eternity’s spectrum, it ought to be entirely unacceptable. So much so that we do feel it in our bones that we need to do whatever He gives us to so that we might live such good lives among the pagans that perhaps some of them will wonder as to this way we walk and the words we say when we talk and find themselves just curious enough that they finally get up the courage to ask of us the reason for this belief we have.

A moment in which they too might learn of Jesus and find for themselves and their lives this love that frees us to see things few have ever seen and hear things that few have ever heard and believe things that exist beyond the wildest dreams as are dreamed by those who think that hope is something they can have inside what is an increasingly broken world.

Yes, the Holy Spirit, our gift from home, it will cause us to learn that this world is not our home as it will open our eyes to the loss of lives left and right to the doing only all that’s wrong.

And as we come to make our stand upon the Cornerstone that’s to this day being still rejected by those down here who are still trying in vain to build their own lives their own way, we’ll probably experience plenty of rejection too.

Why?

Because as much as “bad company corrupts good character”, so too is the opposite true:

Good company corrupts bad character.

Indeed, those who are in Christ, and are known to be by the fruit being borne within their lives, the Spirit they thus house inside will frustrate those bearing the other kind of fruit. Our Spirit will offend those who are living according to the spirit of this sinful world. Our Spirit will, as my dad says all the time for some reason, “harsh the mellow” of those who know not He who gives it.

Yes, this world lives following behind a very different spirit that’s leading the masses in a very different direction toward an immeasurably different outcome.

And as time goes on in these lives we live in this place on loan, we will see only more and more that shouldn’t be whatever it so clearly is. We will hear things that shouldn’t be heard. We will learn things that we don’t want to know.

And so too will this world, as we change through the process of our being sanctified, they’ll hear things from us that they don’t understand. They’ll see things we do and fail to make out the reason why. They will look at the way we come to live our lives and think that we’ve lost our minds because in Christ we’ll no longer walk the way they walk or say the things they say when we talk or believe the things they believe or hope for whatever it is that this world hopes for.

No, in Him we know we have so much more to look forward to that we don’t even look to fit in anymore.

Because that He left to get home before us to make sure the light was on and the table set, it just sets us on a different trajectory aimed eternally upward as is to be taken only amongst those who think it crazy to believe that there could somehow be more than this world has to offer.

Our reaching the point in which we want nothing from this world and offer this world only the truth He’s given us to share, it will convince so very many that we’re so very crazy that they’d perhaps be better off if we weren’t here.

AND WE’LL AGREE!!

We want to be home. We want to leave. We want to go to that place where He’s promised there’s peace.

Because it sure ain’t here!

And that’s a fact that the Holy Spirit He sends down will help us see and hear more and more as this world drifts by the day further away from He who is the Way.

And as this world drifts apart from Him, those who aren’t will thus too drift apart from them who want not to be closer to Him.

What friendship could we have to hope for in that kind of difference of opinion, of outlook, of understanding?

My point is that so many are standing in this world thinking it their home. They’re doing all the normal things, saying all the normal things, living then the normal lives. But friends, there is nothing “normal” about Christ! Nothing. And so if we’re in Him and He then in us, where should there be anything normal about us either? How should it be possible for us to fit in or be understood amongst those who continue to make room for sin and consider then that wickedness isn’t something to worry about?

How can we look at the world and ever again expect to either accept anything that’s done down here nor then expect to accepted by those who do?

Friends, the gift He gave us of His Spirit is one He gave us only having left this world in misery to the cheering of a crowd.

Because they thought He was crazy. He said things they didn’t like the sound of. He warned them of the wrath that is coming. He spoke the truth which opens eyes and unclogs ears and loosens tongues and makes hearts brand new.

All things He calls us to do too!

And if they hated Him enough to kill Him, why then do we seek still to feel so comfortable here?

Why are we afraid to be judged, mocked, belittled by the world that still makes so little of our Lord that they use His Name in their slurs?

I want this world to think of me so strange they do begin to at least consider my, let’s call it, early retirement. Why? Because I’m tired of living in a world that doesn’t see what I see or believe what I believe because so too it a world that sees still what I can’t anymore and apparently then believes what I won’t.

Because I won’t believe that sin is okay. I won’t agree that we’re all here only to do whatever it is that we want to. I cannot see the point in living the life that so many are.

Because I’ve done it and I know where it goes and it’s simply nowhere I want to be ever again.

No, again, I want to be home. And to a world that thinks that this world is their home that will sound crazy.

The joy is that it’s the Holy Spirit talking.

The problem is that He speaks in a language that none here understand.

And that from a place that next to none here believe in.

Just so happens that said place is the only hope some of us have left.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold