Day 4237 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 3:11 NIV

Building betrayals

And they of ourselves and that of our eternities and this in terms of time itself as is both here given but here wasted upon what is this outlook that has us all all but convinced that our little remaining time is somehow best spent upon doing whatever it is that we’re doing, most of which is still done outside the Son and far from the same. And why? Because He remains so utterly different from all this world is and does and inspires us too to daily do. He is still doing something new and that for only everyone who undertakes their being taken away from what will remain in and of this place.

At least until there are but remains of this place left after this place has inevitably passed away.

And that’s the confusion that we continue to miss inside this delusion that is this life that we just keep designing. It’s that everything we’re doing, when done for only reasons or rewards found on this earth and thus in this life, it will be undone, left behind, forgotten, proven only forsaken. Why? Because, again, this world is passing away up to the very point in which we’ve all been promised that as we came unto this world so too shall we soon leave the same:

Naked and with nothing.

Yet we’re all so constantly busy working away at all of our various and curious little somethings as if we actually believe that everything we’re doing, buying, believing, becoming is truly worth something. And I’m not saying that it isn’t. For indeed, in this life we must work and we’ve each been given, as Liam Neeson would put it, a very particular set of skills with which to do the things which pay the bills and buy the food and ensure that our little roofs stay both over our little heads and there able to protect basically the majority of what have become of our little lives.

Problem is that whereas his set of skills made him a nightmare unto those who chose brazenly to exist outside both the law and even simple decency, our sets of particular skills tend only to make us nightmares unto ourselves. Why? Because as slowly we come to find those things we’re good at, those things we enjoy doing, those things that we can do that in fact others will pay us for or praise us for or applaud us for, we also come closer to that consideration that whatever it is that we’re doing matters as it makes us money or friends or fame.

You know, all of those things that we’ve been told at the very least contribute to the construct of whatever it is that our best life is.

And we all, understandably, want this life to be as good as it can be. Want to be comfortable. We want to be successful. We want to be liked and to be popular. We want to feel powerful and important. We want to, as the common consensus suggests we do, leave our mark on this world.

Only problem is that we’ve not really any marks to make other than those made either in Christ or out.

That is literally all that’ll count!

It’s that we’re either doing all we do unto the glory of Him or rather we’re doing it all for the glory of something or someone else, usually ourselves. But that’s the issue! It’s that we are usually doing all we do only for ourselves and whatever it might be that seems then important to us. We’ve truly, in basically every possible way, become the only ones we look to and lean on whenever it comes to whatever it is that our lives are themselves allowed to become.

All because we’ve all become pretty sure that we’re the only ones who could ever know best what’s best for us. After all, nobody else is living our life. Nobody else has to afford to our houses or cars. Nobody else works our jobs or gets in trouble if we show up late or don’t get something done. Nobody else has our fun or plans our vacations or folds our laundry or cooks our food. Well, actually we have managed to begin outsourcing some of those things, but even that is only to other people who themselves live lives doing things such as working jobs at fast food restaurants or even doing laundry for people.

But that’s the point I’m getting at. It’s that basically our every agreed upon reliance has come to be placed in man. Everything we do is all but entirely focused on or found in or founded upon they who are but flesh and bone. And thus, as time will hold, everything we do is then to be proven perishable, perhaps even pointless. Why? Because, as God’s pointed out so many times all throughout Scripture, nothing made by human hands has much if any real worth.

It’s all just earth and things achieved on the same.

And yet, that we can hold it in our hands or see it with our eyes or conceive it with our minds, this allows us to remain of the opinion that we somehow have a say. That we get a vote. That we’ve some sort of power over however it is that basically anything goes. And that’s probably, arguably, the biggest issue of all idolatry. It’s that everything we do as is done to accomplish everything we make which has become everything we have which is then pretty much everything we care about anymore, it’s all done under the glaring reality in which we actually believe that anything goes.

We live in a world in which if you can make money doing it then good for you! If it might bring you fame or fortune or make you some friends, go all in. If it can in any way better your life then nobody will ask any questions as the overall contention is that this life’s best intention is for us to spend it doing only whatever it is that makes our stay here better.

And thus we now exist building all of these little kingdoms filled past full with all of our selfish skyscrapers in which our ego resides on the penthouse floor looking both down on everyone who’s doing it different and eye-to-eye with God who we’re convinced must be so impressed with all we’ve managed to accomplish that He will both let us keep all that we’ve come to love and just help us load the truck and maybe even drive it for us through those gates that’ll surely open for us considering all the amazing things we’ve done and are doing.

Yeah, God’s got to be so pleased with how important we’ve become, how powerful we are, how popular we continue trying to be.

Right?

Not even close!

Rather it’s because of all such idolatries as are literally everything we do anymore and all that we have to show for it, they’re all promised to be destroyed.

Why?

Because He won’t share His glory with another nor allow His praise given unto idols. And sure, we might not see such things as our many efforts, ideas, ideals as idols. But friends, if it takes our focus, our faith, our fealty away from Him, it most certainly is! And thus, yeah, an idol doesn’t have to be a tiny golden statue that we set on our mantle. Idols can be our jobs, our houses, our cars, our friends, our fun. We can turn, have turned literally everything into an idol in what’s become a way of life in which we spend our every waking moment only focused on what we want and what all we have to do in order to get it.

And the issue is that pretty much every single one of every such focus is focused only here. It’s all spent upon something in this life as is lived in this world. It’s all about something we can have or hold or hope to see or be and that before long. Indeed, we all wake up with every agreement already in place to continue ahead into this new day worrying about the same things we were worried over yesterday.

And what were we worried over yesterday?

Probably mostly only all the things we need to get done, all the deadlines we have approaching at work, all the people who we think are jerks, all the joys we hope to experience this weekend, all the plans we have for a vacation this fall, all the things we need to pick up next time we’re at the mall.

It’s all here!

Every aspect of life as we know it has us focused on something here. And that because, well, here is where we are. And too because here has things that we too can have. Here has things for us to do. Here offers us an endless array of faiths and focuses from which to choose that which we’ll do and that from all that we don’t. But my point is that nearly all of life has come to revolve around us and our efforts, our wants, our expectations.

All because all the above continue to achieve for us the outcomes we want such as food and comfort and safety and friendship.

All things that sure seem to be all but necessities in life. And yeah, to a certain extent they are.

Problem is that this life we’re living isn’t the only life we’ll live and it’s actually only lived in the one place we’ll leave.

So why then spend so much time and effort and worry upon things so worldly? Why do we continue giving so much time and attention to the accomplishing of things that will stay behind? Why do we continue giving so little time and intention toward He who is the Key which unlocks the Gate that Heaven has to keep out those who have chosen to live their lives as if the very best of life is only to ever be found on this side of forever?

Would you invite someone to spend eternity with you should they have made it clear that they thought they could always do better than you?

And, well, is that not what we’re all down here continuing to do? Just living lives trying to prove that our ideas and outcomes are better than everyone else’s? That we’re better at living life than Jesus was, you know, considering how He was so hated by everyone that everyone insisted upon His leaving this world as violently and as painfully as possible, and that in His 30’s?

I mean, I’m 38, couple months from 39 and so I’ve already lived here longer than Jesus and, to the best of my knowledge, nobody wants to kill me.

So I’m not seemingly doing all that bad!

Except that most days it seems like my life is falling apart, I’ve entirely too many things to get done alongside entirely too little time and energy to do them all, I’ve bills to pay and work to do in order to make the money with which to pay them, my shoulder is messed up from helping a neighbor move their new freezer last Tuesday and I’m typically angry, upset, frustrated, worn out, sad, ashamed, embarrassed, alone, scared, sore, and I’ve been told that I snore.

Yeah, other than all that I’m pretty sure I’ve got it all figured out.

Because that’s what we’re told that we’re supposed to do. That we’re supposed to spend these lives building these lives that make it look, and us feel, as if we both know what we’re doing and that we’re doing it well.

But friends, “Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.”

Yep, “in vain”.

And the word ‘vain’ is a trait defined as something/someone “having or showing undue or excessive pride in one's appearance or achievements.” And, considerably more ironically, it’s also a word used to express something that’s “marked by futility or ineffectualness.” And, most ironically of all, it’s also a word used to describe something “having no real value.”

And yet everything we do as is done to please ourselves, to protect ourselves, to portray ourselves as those who know what they’re doing and are too of an ability to do it well, something often done to please and/or impress those around us, it’s thus done in vanity. It’s all just us trying to make ourselves look good. It’s only efforts and undertakings undertaken to show the world how good we, or at least think ourselves to be.

But, as the Bible again points out, if God ain’t helping us do it and if Christ isn’t the reason for it being done, then it’s the second and ultimately third definitions of vanity as were deposited above. That being futile and ineffective and, ultimately, something that has no real value.

Yes, nearly the entire sum of all we’ve done is, get ready for this:

WORTHLESS!!

It’s all worthless. It’s all pointless. It’s all without purpose.

Why?

Because if it isn’t for Jesus or from the same then it means nothing as it can’t accomplish anything that means anything. It’s empty. It’s hollow. It’s hopeless.

And yet we’re all still seemingly helpless in regard to this idea that within these lives everything we do matters and means something. And that’s because, well, here it probably does. Again, so much of all we’ve done has here accomplished something, and that probably something that sure seemed to make our lives better. For we’ve all done things to make such things as money or friends or ourselves look good to those who pay us or that we want to hang out with us.

So much of what we’ve done and all we continue to do is focused only on us and what we want and what all we have to do or be in order to have it.

Thus it’s all about us.

Problem is that the Bible says we’re the problems whereas He’s the promise.

And yet we continue ahead into every new day we’re given worried mostly only about whatever it is that we’re doing and what all we hope to accomplish or achieve or receive for having done it.

But all that we’re ready doing inside anything we do that has Christ as neither the reason why nor the hope of, it’s all stupid. Why? Because in He alone is there life. And that because there remains no other Name under Heaven given unto men by which the same must be saved. Not might be. Not could be. Not would be if their every attempt to prove themselves unneeding of salvation fall short somehow.

No, we must be saved and that through Jesus alone.

Why?

Because He’s the One who chose to die to sin while the rest of us go on still happily living within.

We’ve proven time and again that we’ve no problem ignoring Him, giving His glory to the idols we’ve made of everything from our jobs to our jags, refusing Him then the praise He deserves for all that He’s done and continues to do.

Things we probably continue to miss because we’re all so busy working away on building all of these things that will only prove to betray our ability to go on living life whenever this world is proven the one place we can’t stay anymore.

Why?

Because so long as our eyes, our hearts, our minds, our lives are focused here, they’re not then able to focus on all that isn’t here.

But friends, if we don’t look elsewhere then how can we expect to find anything else? Not that it’s on us to find our way to Heaven as we don’t have a way to Heaven. Jesus is the Way to Heaven. But that’s kind of the point! It’s that while we can’t work nor earn nor elsewise plan or plot our own path to Heaven and do so unto the assurance that we’ll be let in, we can at least live these lives showing Him that we trust in Him to be the One who can.

Yet we can only do that whenever He’s both the reason and the reward. Only when He is the focus and that of our every effort and faith. Only when all we do is done unto His glory.

Something that we’re clearly not doing, finding, choosing nor chasing so long as we continue doing so much that only benefits us with what we’ve all come to believe are lives lived here the way we want to live them.

Yes, we’re all down here working away on building all our little buildings to house everything from hope to love. But friends, it’ll all be left behind on that Day when it’s proven that Jesus is the foundation of everything and thus that anything not built on Him was thus then built by the foolish builder who refused to consider that a flood might come again.

Granted, He’s said it won’t be a flood this next time but rather fire.

But fire destroys things too, especially those not fireproofed.

And, well, that’s what He told us He intends to do. To take all we have, all we are, all we then do and pass it through He who is the Refining Fire so that all that remains is only all that matters while everything else is burned away.

Why?

Because we so often get stuck living our lives for all that will burn.

He only wants to help build something that won’t.

Either way a life is being built by each of us while we’re here. Question is whether that life finds its best here or if it’s saving said best for later.

Guess we’ll find out when our every work is finally tested. But we shouldn’t be surprised when all that we’ve done fails to pass inspection when it’s proven that we did it all without He who’s going to inspect it being the only reason we did it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold