Day 4242 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Thessalonians 2:11 NIV

The allowance

As a people who’ve become children of this world via our amassing within the wealth held within so too then have we been conditioned to consider the concept of an allowance as something given to children in response to their both undertaking and thus upholding a specified responsibility mostly centered upon the idea of chores which they do mostly to receive this giving of money in what is a starter transaction which teaches them the importance of hard work and the rewards to be met in the doing thereof.

But in general terms an allowance is simply the amount of something that someone is allowed.

Parents allow their children the promise of a certain sum of something, generally money, given as something of a reimbursement upon their child doing something that the two have agreed upon being done. So in other words an allowance is the allowing of something to be given in the direct response to another allowing themselves to both expect and thus accept the something they’re given in direct response to their doing whatever was required to be done in order for their to have won whatever the reward/outcome may be.

Problem is that it works with more than just kids and too for more than just money.

A problem to be proven perfect in that we’re headed toward a Day in which we’ll find that God’s allowed us all of this time that we all call this life in which to do whatever we’ve chosen to as was chosen in light of our inescapable awareness of His divine presence and the purpose, promise, patience and power that has always been evident within. In other words God allows us to live these lives, allows us to do within them whatever we wish, be it in terms of things done in agreement with His will and Word or without, and thus then allows us an at least misty understanding of both what’s expected of us, from us and too what is promised us in regard to both whether we uphold His said expectations and what’s promised if we fail to do so.

The failing to do so the thing that He allows us to do.

The promise of eternal life in Heaven with Him the allowance to be given unto those few who do choose to do what all He asks all of us to.

The punishment of everlasting death in a place immeasurably far from His peaceful and provisional presence paid as an allowance unto those who chose to refuse to do what He calls all of us to do.

The allowing of the difference allowed so as to define us as the ones who chose.

Yes, He allows us the gift of freewill in which we do as we want, making our little choices in regard to our little lives and what all we do or don’t wish to find, feel, see, be, hear or hold inside. A choice we make every day, multiple times within them in fact, that all will combine to tell the story of a life in which we did all we did or didn’t based upon our at first awareness of His existence and then our chosen acceptance and appreciation thereof or our vastly more common denial and deviation therefrom.

Vastly more common because, well, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Can’t be more common than the including there of “all”.

Indeed, we’ve all been allowed to be and that alive and that in a place in which the lie is held so high and deep and wide that it has come to infect every single life. What lie? That one which tells us at first that we can be as gods and thus needn’t the presence of God as He’d then be but a rival entity who would compete with/for the honor, praise, glory that we seek to store and enjoy all for ourselves.

Yes, the same devil continues to sell the same deception to a people already so deceived as to believe that God’s not worth our time or consideration, a consideration we’ve all enjoyed considering because it’s allowed us to find and feel so much pleasure and enjoyment that now the very thought of repentance and the humility in which it exists seems to us a punishment met where we contend no punishment due.

After all, we’re all just innocent little kids down here doing our best to make the best of our being here, aren’t we?

And hey, even the Bible tells us thanks to the wisdom given unto Solomon that, “there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.” Why? For “then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.”

Toil that we undertake in response to an existence God has allowed us, an experiencing of joy then that is something of an allowance rendered in response/as reimbursement offered in kindness unto our doing whatever He’s put us here to do. Which, considering the initial design of mankind’s existence as was given in a Garden in which we were to tend said growings and they as planted by God’s goodness seeking to sustain us who were at first created in His image and thus to be His children, asked us to simply be His children and exist then in an undying appreciation for all He is and all He does.

Not what we’ve done, is it?

No, instead we’ve done just about everything else. Maybe that experience in/of Eden was just too boring. Maybe there wasn’t actually everything we needed to remain alive given therein. Perhaps those first of our people just couldn’t help but wonder what all they might be missing.

A wondering allowed them from God through the presence of the serpent who told them that the one tree from which God asked them to refrain eating the fruit borne upon (the task He asked of a children of His own in light of His knowing the responsibility to be incurred in said knowledge to be gained from said tree and how it would not work out well for any) would elsewise open their eyes to seeing the more their lives could be.

A more for which still we seek in what remain so many places that have so little awareness or appreciation of God that it’s to be now demanded of us all an accounting for all we’ve done in all of this seeking, serving, buying and believing all that is under the sun in what have come to become lives in which, to us, God basically doesn’t exist because He’s allowed us to live as if He doesn’t.

And, well, turns out we’ve come to love it!

Indeed, this is why the devil was allowed to tell Adam and Eve to try the fruit of that tree. It was to test and see what God’s creation would do, how they would respond. Much the same as how a parent bestows upon their child the opportunity to do a work, complete a task, take out the trash and offers them a payment rendered in response to their shouldering said responsibility.

God asked them to stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and promised them the payment of the ability to remain alive forever in lives lived in peace perfected within the Garden that God had created, and said Himself was good.

A responsibility they ultimately denied as they considered that the devil had offered them a better payment given as reimbursement for their doing what he wanted them to do.

A desire designed inside his quest to steal and kill and destroy whomever he can.

Why?

Because God allows an alternative to Him so as to give all of us the opportunity to choose for ourselves who we serve.

Because it wouldn’t be love if it were forced.

No, God doesn’t force us to acknowledge Him. Doesn’t force us to do as He commands. Doesn’t force us to appreciate the fact that we who’re alive now are so on this side of His having sent His Son who died to atone for our sins as were started way back in that Garden when the first of us, our shared ancestors, chose to rebel against God and found themselves paid the allowance of both knowing the knowledge of the difference between good and evil and to the inability to uphold said knowledge well.

A problem they’ve passed down to all of us who now know the difference between good and evil and still don’t handle it well.

Again, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Because He allows us to.

Why?

Because He knows that since humanity’s rebellion is now complete, having been completed in the Garden from which those first of us were evicted thanks to their refusal to uphold the single responsibility that God had given them (don’t eat that one fruit), the only way for us to now come unto an understanding of all He’s done to reverse our rebellion is for Him to allow us to rebel, to fall, to fail so that, once we hit rock bottom, which we all will, we can then and only then see the many lies and deceptions that we’ve chosen to believe instead of the simplicity of believing in Him and seeking then to honor only the same.

Yes, we have to run this race spent always away from Him if we’re ever to find that there is no life without Him.

Thus He sends the powerful delusions, the lies, the false prophecies, the lips of fallacy and the eyes of flattery unto us all so that we all have to now choose what we do and why it’s done.

All so that He can “repay each person according to what they have done.”

The repaying then a reimbursement promised in light of an honest work given unto either honesty and thus a belief that serving the truth is the better choice or rather of a work given unto serving disbelief as is believed because serving the lie seems to make better these lives.

For doesn’t still that same offer sell? That we too could be as gods? That we can determine our own lives and how they go via the deciding of all we determine to do within them? That we’re the only masters of our fate? That there’s a best life we can live here? That seeking to please our flesh, something that will never not feel good, does indeed seem then to be good?

A powerful delusion.

One given so as to allow us to determine for ourselves all that we do and why. Why? Because, again, God intends to “repay each person according to what they have done.” Why? Because, again, we all have the chance to choose whether we live as if His children or rather as those who exist as if we’re our own. And, well, the vanity and pride which have come about as something of a side effect to the fruit that Adam and Eve consumed has continued to prove that we just really prefer the process of putting ourselves first via the endless seeking for mostly only our pleasure.

Indeed, there’s not a human alive here that doesn’t understand the excitement, the enjoyment that comes from living to serve ourselves.

All because He’s allowed us that choice.

All to see an evidence which shows perfectly both who we are as is defined by all we do and thus too whether we agree that we are His as is done only when we do only as He calls us to or if we rather belong to another as is proven in our doing of little if any of all He asks us to.

Yes, God allows for every lie, every deception, every false pretense and common rejection because faith can only exist as a personal relationship which demands then that every party involved choose to be involved. Otherwise it would remain a job, a lifeless, loveless experience undertaken out of mere normality. If our love of God were as simple as His forcing us to love Him, then we’d have no say in it. And if we had no say in it then we couldn’t be repaid for whatever we did or didn’t do in light of it.

We’d just be robots who lived as if programmed to repeatedly praise Him in whatever manner He’d programmed us to.

But He didn’t want praise robots.

He wanted children.

He wanted a people who wanted to be His people. He wanted a creation that existed in an appreciation for all the goodness He is and all the goodness that gives. He wants still a people who want to be His, who live to be His, who are willing to die to be His.

He wants a people who live out an obvious understanding that in regard to this life we all live here, the very best it can ever be is whenever we live for Christ in the agreement that to die then is the greatest thing to gain as we believe that when we leave this world we get to go home.

Are we those?

Do we believe that?

Is Heaven the greatest hope we have, and it had because we know of a love there so amazing that it was willing to die for us to have the hope of being there with Him someday?

Or are we still buying and believing in the delusion that has had us all lost in the illusion that this life in this place is the best that life can be? That our purpose for being is the ongoing experiencing of pleasure? That our promise is the enjoyment of all this world’s treasure? That being entertained or seeking always for such enjoyments is the reward for our existence?

That we are here as gods who then deserve to be pleased, satisfied, satiated upon the substance of all this world has to offer?

Is this world our reward?

Truth is that all of us have lived as if it is and that because the deception of disbelief tells us that it is, and that alongside a real-time experiencing of such things as pleasure and enjoyment. Indeed, we don’t have to believe that life here can feel amazing in what is a place in which we’ve all felt pleasure and satisfaction and success. We know this life can be seen as the best life we’ll ever live.

That’s the delusion.

That this is all there is. That our time here is all the time we’ll have. That we’re then here to soak up as much of whatever it may be that we come to believe is good in and of this world while we’re in it.

But the Day comes when we’ll not be in it anymore.

Problem is that the devil has had us all convinced that, since we too might be as gods, then should there be a God then He’s but an equal of ours and thus without any real power or authority over us. Thus if He is there then He can’t punish us. A belief we choose to believe as it leaves us freed to continue doing whatever we want to do as if we’re the only ones we’ll ever answer to and the only answer that will ever matter is our own personal pleasure.

It isn’t.

No, the only answer that will one day matter is how much of the Son we sought to know in what then should be lives in which it’s plainly known that we’d begun leaving everything here, counting it all as loss, rubbish in fact when compared to the hope and glory and gain of our believing in His being the only Name given unto us by which we sought to be saved from what we know had been lives that grew so very dark that only His light could make us right.

God allows us to fail Him, to fall short of Him all so that we can come to understand and appreciate the promise He’s given and what all He had to do and endure to give it.

He allows His children to hate Him so that they can hopefully come to know how much He loves them.

Thus He allows us to fall so that He can pick us back up.

Because that’s what love does. It allows another to live their life, even if it means watching them do wrong rather than doing right, all so that it can be there to help should they ever realize they’re only wasting their lives doing wrong.

Because it has to be personal.

Otherwise it means nothing.

Thus He allows us to make our decisions, to choose our choices, to listen to whatever voices we want to hear and to do whatever it is that we end up doing while we’re here all so that He can repay us in accordance to all we’ve done. Payment rendered in the giving of death to those who leave this world still refusing the Son and the giving of life to those who rather walk out of here in a growing agreement that Christ really is the Way, the Truth, the Life.

A truth we’ve all clearly denied.

A denial that we too can take part in getting rid of thanks to His call unto the task of repentance in which we show Him that we’re done believing the delusion, the deception and wish rather to now only believe in only Him.

Make that choice my friends.

For the Day comes closer on which our allowance will be paid.

And that as fully as forever.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold