Day 4264 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Acts 7:51 NIV

The perpetuation

Among all of our curious attributes, demeanors, characteristics, chatters, cancers, confusions, delusions, decisions, demands and destructions it seems as though our ability to repeat something pretty much endlessly is perhaps our greatest strength. And indeed, depending upon the topic or trial or triumph or turmoil being considered, said ability to reprise our lives, or that of those who had theirs before we had ours, can be a good thing should the topic or trial or triumph or turmoil actually prove to be unto our undeniable benefit.

Problem is that there is nothing beneficial about our having made rejecting God, denying Christ and resisting then the third part of the only hope we have so common and arguably commendable as we have.

In fact it can only go bad.

And yet as a people who seek always to repeat those things that all other people have always tried to prove, seeking always to show ourselves strong, resilient and sure we all sure seem to be forgetting that those things which won't bend will break should enough force be not implied but finally applied that insists they do.

And indeed, one day insist He will.

And why?

Because each of us have given our lives to being nothing really all that different than all those who doubted and denied and determined then to have nothing to do with Him who has made it clear from the very beginning that all He’s wanted was for us to be His, a fact we see right from the start, (before all of everything we know started falling apart), in that He created us in His image.

We managed to forget that so wonderfully, forsake that so constantly, forgo that so culturally, reject that so completely that we ended up hating the very One who is the Son who came from above to show us both how to love and that we are loved and that so very much that He wants not for any us to die in our sins but would rather watch Him who had none suffer as if He had them all.

And still we stood at the foot of the cross cheering it on.

For stubbornness isn’t merely a hobby of ours but it is rather this heart of ours.

We know nothing of the kind of humility that would allow us to see how simple is the story of both His glory and our joy because we think the only joy in life is when the glory is ours. And the biggest problem with this is that we’ve all come to assume our glory gained in the continuing of such things as living these lives as if, yeah, our hearts and ears and eyes and minds are indeed still uncircumcised.

For what is the process of circumcision but the removal of the flesh?

Clear to see then why we want nothing to do with this!

It’s because, to us, the flesh knows best. The body doesn’t lie whenever it finds something that it likes. Our finding and feeling of pleasure makes far more sense to us, and is anymore far easier, than our enduring such things as His rebuking and the change inspired through said correcting. Indeed, to us there is nothing to correct as, again, we all know only to think we know best. And, well, whenever you consider yourself to be the best at something, doing anything else is just considered stupid.

Especially when the something different comes at you in the form of something new that He at first came to do and now calls us all to do too.

For it’s not that we mind that which is new as we clearly rather enjoy the novelty of such constant progressions as getting new cell phones every year and seeing what new flavor of candy they’ll release every fall.

We all love all of that sort of newness and excitement.

We just obviously can’t find the excitement in His new thing being our dying.

After all, we’re again not only alive and thus living a life but we’re all pretty much convinced that we’re the best there is when it comes to doing so.

And so we fall right in line living this life behind those who went on ahead into their dread of meeting a God who they too spent their lives trying to avoid however they could because their version of good couldn’t see anything good in His kind of something new.

And this is something that we all continue to do too.

Because, well, as much as there’s nothing new under the sun, neither is there anything new about His Word as was written unto a people living a life without any real, any tangible, any logical awareness of let alone then appreciation for the Son. No, mankind has never once managed to find the willingness to embrace the sort of life that He laid down His life for us to find.

If anything His version just feels wrong as it’s obviously backwards.

I mean He literally came here to die whereas we’re all here trying everything we can to live our best lives alongside an endless ability to think that’s something that we’re actually doing. That we are living the best lives to ever be lived. That there is then nothing we need to change and thus nothing we want to change and thus inevitably nothing we will change because, to us, change is basically just death without the casket.

It’s just waving goodbye to what’s been in our every measure a really good life that seems as such because, well, that’s kind of been the entire idea all along. To live a good life. To live a life worth living. To find that life that looks, feels, seemingly then is so very good that to do anything else within it would again be only stupid. And indeed, we’ve all managed to have gained so much comfort and so many companions and come then to feel nothing short of our each being champions at the contest to see who can live their life the best that we see now the rest as everyone who’s only wrong.

Again, especially the Savior who came to give it all away in the form of at first being hated and that long enough and so very much that the people eventually agreed that He just needed to die.

Even one of those closest to Him basically sold Him to those who wanted Him dead for a handful of silver.

And then as He was led away to be tried for crimes against the inhumanity of our humanity, another ended up doing what Jesus said he’d do: deny Him three times before the rooster crowed.

“I don’t know the man” Peter said. Yep, the same guy who walked on water and watched Jesus turn other water into wine. The same one who witnessed Him bring the dead to life and heal the sick, give sight to the blind, he told everyone who asked him that night that he didn’t know Christ as he didn’t want to risk being hated so equally.

None of us do.

And that’s why none of us have ever willingly gone out of our way to come out of our lives and live new ones outside of this world and its way. Rather all of us have done everything we could ever think to do, say, believe or try to be found welcomed here, loved here, hopefully liked enough and that by enough that we could indeed live good lives here.

Because that’s again the goal that all of humanity has always sought to know:

A life here so amazing, so comfortable, so successful, so wonderful that, having come to believe we’ve actually found it because we have found some things, felt some things that are wonderful and amazing and comfortable, we think we’ve become then successful at figuring out how best to do this.

And that so much that His call for all to lay down their lives and follow Him in then our too living them as He did, up to and perhaps literally including the promise of dying younger than we’d like at the hands of those who probably won’t like us very much anymore and that for speaking the truth that only sets captives free by at first pointing out all of our chosen and vastly adored captivity, it just makes no sense.

And that simply because, thanks to our eyes and ears and hearts and minds being still clearly so uncircumcised (because the flesh is still in the way), we don’t know how to think in such a way as to see the way that our lives are going so long as we all continue going only against Him who literally died for us.

Indeed, we’re all down here fighting daily against the Savior who wants to give us so much life and peace and joy and rest as if we find it better to all continue living as if all of this hatred and anger and violence and unrest and, yes, death is somehow better.

Friends, we couldn’t have gotten all this more wrong if we’d have tried.

Which, thankfully we never really did as instead we’ve all just come to live as if broken records simply repeating still today the very same rebellions and rejections decided upon by our ancestors who too refused to do pretty much anything of the little He’s asked us to.

We can’t even manage to love ourselves as is the first step to loving others as ourselves which is but a reflection of the love seen which came down from Heaven to lay down His life for a people still so blind as to go on living even still today as if He didn’t.

Because we don’t want to think about what it means that He did because, well, that line of thinking can only go bad because it only leans toward the realization that we’re not good.

But we know only to think we are as the leaven of the Pharisees has indeed leavened the whole batch of all of us who continue to live thinking only in pride and thus only for whatever it is that our ego can spend an entire lifetime thinking it knows. Again, we have proven that we can repeat the same things endlessly.

But friends, denying Him who calls us toward life eternally is inarguably the dumbest thing we could do, let alone keep doing so very much as it seems we’re all but adamant to.

A fact we continue to prove in that we all continue to refuse to bend the knee or bow the head in what could then be seen as lives willing to surrender to His will for once. Instead all we care about is our will which is written only in our wants which are for only whatever it is that we think is good as is only ever considered of those things that look or sound or feel the same.

And, well, guilt, regret, sorrow, sadness, shame, remorse, repentance, none of those feel good to us.

Rather they all suck as they’re all very close cousins to the death we dread thanks to the lives we’ve lived thinking that the only best way to life these lives is to keep on doing as we’ve always done.

We want nothing new under the sun and thus we reject the call of the Son who came to do something new that asks us to do something different.

We’d rather die having fun than live serving the Son.

And, well, as I said at the close of yesterday’s post, one day He won’t argue anymore.

One day He won’t try to change our minds anymore. One day He won’t ask that we change our lives anymore. One day He will carry on to completion the decision He made to give us all over to our sinful ways. And on that day He has promised that from then on nothing will change.

Rather once our forever is sealed, it’s ours to experience forever.

And yet even the hints as to how horrible hell will be and they given alongside a daily clarity as to how good He truly is to you and me, it rarely makes any difference. Instead most just keep on going the direction they’ve chosen because all of us love more the lie that tells us that we’re doing good enough than the truth which says there’s something better for us.

We don’t want better.

History has proven we never have.

The promise of there being a wide road paved toward eternal destruction says many be those who never will.

And, again, one day He won’t argue anymore.

The day is coming in which He will give us whatever it is that we’ve spent our lives asking Him for. Problem is that for most of our lives we’ve lived asking only that He go away, leave us alone, let us do whatever we want to without all of His pesky reminders of such things as reason and responsibility and righteousness. No, let us do wrong if we so wish because for us we alone know what’s best.

And indeed, He will let us have the reward we want wherever and whenever we want it.

Most are seeking and seemingly finding it within this world.

In fact, all of us have as we’ve all of us had plenty of fun, found a ton of enjoyment, made a whole bunch of friends, experienced a countless number of good things in what sure seem to then be good lives.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I believe that He doesn’t want us to experience good things nor to have good lives. I just consider that this world’s wickedness has gone and convinced us to lose our minds as we too seem more than able to agree that dark is light and wrong is right and life is worth taking whenever it doesn’t match up to the plans we’re making be it the life of a child we didn’t plan on having or that of the Savior that we never expected was actually coming because we’d all become of the opinion that we needed no salvation.

Indeed, we continue to prove a people willing, able to sacrifice whoever we need to so that we can continue to do only whatever we want to in this life lived inside this place.

And we drive past graveyard filled with some who never got the chance to be the good they could have been because we didn’t think we needed anyone’s help doing any better.

Friends, we’ve been killing each other forever inside this willingness to just let one another remain in sin and apart then from Him who is the Life. And someday soon He won’t try any longer to bridge the divide but will rather allow it to remain for all of forever with the vast majority of us on the other side of life.

He will let us die if we simply refuse not to.

And every day we continue choosing not to because that’s what we see everyone else choosing to do. None of us are ever going to welcome the Holy Spirit to begin its work of wrecking our lives until our lives are so wrecked that we have no choice anymore.

Blessed are those who are shown here to the humility that allows them to see that things couldn’t get any worse.

My hope is that we can all see that before time comes to a close and that final verdict is sealed.

I know that the very mention of change sends anger and resentment and this violent sense of danger coursing instantly through your veins. For me, to me it still sometimes does the same. But friends, just try it. I dare you, I beg you. Just one time ask Him to help you see just one thing in your life that you could change and better for having done so.

And then do it.

Change it.

Try it.

Because the truth is that we’ve been given these lives to practice both living and dying so that we could realize for ourselves which of the two is obviously the best. Humanity has proven that is has no problem in continuing to die to everything better that we could be if only we’d change. It’s time for us to do something new if we really do want something better.

Because forever is getting closer and when it gets here many will lose that hope forever.

Please don’t risk that just because doing so remains so popular. Rather leave the dead to be their broken record.

For we’ve got something different, something better we can be if only better we’re willing to be.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold