Forged By Faith

James 3:16 NIV The Gate As opened unto a closing door that’s slammed upon the substance of the better life you’ll only later realize you used to have in what was then a time in which contentment knew nothing of jealousy and thus you nothing of want. Nothing then of disappointment, or at least not near as much. Nothing then of anger or frustration as are found inside a life that seemed so much better than that which you’d left behind. Nothing then of who you’d become on the other side of what’s become so many lines crossed looking for the greener while only managing to see the greed. And that along with what grows into our coming to know that there would be a most solemn of struggle should we ever dare venture back as the only returning path is that paved of such a surrender that indeed nothing much of who we’ve become will be allowed to survive. All because we’ll not have any of that humbler person left in which to hope having all but come to know all that still we’ll know only to want...

Proverbs 6:27 NIV Pain is a promise meant to inspire us to avoid the promise of pain. But we live in a place that believes pain only a problem meant to ruin their carefree outlook on life. Millions running headlong into as many walls of self and insanity as they can find, all while pretending they’re not hurting from all the crashes and calamities they’ve felt so far. But I guess the question is just how long we can pretend we’ve felt no pain despite pasts that bring regrets into the present. Because that’s the promise we’ve been presented: That one day it won’t be pretend anymore. No, the pain will become permanent no matter how good we thought we became at pretending we could play with all that’s dangerous without ever facing a consequence. That’s what has the world running a million different directions believing a billion different lies. They don’t want to care about where they’re going, because if they did, they’d have to admit sin has them going the wrong direction. And unlike th...

1 Timothy 4:1 NIV We should be wary of holding to what may well prove a deadly assumption. Problem is that humanity doesn’t seem to see much danger in assumptions, let alone danger enough to potentially prove fatal. No, many live their lives as if everything will “come out in the wash.” Society has settled upon this outlook wherein there is no danger as there is nobody who would actually be so callous and cold-blooded so as to risk the eternal well-being of those who form the platform upon which they stand. But the reality is that we may have actually arrived at these "later times" described here in the opening of 1 Timothy chapter 4. We may be walking through the very days foretold by those who somehow saw what we're seeing now. We might very well be the ones who witness things talked about in the Bible, things that were only considered as yet still to come whence they were written well before our generation came to be. We might have indeed come upon the fulfillment of m...

Jeremiah 3:24 NIV From the very dawn of civilization, mankind has managed to somehow fail to learn one of the most crucial truths that exists. The problem that created original sin continues to be the problem that corrupts and destroys humanity today. They say that if you don't learn from the past that you're destined to repeat it. Well, we've clearly not learned our lesson because we simply fail to understand how an apple can teach us anything. And so we’re repeating that same downfall over and over again. That lesson is that what we consume may also end up consuming us. It seems that every single year, without fail, this idea starts spinning around my mind during the lead-up to this holiday that many are celebrating today. Flipping through the channels and seeing all the ads for all the scary movies. Watching a show and seeing a commercial for some new horror flick that's coming out. Scrolling around the interwebs and seeing stories and messages and advertisements and...