Forged By Faith

Isaiah 55:7 NIV Losing a self That’s the share, is it not? To lose a self? To not merely weigh the possibility of a life lost being a necessity but to rather both welcome said understanding and then humble oneself unto walking daily into new depths thereof? To no longer stray from the contemplations of a lost soul’s vacations from the very vocation unto which they’ve been stationed but to rather embrace the thoughts of all the times in which we did everything other than anything we should have? A now lifelong collective of choices that have accomplished our having become what He had to come to leave undone so that the same we might now not merely become but delight in the daily process such fading entails. And while it is a truly strange thought to think in what’s in many ways still that mindset stayed upon such soured assumptions as our present presumptions that whatever it is that we’re doing, wanting, winning at the moment is somehow always what’s best for us to be so pouring oursel...

Psalm 130:4 NIV For, “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” It seems as though verse 4 highlights the hope whereas verse 3 pinpoints the problem, both coming around to the combing of the magnificence of what we celebrate at Christmas. Indeed, it’s something that manages to hit me somehow differently every year anymore. And yet despite the design or divide, each year is still defined in many ways the same too. It’s become quite the challenge to a consideration as it always changes and yet stays the same. Kind of the perplexity proven between affect and effect. I remember growing up and finding that similarity in spoken word as defined by the difference between one letter determining the verbal form of the same idea from the idea’s use as a noun instead to be an almost condemnation in regard to my ongoing interest in the English language. Look at me now! Guess it’s sort of like the kid who despised geometry that grew up to own a construction company or engineering ...

Ezekiel 18:27 NIV To live a life lost within the darkness of our own deceitful desires is all but demanded in this place as such is the way all of everyone lives, but therein lies the beauty of the light which has now come with far different demands. For God’s ways are indeed higher than ours, better than ours, thus simply different than ours. And since His demands as defined by His design are indeed so very different from ours, well, we’re left with a rather simple decision: Stay or go. Remain or return. Continue to rent or conspire to repent. And yes, I said conspire. For to conspire is to “make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act.” To conspire is to “seem to be working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone's detriment.” And thus we find within this faith a chance at a change that will literally turn our lives around and thus lead to the salvation we so desperately need from the sinners we’ve so clearly become. But the gravity is ...

Hebrews 9:15 NIV You've heard the saying "out with the old, in with the new"? Well, Christ perfected it! He embodies it. He is the most perfect example of that phrase in every way possible. He came to this earth to wipe out everything which had come before and offer us something entirely new in its place. He slammed the door to the past closed and opened up to us a new life, a new hope, a new future, a new everything. He gave His life to overcome death and to leave behind everything that had existed before His arrival in the process. Problem is that we're still adjusting to all that newness. We're still kind of stuck in this weird middle ground between the old and the new. Our hearts have been remade through the death, burial, and resurrection of our Savior, and they're slowly but surely learning how to live this new life we've been given. We're learning how to take advantage of this fresh start. We're learning how to set aside the old and strive t...

Luke 17:32 NIV Stuck. Frozen. Cemented in this eternal middle ground where all we have is a reminder of a doomed past we’re not going back to and the dream of a hopeful future that we’ll sadly never experience. You see, that’s what we get by wasting all this time worrying about all these feelings of unworthiness. We get stuck in the middle. We find ourselves being led to the hopeful realization of a salvation we don’t deserve, but still somehow unwilling or unable to let go of the disaster that we’ve created behind us. It’s like we have this innate sense of responsibility to clean up the mess we’ve made of our life so far. We feel this responsibility to maybe fix it somehow so that we feel better about the gift we’ve been given through the cross. I guess we don’t want to feel humbled by God giving us a gift that our old lives clearly don’t deserve. Or maybe we don’t want to feel obligated to feel grateful. Or maybe we still just don’t understand how all those mistakes we’ve made can tr...

Isaiah 55:7 NIV Yesterday we talked about how we can't afford to let shame to hold us back from sharing the message of the cross with those who desperately need to hear it. It's a message that applies to all of us because it meets us in our sins and shame and helps us understand that we don't have to stay there. But all of us can agree that shame and regret are some pretty strong feelings. The thing is that they're just lies. Shame tells us that our pasts are what tell the whole story of who we are. It reminds us of all the bad choices we've made and the horrible mistakes that have resulted because of them. But what we have to understand is that shame is something that we give power to, it doesn't actually have any power of its own because again it's a lie. We have to reach the point where we're just done listening to a repeat of the past and realize that we are actually free to change. All of us have lived our lives like they're some kind of game wh...

Psalm 113:12 NIV I'm thankful for distance. Yep, that even sounded weird in my head as I typed it. But I read this one last night and even though it's one that we all know, I still had to go back and read it again. There's this inconceivable feeling to it that just grabs ahold of your mind for a minute. We talk a lot about forgiveness in our faith, but the way this verse describes it almost goes beyond what we know of forgiveness. And I think that's what makes God's mercy so impossible for us to comprehend. It's bigger than anything we know. It's more than anything we've experienced. It's beyond what our words can define. His forgiveness is more than just saying that our sins are paid for. It's more than Him saying that it's okay as long as we try to do a little better. They're gone. All of our mistakes and problems and messes are as far away from us as they can be. Where does the east begin? Where does the final boundary of the west lie?...

Job 33:27 NIV People used to say that honesty was the best policy. These days it seems more like they see honesty as some kind of burden that needs to be dealt with rather than the factory setting that it should be. Our world is so used to running under false pretenses and comfortable lies that some people may not even remember what it's like to just be open and honest with others. But in reality, being honest is the only thing that really helps anyone. This verse from Job from my reading last night really goes along with what we talked about yesterday. We need to strip away this facade that we've put up regarding our faith. It doesn't make us better than anyone else. It doesn't put us up on some pedestal where we can look down on those around us. If anything, our faith reminds us that we're the problem. It confirms that we're the ones who are the broken, the lost, the hurting. But anymore it's almost like people use faith and our pursuit of righteousness as...