Forged By Faith

1 John 5:11 NIV Where is life? It would make sense for us to assume that it’s found here as, well, here we are and we are all living what sure seems to be a life. And indeed, we are all alive and so, yeah, here we seem to have found a life. But of late I’ve found myself beginning to wonder as to whether something is truly found where it can be lost. Can we really have what we will one day lose? Or is this not something more of a borrowing scenario in which what we have is but ours to have for but however long another’s determined to let us have it? Is not life, as is lived within this world, but a loan of sorts? And, well, is any loan really given without the intention of getting back that which you’ve allowed another to use for a specified time, usually unto the pre-agreed upon returning of both the initial investment alongside an equally agreed upon level of interest? Nobody, at least not many that we know of, is willing to loan us much if anything of much if anything without there b...

1 John 5:12 NIV What do we have here? For most the answer to that question usually revolves around something that’s here with us. In fact, the answer is or has been the same for all of us in that all of us have lived all of our lives looking far too interestedly upon the things and theories of this world. We’ve all given entirely too much of our time, our efforts, our energies and imaginings unto those things which we can see thus could hold, could buy within this life that we’ve fairly been convinced that we’ve lived. Because indeed, one would think that to be alive meant that they were living a life. And perhaps we are. Maybe we have. I hope we do or will or at the very least want to as I consider life to be an amazing gift that’s honestly, considering it’s given us daily, entirely easy to overlook and take for granted. I mean, when you continue to receive the same thing day after day, it’s pretty much expected that you’ll probably come to expect it. And this is in every way what eve...

1 Timothy 6:19 NIV Get a life Don’t worry, it’s actually remarkably easy to do! For while I know it sounds both confusing, degrading, a little bit childish and a whole lot of rude, the fact is that it’s actually the pursuit that we’ve all been called to. And that’s simply because He who created us at first created us for basically everything better than everything we’ve chosen instead to become and then He actually chose to come to become among us so as to, having put both on us and up with us, save us by doing with His life what none of us had done with ours. And that’s honor God through the violent upholding of His will as if it were all that ever mattered. No, the tragic reality of our reality is that our humanity has really neglected to even simply acknowledge Him. And we’ve in truth done this in every possible way that we could imagine to. We’ve blatantly gone willfully against His Word and will. We’ve brazenly rejected His offering to lead us for the mere repayment of our loving ...

Colossians 3:3 NIV decides upon the death And that of even all that is because along this line you’ll come to find within this time that we call life there’s so much that isn’t what you’ve long thought it was that because you did you do start to agree that the part of you that still tries so hard to see, to know, to hold, to have is indeed better off left to a dirt nap. Because there’ve come entirely too many times within every single one of our lives in which our hearts and/or our minds thought and felt that they’d figured out the reason, the purpose, the very promise of life. Only to all of us stand here still today still looking through things for something that will perhaps not let us down this time. Or, and it would in truth be a feeling finally even better, perhaps something that we won’t let down this time. Because, at least for me, that’s been the story of my life. And it’s become such the tagline that my mind finds only all the time all of the ways in which I surely disappoint...

Psalm 90:10 NIV Trouble and sorrow I sit here at 38, apparently and probably halfway home if not more, and I can already look back on what’s been a ride long spent through a fair share of the both as have been met more times than I can remember as of this morning. For in truth, such truly is life. It’s but our time in which we find that we’ll all feel that we’ll always fail to find the fun, fame, fortune or whatever other such fast-paced frivolousness that the world continues to tell us that we need in ever-growing measure. Why? Because to many here this place is their home and thus too the same of their every treasure and, well, as time continues to fly by toward wherever time goes once it’s gone from us, the same then seem to easily understand that their running out of the time they once had more of demands they find more soon. Not time as that’s what we fail at in this life, finding time. But more stuff, more treasure as it were and for many will continue to be. Indeed, so many here...