Forged By Faith

1 Peter 4:13 NIV What are we missing? Is it an understanding as to the promise given unto all of us? Is it the ability to appreciate the honesty of the call? Is it the humility that would allow us to better uphold the opportunity? Is it an awareness as to what all this means in that being so hard only proves to accomplish a deeper hope that won’t let go of us even when we prove unable to keep hold of it? Is it realizing the fact that we’re dying, a realization given unto the heart of every man so as to inspire within the same an urgency to seek for some way to escape that reality? Is it reality, are we missing the true gravity of why we’re here as waits always hidden in what all we’re not doing? Is it that fact that all we are doing is most often just losing everything from our time to our lives to our minds in what’s become so sadly a life in which so much matters that doesn’t and all that does often then doesn’t either? Is it the chance to change, the opportunity to actually start ov...

Colossians 4:5 NIV “for which I am in chains” I wonder what our world would be like would that we could share in what Paul seemed to see even in his captivity. What might it be to feel that kind of urgency to continue doing something that meant so much that not even prison was allowed to alter our passion? What if we could see through the chains we wear unto the beauty of our being here able to share stories of our too having held them so as to help others see that we have a Savior who came to destroy them? What might we have to say if that was the story we felt we couldn’t help but share? What if the Gospel was the story we felt we simply had to share no matter when, no matter where? It’s these sorts of questions that I find my mind asking my heart in what’s been a now long-fought fight between my head and my hope as was for a long time held inside a heart that just wouldn’t listen to anything anyone else had to say. For in that way all I felt I had to say was this story about what ma...

Isaiah 30:10 NIV When confronted with confrontation from among a cancerously cantankerous culture one has but two considerations: Cower until you concede or chase courage until things change. Even if things never change. Here. Because that’s the overall trajectory of life both promised in the Word and debated, denied, declined and decried amongst the world. It’s proven, unequivocally and ultimately undeniably that all manner of life as lived within this land is eventually aimed outward in that we’re spending time that’s running out, we’re all called to come both out of ourselves and out of these surroundings, and eventually that we are all going to be venturing out of this world and of this life and thus of this life as lived like this world to be liked by this world so as to share in their fear of that finality perhaps not being quite so final after all. That’s what underscores all this agitation that otherwise undermines all good efforts given unto good works aimed at achieving a bet...

Hebrews 12:1 NIV To know that you've been held back from a life of deeper meaning and more meaningful purpose is altogether gut-wrenching. But to know that millions around you may never care to know true freedom as it exists only on the other side a wrongly lived life laid down is as devastating a realization as a human mind can consider. Because along this narrowing path unto which we’ve been called, it's not just our freedom which is found. No, so too do we find that too few others care to find theirs. And yet, despite the division deepening between us and a world we remain in though no longer of, that the weight of that saddening realization remains firmly in place no matter where we go or how hard it becomes to speak the truth in a world in love with lies testifies to the true purpose of our very existence. It's not what we've always thought it was. We're not here for all we've always assumed we were. Our lives are indeed not our own, and yet that's a tr...

Isaiah 43:19 KJV Eventually all which has been lost, left set adrift atop a sea of uncertainty and sorrow, will wash up onto the beaches of what may well feel a war-torn reality. It’s just inevitable. Inevitable because it's promised by He who authored reality and the inevitability of eternity into being. Thus it's something that all of us either have or will experience for ourselves at some point. Problem is that that point seems to have at least some hinging upon the decision between our embracing the willingness to embrace it or our continuing to swing over onto the opposite path where we simply continue trying to avoid it for as long as possible. Now don't get me wrong, I do understand why we want to avoid the crippling fall back into the reality from which we've been running. It's because it's crushing to see the many missteps and missed opportunities now forever a part of our story written by our pride thinking we had both the right and the ability to stea...