Forged By Faith

Ecclesiastes 4:6 NIV More is more Just of nothing that we want and even less of all we need. For with more exists this opportunity of greed coming along and convincing us to keep going along what is the endless path that’s paved in desire and its ability to keep ever-lit this raging fire that lives this life through these eyes that see these lies not for the lies they are but rather for the lives we want. And indeed, within this world we are surrounded by so many things that can become unto us the seeds which grow this greed as every single day spent here we see something else that someone else says we need. All of it for no reason other than making our lives better. Apparently. And, well, whenever better is something that’s widely considered available, and as easy as it is to find, supposedly, then you’d have to be a fool to refuse it. After all, better is better is it not? And indeed down here the commonest of all pursuits is that aimed at living our best lives and, well, best is mad...

Philippians 4:7 NIV It's as if, all at once, all of life's storms are stopped, a calming of every wave of worry and wander, finding us finally free of what it is to feel afraid as we find ourselves not the basis of our beliefs anymore. No, it’s as if we've washed finally upon the shoals of eternity's shore. And it’s here, within this place, placed at peace within His grace that we find we've nothing to fear, know nothing of fright, just of rather a life all but now completely lost within the light that is His love that is indeed a gift given unto us from high above. And it’s this very gift that very much does surpass all understanding, even our often still feebly trying. And that His grace leads to this place where our understanding isn’t needed anymore, such it what this freedom is for. It’s to absolve us of us and all we’ve done, been, become and seek still to be. It’s a letting go of you and me, a finally kind of free, one felt for all of eternity. A journey into...

Matthew 10:13 NIV Oh the dangers of a life spent driving distracted down this dividing line of undeserving devotions. Seems that we’ve all come to forget that this world and its ways invite in us a risk of so quickly losing sight of salvation's severity that so too do we soon lose sight of the varied blessings such salvation has secured inside of us who claim to be inside of Christ. Because the truth is that we've so much to lose even if His mercy can't be lost. No, it's what His mercy has given that might be taken should we for a moment allow past blindness to catch up. And yet such mistaken misunderstandings don’t even have to struggle to catch us as we never really seem to move on from a life wasted on wanting all that this world wants for us, wants from us. Headlines and hatred creating in us an identity shared with everyone else too weak to war for what Christ died for. No, we’re still very much the same as we’ve always been, those stubbornly lost so lost inside as...

John 14:27 NIV Life's most priceless gift was given through the heaviest cost, something this world cannot give as it cannot understand. This peace we've been offered to share is something in dire risk of dying the death of a million momentary concerns. It's hanging completely in the balance between the endless choices from which we're pointed and told to pick in this place. But often times, all the time in fact, seems that our peace, the version given us of Christ sadly isn't seen nor considered among the options from which we're given to choose from the world in which we're walking. That's a bit of what we talked about yesterday, this world doesn't know peace because they refuse to know Christ. Despite all of our 'progressions', kindness and humility are entirely not among them. Technology? Sure. Social interaction? Most definitely. A mingling of the two into a platform from which each of us has a digital voice allowing us to add our prover...

Hebrews 12:14 NIV Peace is far too precious an outcome to not pursue it as desperately as possible. But so too is peace far too priceless for us to allow for compromise or for it to be taken for granted so just we can find an arbitrary version somewhere within this middle ground. In this world we're expected to simply go along as the preeminent means of getting along. To be spineless is seen as the only real way to be cordial and make for comfortable contentment for all those around us. And thus we're taught that peace is something defined by the world in which we walk and that it's up to us to therefore alter our ways, our opinions, our beliefs in order to better adhere our lives to their arrogant insistence upon our giving them peace. World peace. That's something that's sadly descended into a mockery most laughable. It's a quick replay given by ladies in a beauty pageants. It's a campaign slogan, a political emphasis, a global consideration of a rapidly f...