Forged By Faith

John 19:30 NIV “It is finished” And by it He meant all of it. Every bit of the Old Testament and every prophecy spoken within it. Every ounce of the waiting and worry won within the hearts and hopes of those who’d lived it. Every moment in which mercy was needed but never given. Every time that love was offered a chance to come to life but was elsewise rejected. Every word spoken that had no business being uttered. Every action ever undertaken that caused only the sort of suffering that He had now completed. Every life that had been lived in an enemy’s enmity as thrown in the face of the God who had now come to help us see what we had become. It was over. This is in every possible way one of the easiest ideas to contemplate and yet arguably the most difficult to even begin thinking about. For in this life we’ve all been given the ability to have met many things, thoughts, theories that have long since met their conclusion. We know the gravity of something ending. And, well, we know tha...

Colossians 1:22 NIV For our to have been made something we once were but had since lost demanded the doing of something none had ever known, had any reason to imagine, nor as it turns out even the ability to imagine. Because who would imagine such a freedom as forgiveness? Who would imagine such a blessing as a new beginning? Who would imagine such a kindness as Christ’s compassion? Who would imagine such a love as one that would delight to lay down a life for the good of anyone much less for the best for everyone? Yes, who could imagine that through such a death as that in which He decided to endure, delighted to endure, that through such a suffering might one day come an eternal salvation complete with everlasting life won on the other side of our present death as defined by our living in the dark afraid of the light? It’s in every way mind-bending and life-changing as that is in fact the point and purpose perfectly perfected in Christ Jesus. To free us. To change us so that we can f...

Romans 5:10 NIV The redemptive work of our restoration as deemed now a reconciliation both despite our irreverence and thus in spite of our rebellion as won within such spiritual indifference is one won by the blood of the Son who came to remove all reason for our rejection both of God and thus by God. Problem is that we still get stuck most days seeing mostly only the scars we’ve carved and all these stains we’ve claimed knowing well that each were caused by choices we made that are not at all as light or in any way quite so simple as we at once assumed them to be but have rather become what seem these constant reminders of painful memories of who we’ve been being worthy of perhaps just about everything but a welcome back within the presence of the One we’ve lived our lives pretending wasn’t there, couldn’t hear, didn’t care. Because when confronted with the consideration that the One we’ve so wronged is the same who came to set us free from a life lived wrongly, well then what’s one ...