Forged By Faith

Acts 4:11 NIV Overruled Because, well, truth is that God’s not persuaded by the arrogance of man nor is He in any way to prove ever inclined toward listening to, learning from nor looking for ways to please those who continue walking in it as is proven in every life that’s ever been lived by those of us, who are all of us, who have indeed lived as if Christ were neither a need nor even a thought. And in all sadness this is something that has defined all of us and how we’ve gone about at least a portion of our time here. We’ve all rejected Him, refused Him, ignored Him, maybe even mocked those who believed in Him before we did. Why? I personally think it’s because deep down we all know inside our bones and their marrow that “anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces” whereas too “anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” And, well, human logic has us all pretty much convinced that neither of those is in any way an outcome worth wanting and so, well, we’ve just all chosen t...

James 1:21 NIV Unbecoming And that all of everything we’ve all become having become what He had to come just to die to leave undone all because we’d become all that is to be defined as unbecoming of where we’re going because where we’re going is not the place that He went to make for those who are as unready, and unwilling to even begin becoming otherwise, as we’ve so sadly become even on this side of His having came to overcome all we’ve become behind the lines of those who became the same but won’t let it go before they go wherever all of us are. In short, the Gospel is meant to utterly decimate everything it is that defines us here inside these lives living as whatever you may want to call this. Sinners seems to sum it up best. Unfortunately, that’s never been something that we’ve sought to become able to see or be seen agreeing with. And why is that? Because one major part of what we’ve become is nothing but a reflection of the longstanding rebellion shown around us and seen inside...

Hosea 6:1 NIV The locust We’re told in Joel of this invading horde that comes screaming into the existence of a people so far gone as to have lived in utter denial of God and thus doing all but absolutely nothing to honor Him, revere Him, respect Him. And it’s this army that seeks to devour and destroy the very lives of those to whom it’s been sent on what is clearly a mission to leave such a stark tragedy in its wake that those left behind will perhaps indeed finally awake unto the seeing, as if for once, the ways in which they’d been living their lives and how there was just no life lived within them. And it’s most hopefully promised in Joel 2:25 that He will restore to those who do repent of such a lifeless life unto the living of a life that seeks finally to honor He who both gives and is the Life the years that the locust has eaten. Yet then what if I’m the locust? See, yesterday’s post left me thinking, as they often do, about the many things that I myself have perhaps stolen fro...

Romans 2:4 NIV Thus sorrow a kindness of sorts. For if godly sorrow is the same as what brings salvation as offered only unto the repentant, then the very sadness which begets repentance as here defined a kindness as meant unto the inspiring of all to the very seeing of a life not lived as lived only outside where both the rain and strain fall in greater measure in what’s there a misery that can help us to see that life is more than what we’ve made it out to be. And this should have always remained a clarity, simply because a sorrowful misery is by no means the joyousness meant for this journey. Because if God is as good, loving and kind as so many still define despite a life lived with the very pains and problems that every pride would prefer we miss, then we’ve missed something amazing along the way to the many sorrows we carry this day. And those won within every other too. Indeed, at times this life seems to be an overworking conveyor consistently proving the purveyor of both probl...

2 Corinthians 7:10 NIV Despite the blur. For despite what we’d all prefer better be, truth is that such is what all that every better is and will always be for the time being what it is already. Because better is never now but rather must be always a matter made better later as such things as the growth into what becomes a matter improved enough to be determined better than whatever already is can only ever come at the exchange of this moment loosed and thus a minute lost, and thus too the same of a frame of mind with it perhaps. Yes, better is something of a weather blown in within days always still to come, but even then only when we allow it blow out all that better isn't. Which you would think would make perfect sense, and perhaps it does. But alas such things as pretense and preference have left us almost perfectly misplaced as to the betterment of ways that might bring us unto the bettered days that we clearly cannot truly contend that we’ve as of yet to know the content. Aft...