Forged By Faith

Isaiah 52:11 NIV The journey away For that is where we’re all now called to go. Away from where we’ve been. Away from who we’ve become. Away from whatever it is that we think we’ve known or have likely come to be known by. Away from those who helped us learn to be whatever it is that we’ve become. Away from those who have no desire to help us become who God calls us to be. It seems that nearly the entire story of the Christian journey is one written in the walking away from what will prove a great many things. Problem is that among what we’ve become is found this now almost natural instinct to mourn the losses along the way away. And that’s because what we’ve become is largely a reflection of a people whose deception runs so very deep that they literally seem to see no problem or pitfall within nearly anything at all. And our having lived learning to live life from those of that frame of mind has caused us to too consider that there are really no good things or bad things but rather on...

Psalm 26:4-5 NIV Hidebound Perhaps it’s something that simply comes about with age. Maybe it’s an outlook that we stumble upon in what’s become a world which jades. It could be a mere reactionary reaction unto the fractures and factions which all but daily spring up all around us. Whatever the case may be the fact seems to remain that I have found myself suddenly quite content as to the joy I feel in my living a life that is being lived in what is likely quite easily perceived as a remarkably narrow-minded perspective that’s growing only in its apparent unwillingness to move or be moved. Simply because I think that’s kind of the point. You see, this world has managed to convince us to live as these all but rudderless ships that exist to simply blow about and fall apart in their endless searching for the treasure of worldly pleasure and social adoration. We’ve all become vastly infatuated with this boundless ability to seek the applause and approval of our many communities via such medi...

Isaiah 52:11 NIV Why It’s not a question, though most of the time it’s a word that seems to demand an answer. But sometimes in life what we will find is that why is the answer. Or at least once we find our why, the why we then finds the answer. And indeed, sometimes the why we find as an answer to why is as simple as that childish reason we used to give back when we were children faced with this question of why. Why? Because. Because I said so. Because I want to. Because it makes sense. Or in this case because He said so because He wants us to because it makes sense both from His perspective and thus too for our pursuit of the promise toward which it leads. After all, what might be a better answer to why than our living a life in which we’ve found our answer and thus know so well why we do what He leads us to that we feel never again any need to justify or substantiate our stance nor to answer for why it’s caused us to stand what is both so far apart from the place in which we once sou...

2 Corinthians 6:17 NIV Separate To set or keep apart: disconnect, sever. To make a distinction between: discriminate, distinguish, sort. To disperse in space or time: scatter. To sever conjugal ties with: divorce. To sever contractual relations with: discharge. To block off: segregate. To isolate from a mixture: extract. To become isolated from a mixture: extracted. To divide into constituent parts. To dislocate. To become divided or detached. To sever an association: withdraw. To cease to live together. To go in different directions. To be set or kept apart: detached, solitary, secluded, not shared with another, estranged from a body, existing by itself: autonomous, dissimilar in nature or identity. And then there’s this, and it is what is determined to be the archaic definition: To set aside for a special purpose: choose, dedicate. Chosen. Dedicated. Sat aside for a special purpose. For we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a people meant to embody what ought to be a holy natio...

Revelation 18:4 NIV A part or apart? For in truth such are the only two options when it comes to living a life, and indeed either are to be considered both such extremes that we should in fact seek their extremities. Problem then is that we’ve since chosen to chase the many extremes of the many scenes seen inside the things shown of a world that’s grown only deeper in its chosen contention against the God of all creation. And so our having chosen to chase the world’s way of what is a life lived to waste itself has left us each holding what is too a wasted life. All because we settled for the wrong space to place our pursuit. See, that’s truly the only difference in those two words that define the only two choices we have whilst in this world. It’s the space. And yet it’s also that of a proverbial table flipped as well. Because, well, the space seen in the choice labeled “a part” ironically denotes a lack thereof. There is no space in our being a part of this world for said pursuit all ...