Forged By Faith

Ephesians 5:12 NIV Distasteful Such is what we’ve daily a mouth full thanks to a heart full of a world full of a people fooled by a sinful school teaching us all to pull into what remains the lane in which we lose our lives day and night because of our known delight in darkened sights seen and shown for all to see what we’ve been and who we’ll be. Simply because who we’ve been is who we’ll stay thanks to our agreement to stay unchanged by a world vastly resolved to do the same. Just be ever unchanged because entirely too many truly seem to like living this way. What way? Well it’s that defined in fairly decent detail in the verses leading up to that which we discussed yesterday. It’s that way of life in which we find the presence of such problems as those clearly mentioned in Ephesians 5:3-5 in which we’re all called to wage what is in every way a holy war for our souls against all here that we see and hear which so clearly wages war against them. And considering how this life is a war...

Hebrews 12:2 NIV The race set out. For such is the income of those of the same outlook as He who came to leave in what was such a last place that none even loved Him enough to claim Him in what were His final breaths as breathed in betrayal by a world so still the same that our then staying as such is just as much the betraying beating as those He endured on the behalf of who we’ve been but now, in Him, have neither cause nor then pause to pretend we might delight to remain. Because in a race there is no staying in place. As was said in one of those hollyweird movies I now hate, you’re either first or you’re last. And alas, we still think it somehow better to be here first amongst the rest who too live as if to win is to come in ahead of the curve that’s been graded in our favor by a Father who is of such moral fiber as to ignite the fire that came to at first consume our sin and then take over from there and burn within what are hearts that have long known nothing of life having lived...

Isaiah 59:10 NIV I fear the ravages of our rebellion have caused sins that’ve left stains that have become scars that have borne stories of doubt and disbelief that have left us a million miles from anything by which to hope. For here we feel as if hope is somehow housed within something held by the very hands that are the same as those which have grasped for the ghastly and ghostly, leaving us all gone farther than we might have ever dared figure in terms of our trading faith for foolishness and folly. Indeed, as we discussed a bit yesterday it’s that our iniquities have hidden God from hearing all our indifference has thus far had to say from within these lives defined by the death of decay and distress designed by what has come to be an utter moral indignity and spiritual dishevelment. Yes, such is anymore our only temperament as tarnished by these treasures of pleasures that we’ve pursued at the expense of this now impossible expanse across which we often fear our scant few humbled...

Romans 6:21 NIV Perhaps the greatest gravity to a life’s regret is given in that there is here within this life as lived within a world’s temporality an unavoidable brevity to all benefit, especially those received only in the moment. For the true reality of our mortality is that any of it spent outside of morality is thus recused into what is to become before long an eternal accusation of our having chosen to honor ourselves within our lives as lived within a billion separate moments in which are made either memories or mistakes, both combining into a message that chimes this choice saying that we feel as if our lives are ours alone. And we make this choice so very often because it’s the very ideal to which this humanity has decided to descend. Indeed, everyone here at one time or another lives as if they’re here only to do as they please as if our personal proclivities such as pleasure and preference can truly provide a life its purpose. But you see, when at first we dissolve into th...

Romans 6:21 NIV The beauty of hindsight is that it's seen through eyes unstained by the moment. But the misery of it is that we often see our mistakes only after we’ve made them, long after that moment proved more fleeting than we could have imagined. You see, we've set out to create for ourselves this ability to warp any given situation or undertaking in such a way that makes it seem everything we want it to be. We've taught our eyes to look past the obvious issues and concerns and warning signs so we can see only the glory which can be gained in seeking indulgence. We carry these minds broken down and reconfigured to actually think that everything unhealthy, unhelpful is actually helping us in some way. We have in every way chosen to become blinded at any given moment simply so we don't have to see what we don't want to have to be responsible for having realized. And that's the true nature of sin. It's missing God in the moment. It's choosing to ignore...

Romans 1:16 NIV To be ashamed of the gift which absolves our shame is the kind of nonsensical contradiction that only a broken mind can conceive. Yet each time that we agree to cower in fear because of our awareness of how our limitations have brought about our immense guilt, we avoid the very One who came to tell us that we've not the power to write this story. And if we haven't the power to write this story, then our mistakes also lack that authority, which is a truth that's being radically forgotten amongst us today. Because so often we give our mistakes the authority to keep us living apart from the healing we need because our pride is embarrassed to admit that we need His help. That's one of the words used to describe shame. It's an embarrassment. It's a kind of humiliation that seeks to go so far as to instill doubt in anything other than what the guilty know they deserve. Shame tells us that we're so far gone from where we should have stayed that ther...