Forged By Faith

Ezekiel 23:30 KJV It's altogether easy for us to miss the point and purpose of truth as we're now so used to dodging as many bullets as we can see coming, and the affront of truth is aimed right at the maniacal misunderstandings which deep down we know to define us. And so, right from the start, any semblance of a truth which doesn’t adhere to our more ironic version must be met with a firm decision to deny its legitimacy. Yes, to we beasts of increasingly singular interest and concern the warnings strewn throughout Scripture do indeed seem overzealous to the point of coming across as entirely offensive. Having long been taught an idea now firmly entrenched which has us believing ourselves the only deity in the vicinity, who is this God to step in and demand our surrender? Who is this God that seeks to prove Himself what we’ve long thought ourselves to be? Who is this God that threatens us with damnation when we don’t see reason to agree we’ve done anything wrong? And so clearl...

Isaiah 42:8 NIV We don't need to know all there is to know about our God in order to know enough to understand who He is, how He works, what He expects and what He deserves. You see, He, knowing our incessant inability to be anything other than impatient and underwhelming in regard to effort and output, saw fit to narrow all this down to an amount of information that all of us can and should be able to understand and therefore apply to our lives. He made it simple, made it easy, made it clear. But clearly we've still managed to entirely miss the point. And this fact is easily one of humanity's greatest under-achievements. Why? Because again, He made it easy. How easy? A couple pieces of stone carved with Ten Commandments. Ten requirements. Ten rules that ask nothing of us but that we glory and honor and revere and respect both God and all He's made. Ten Commandments. But sadly, ten is apparently too many still. And so, being the benevolent and patient Father He is, He s...

Ezekiel 11:12 NIV One of the overarching messages of Scripture is that even though all of humanity rejects Him, debates Him, denies Him, God will, in the end, ensure we know exactly who He is. By whatever means necessary. And that ought to prove enough to shake us awake because that God's made both His presence and His benevolence apparent is undeniable, but equally evident is the evidence of our efforts demanding He do more than what's already kindly been done. We've unfortunately never saw fit to see beyond what shimmers and shines within the cities and civilizations in which we've lived and grown and learned how to not learn nor grow properly. All throughout time, all of mankind has shared this frame of mind founded up proving ourselves something we are not by assuming God something He is not. And all of this arrogant maneuvering has found humanity often in the crosshairs of exactly what we've asked for. Problem is that what we're still asking for is for Him ...

Ezekiel 18:23 NIV That we can feel guilt is not a punishment but a kindness meant to guide us away from true consequence. But unfortunately, we've chosen to become a people so feelings-centric that we've grown unable to understand the difference between physical pain and emotional torment. We've equated the two for so long that we now know only to assume them one and the same. It's this gross misunderstanding that is undermining our ability to appreciate the brevity of God's benevolence. It's causing us to forget that He will not forever relent upon His wrath that is both well-earned and long overdue. We're forgetting that we will not always have today in which to learn and grow and make the changes necessary to make either even possible. We won't always be given another tomorrow upon which to offload the things we didn't want to be bothered with today. And it's within our ability to take everything for granted that we find ourselves assuming God...

Lamentations 3:39 NIV Having settled into such a fierce aversion to pain and misery we've sadly lost sight of the fact that to feel pain demands life. Yet around here anymore it seems that for the most part most of us would just as soon pass away than endure one more day filled with anything grievous or grating or in other way less than self-gratifying. Maybe part of it is that we're so self-absorbed that we can only appreciate that which pleases and appeases our self-perfected selfishness. Or, and so equally likely that I venture to surmise that the reason is a combination of both the above and the following: We're just in love with this mindset that's set upon our remaining conveniently oblivious to the obvious. Indeed we’ve adopted this really weird outlook of life that’s left us immune to understanding. All we can see though pain is the hurt. We just know it hurts and that what hurts feels bad and if it feels bad then it can’t be good. Right? We don’t deserve to hur...

Titus 2:12 NIV What God asks of us in exchange for His grace is indeed radical compared to what we've been conditioned to accept. But that’s because He knows death is no way to live. And yet we find ourselves in a rather sad state of affairs as we’ve collectively reached the place where the good God began is seen as the punishment we only want to end. All because we've been conditioned to enjoy our fallen condition, and so that's largely almost all of what most of us can see anymore. It's this tragic outlook that has us seeing through eyes still blinded by all that shimmers and shines upon the surface as if all of life consists of the superficial. And within this great unraveling we find little reason to accept God's undoing of all we've done seeking to do as we wish in order to find what we want. We've become a people consumed by ourselves and our selfishness, and as such, we no longer have any regard for what He's planned or promised, much less the hig...

Ephesians 4:24 NIV “Who am I?” I can’t imagine considering that question thinking that I had to find the answer inside myself. Because I can’t understand how the answer could possibly be something that I myself could define. Because I didn’t make me, only the mistakes that have made me who I am today. Yet, knowing that it was those many mistakes I made that made me who I am today, I don’t know who I’d have been had I not made those mistakes. So as best as I can figure, who I am is simply a list of mistakes that have led me away from who I could have been had I been bold enough to follow the path I didn’t choose all those times I chose what I now know was a mistake. Stands to reason that the answer to who I am must therefore come from someone who knows far better than I do. And thankfully, He came to lead me back. Came to lead us all back. But it’s a journey! They say that in order to know where you're going you must first know where you've been. But to know where you've bee...