This is the text copy of the devotion I presented in my Souls Week stream of Remnant: From the Ashes on Tuesday, October 29, 2024. You can watch/listen to the highlight on Twitch by clicking here.
My original plan for the Extra Life marathon this week was a joke. Not in the sense that it was going to be terrible, but that I found it amusing and felt others would, too. That plan? Make myself suffer through a Dark Souls game, dying repeatedly for the entertainment of viewers, letting them take joy in my frustrations and potentially donate pity dollars to Extra Life. People have always enjoyed the Souls games simply because they’re difficult, and it took me a long time to understand why that was good in their mind.
Welcome to Souls Week: my week-long marathon for Extra Life, but also a series of discussions about why starting again and persistently struggling isn’t as bad as it sounds. This is Day 3: Repent in Dust and Ashes.
What would you do if you lost everything? Everyone? How would you handle life if the world as you know it was decimated, ravaged by war and death and untold evil? Would you give up the will to live? Would you despair? Would you curse God? Would you turn to evil since it seemed to be the reigning power? What would you sacrifice to survive? Would your integrity hold up?
There are two stories to apply these questions to, and the first one is the game story in Remnant: From the Ashes. In the game, our world has been invaded and ravaged by an interdimensional evil called The Root. The player is a survivor of this apocalypse, trying to continue to survive by fighting evil and negotiating with others who are in power. Hard decisions have to be made which can alter how the game plays out, but the vast majority is bleak. Yet humanity persists and strives to survive against The Root even though so much has been lost and can’t be regained or restored. The player even sees another entire world whose inhabitants intentionally destroyed it to protect themselves from The Root. It paints a picture of how evil can completely corrupt and destroy everything.
The other story we can apply the previous questions to is found in the Bible and is the entire book of Job. I won’t be reading that much scripture for a devotion, so I encourage you to go read it for yourself sometime. The summary is that Job was a devout man, and because he was devout he was blessed by God. Satan comes along and tells God that Job wouldn’t be so devout or sing God’s praises if he lost those blessings. So God allows Satan to do what he pleases to Job, excepting that his life is spared. Job then loses everything: his children, his livestock, his wealth, and even his health. It becomes so bad that his wife even tells him to curse God and die since it seems he’s been abandoned. But Job doesn’t do that. He patiently endures everything even as his friends counsel him otherwise. He only questions why, and God makes Himself clear with His answer: He is the Creator who made the very foundations of the earth, and Job is simply a man. Job acknowledges this in Job 42:6: “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
Thankfully, we don’t live in the Remnant game’s world where restoration is entirely up to the remnant of humanity to accomplish–however, as evidenced in the book of Job, we DO have to contend with a power comparable to The Root, and that is sin. Sin which caused our world to fall. Sin which we can’t overcome on our own. Job was put in his place for daring to question God, but then God restored him and increased his blessings. The message here? Repent humbly and you’ll be reconciled to God and restored!
Acts 3:19 says: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”
And the best thing about repenting? We are not the ones who do the reconciling. That has been done FOR us! The apostle Paul outlines it for us beautifully in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
God, thank you so much for every listener hearing my words today, whether they’re watching the stream or checking out the video at a later time. It is so easy in this fallen world to lose sight of our integrity as well as to doubt who you are and who you made us to be. You are the Creator and we are the dust you breathed life into. I pray that you grant us all a spirit of humility and a heart that longs to be reconciled to you for your glory. In your holy name I pray. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment