A Deep Cleansing

Matthew 6:6 encourages us to pray behind closed doors. This is something I do quite regularly. When I pray in private, it’s usually at the end of my day as I lay in bed ready for sleep. Sometimes I think about my day and share my thoughts and feelings or reactions with God. Lying awake at night, the Holy Spirit will put people on my heart. Without knowing a thing, I’ll pray for them during the night, and then hear about their struggles the morning after. Still, there are times I can’t sleep because the Lord has brought some unconfessed sin to my attention and don’t feel at ease until I deal with it through prayer. After I’ve spent the night confessing my sins to God, I usually wake up the next morning feeling guilty and beating myself up over the previous night’s prayer of forgiveness. King David reminds us that doing so isn’t necessary. In Psalm 103 he writes:

The Lord is compassionate and merciful,

slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

He will not constantly accuse us,

nor remain angry forever.

He does not punish us for all our sins;

he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.

For his unfailing love toward those who fear him

is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.

He has removed our sins as far from us

as the east is from the west.

Psalm 103:8-12 NLT

Here, we learn how God treats someone with a truly repentant heart. Verse 8 says He is compassionate and shows us mercy. Charles Finney describes mercy as an act that frees a guilty party. Its exercise consists in arresting and setting aside the penalty of law, when that penalty has been incurred by transgression. What this means is, when the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and we bring it to God asking for His forgiveness, having compassion on us, He withholds the punishment we would have received for disappointing Him.

The psalm continues by reminding us when we confess our sins, the Lord doesn’t bring it up again. After we deal with our sin in prayer, He forgets about it. 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 says that love is patient and kind. True love doesn’t annoy us by bringing up our past sins. It won’t because true love doesn’t keep a record of our mistakes. When we ask God to forgive us He wipes the slate clean. David knew this and reminds us by saying just how far God removes our sins. Verse 12 tells us that God removes our sin as far as the east is from the west. David uses this as a metaphor. An aspect of God’s forgiveness includes having our sin permanently gone. Cast away, never to be found again.

Suppose you wanted to find the exact point that east turns into west. So you begin by traveling east, hoping to pinpoint the very moment your compass tells you you’re now traveling west. You could continue in that direction forever. The truth is at no point in that journey would you be traveling west. The same thing would happen if you traveled east. You wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the moment you travel west. You won’t find it because no such point exists. God does the same thing with our sin. When we confess our sins to God, He takes our convictions and throws them away. From that point on they are impossible to find.

I’d like to say every time the Holy Spirit convicts me of my sins, I deal with it right away. Sadly, that’s not always true. Sometimes I ignore the Holy Spirit’s nudging. When I do, I wake up the next morning still prompted to spend time before God asking Him to cleanse me of the sin that separates us. This usually continues until I seek the Lord’s forgiveness.

1 John 1:8-9 says: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” How have the last few days been for you? Do you have an overwhelming sense of guilt you can never escape? If so, please spend some time before God in prayer. It could be the Holy Spirit convicting you of an unforgiven sin.

Credo For Support

Fug-ge-da-bo-dit

In his letter to the church at Philippi the Apostle Paul writes:

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus

Philippians 3:12-14

One thing that strikes me is what Paul’s realness in this confession. Paul “gets” something and strives toward one thing I often fall short of. Forgetting the past and moving on! I never claim to be a Curt Henning (that’s Mr. Perfect for those non wrestling fans out there.), I often will be the first one to admit that I have faults and screw up on things from time to time – you just don’t hear about them. I have a hard time forgetting about them.

Probably one of the hardest things to do after one stumbles in their relationship with God is to get back on the horse. Pick yourself up out of the muck and mire you’ve gotten yourself into, and keep on trucking. Sometimes this is easy for me to do. But there are other times I wallow for a day or two, throw myself a pity party and just sulk. It’s not that I don’t know that once God forgives me, my dirty past is now water under the bridge. It’s just one of those times I wish we had no memory.

With that said, I’m left wondering a few things. Why is it so hard to ask God to forgive you, then as a New Yorker might say – Fug-ge-da-bo-dit? Sunday afternoon, I attended an H2O session at Erik and Bonnie’s place. During the session Kyle, the guy on the video, mentioned how the church is supposed to be like a stream of clean water. Everyone is invited to come and drink from this stream. But because of its marred past, this pure stream has become polluted. I wonder if our ability to Fug-ge-da-bo-dit and keep on going, adds to the bad rep the church has built up over the years.

Thoughts comments or suggestions anyone?

Breathe On These Dry Bones!

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"

I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."

Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.' "

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' Therefore prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.' "

Confession

I’m slowly working through a pile of recommended readings I’ve accumulated over the years in college. One of these books is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. As I was navigating my way through the book this evening, I came to his chapter on confession. In it he shares his involvement in Renn Fayre (a big party weekend) during his own college days).

Wikipedia says Renn Fayre is a three day weekend where the students’ events include bizarre art installations, bug-eating contests, the alumni Meat Smoke, a  occasional motorized couches, fireworks, naked people painting themselves blue (a tribute to the ancient Picts),naked Slip 'n Slide, a beer garden, the Glo Opera (performed at night by actors covered in EL wire and glow sticks), lube wrestling, full-contact human chess, parachuters, castle-storming and bike-jousting.

According to Miller, the few Christians that attend the college often opt out of the festivities, giving the Holier-than-thou impression. During his days though, there was one year where him and his friends set up a confessional booth for those who wanted to confess the sins they’ve committed.

Don’s fellow classmates would approach the booth in a drunken stupor, doped up on hallucinogens, expecting their carelessness that weekend would be forgiven. But their confessions wouldn’t be heard by Don and the other believers on campus. Instead, Don and the other disciples of Christ would confess and apologize to the lube wrestlers, human chess pieces, and bike jousting contestants.

For decades and centuries, the human race has poorly represented Christ and everything he stood for during his days on earth. Entire wars have been fought “in the name of Christ” or “under the authority of God.” After you consider the motivation or purposes of the armies involved, their use of the term “for Christ” is an abuse and misrepresentation of the man’s stance and reason for being. (One such army is the LRA or the Lord’s Resistance Army.)Things of this nature and other monstrosities have given Christ, the Church, and other Christians a bad rap sheet through the ages.

Rather then win people over by sponsoring intellectual arguments or pointing out one’s failures, Don – and the other Christians present chose to admit they were guilty of giving Christianity a bad reputation. Don says this repentance, as cheesy and lame as it may sound, made a significant impact in the student body at Reed College that year.

Don Miller’s confession of not always having it together and seeking forgiveness from others, got me thinking of the times the Lord has lead me to apologize to people from my past. If don’s experience of seeking forgiveness from those he has wronged has brought all parties to tears, I wonder what impact my letters of apology have had on the ones I’ve sought an apology from.