Today, while reading my daily devotional Jesus Calling by
Sarah Young, I was struck by the first two sentences. God's voice
seemed particularly clear and direct as my heart heard these words come
forth:
"You can live as close to Me as you choose. I set up not barriers between us; neither do I tear down barriers that you erect." (November 5, page 324)
While reading the first few words my heart was shouting a big "Oh,
yeah!" But the jubilation only lasted a second. My heart was pierced
by the last part. "Neither do I tear down the barriers that you erect."
Stopping myself from reading the rest of the devotion, I sat silently
pondering those words. God's direct approach this morning had caught me
so completely off-guard, I knew that I could read no further until I
had addressed His comment spoken so specifically to me.
"Neither do I tear down the barriers that you erect."
You see, I love the idea that you I can live in such close proximity
to God that I experience many intimate moments throughout the day. And I
also love the idea that I could never go so far wrong that God would
build a brick wall between us. God set in motion a plan of relationship
with Him that involves me running boldly into His throne room, without
hesitation or fear, so that I can jump into His lap and be encircled by
His loving arms, and at any point during my day, frequently if desired.
But what I don't like about what He said is that if there are any walls
that are put up between us, it will be of my doing. And what's more,
He will not be the one to tear them down. If I build a wall, I will be
the one to have to destroy it, if I want it down. Even worse for me to
hear, there seems to be the implication that I have erected and will erect these walls.
My convicted heart knew in that moment that there is still a wall of
barrier between me and my Lord. I have built this wall, brick upon
sinful brick, as I walk in the disobedience of my own fleshly heart.
What stands between me and the Lord are my sins, and the only way those
bricks of sin are coming down is if I surrender myself to the Spirit
within me, and I begin to obey the commands of God's word. In a
nutshell, the wall will come down as I repent, turning completely and
resolutely away from each individual sin that is a brick in my wall.
Once again, my Lord has brought me back to the same thing He has been
addressing in my life for several months now. It is the issue of the
individual sins and idols that are still in my heart, and they are
affecting my spiritual life and walk with Jesus. This has
ramifications on my intimacy with Him, too. The bottom line is this: I
can spend much time in the Word; I can learn all that it says to me by
dissecting the words I study by defining them more correctly in the
Greek and Hebrew; I can do endless cross-referencing that will support
the concepts found in a single verse; I can sit in on multiple Bible
classes and teachings each week. But if I am not applying what I am
learning, and if nothing really changes in my thoughts, words, and
actions, then all my knowledge and understanding comes to nothing.
For years I have basked in the idea that "knowing" is a great
blessing. But the blessing only comes when we "do" what we say we
"know." Jesus told His disciples a powerful truth, just after He had
washed their feet and challenged them to live spiritually higher and
more intimately than they could completely understand. These are the
words He spoke to them, and to me today, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." I have coined a saying that is similar to what Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With The Wind. Here is my thought that seems to line up with what Jesus said to His disciples, "Knowin' and sayin' ain't doin'!"
In the end, my biblical knowledge on the topic of the importance removing sin and idols from my life, the
verses I can quote about it, even teaching the Word's truth of it to
others, will never equal the 'living it out' in my own life. The wall I have created out of multiple bricks of sin and dependence on things other than God Himself must come down! The
difficulty of the task can never be my excuse to avoid tearing it
down. The state of the mortar that holds it together (whether hardened
by years, partially solid, or still soft from its very recent
application) is irrelevant. The wall must come down if I want to
experience life in the Holy of Holies. My wall is the veil between the
Inner Court Classroom on my spiritual journey and the intimate presence
of God in the Holiest Place of All. The wall, the veil in the
Tabernacle, is my own flesh!
To turn away from the difficult work of rooting out all sins, idols,
and wrong attitudes in my life through my surrender and repentance is to
make a choice to live farther away from God than He desires. It is a
choice to live with my sin-wall between us. Yes, my wall MUST come down!
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