The Fruit of Repentance

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Matthew 3: 1-8

How the people longed for Messiah to come!  They came eagerly and willingly to the Jordan to be baptized by John.  This would be the first time that they had owned up to their individual sins, taking personal responsibility for them.  This was so different from the annual Day of Atonement that they were so familiar with, a day of confession that was more of an event than a change of heart.  It was their yearly spiritual 'bath' that made them feel better for a year.  It was not heart change, for how often had they returned to their sins only to come to next year's Day of Atonement?  Yes, this confession and baptism in the Jordan was a brand new thing, and as they came up out of the water, what zeal and great desire to LIVE RIGHT came up out of the water with them!

The Pharisees and  Sadducees came to the Jordan as well, but with a completely different mindset and attitude.  They too longed for the coming of Messiah, but for them, it was all about how they appeared.  They neither came repenting, nor confessing their  sins, nor desiring true heart and life change.  You see, they believed they were already 'good to go.'

John's charge to them has a bit of a sting to it.  "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance!"  The sting is this:  the command implies that they currently were not bearing the correct fruit  So what is it that they were missing?  Just what was the right fruit?

The fruit of repentance is always obvious, especially to others.  It is the ACTION of turning around, turning away from the sin of which you are repenting.  The fruit of repentance is the cessation of the sin!  It is no repentance at all if you confess a sin to God and even others and then continue to walk in it.  The fruit of repentance is living life without the sin.  This is the fruit we are to be bearing!

Lord, I lay my heart bare before Your holiness, knowing  the multitude of sin that resides within it.  I confess that my sin is offensive to you, and that I am going the wrong way in so many areas of my life.  But I don't want to stop at this confession of my sins, believing that is all I have to do. Confession and repentance go hand in hand.  Speak to me and reveal the sin You wish for me to turn away from this month, as I begin the long process of rooting out all sin in my life.  Reveal to me another one next month, so that at the end of this new year, I will be able to look back and see the mighty work You have accomplished in me.  Holy Spirit, take my hand and guide me as I turn away and walk in a new direction.  I surrender to You and the process of repentance, knowing I will never bear the right fruit of repentance unless You produce it in me.  I am Yours; come do Your work in me.  I desire to live a holy life before You.

Our Path of Sin -- Colossians 3: 7

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When talking about sin, it is quite easy to put ourselves in a category that is different than the lost. We can see a list of sins in the Bible, like the one we looked at a few days ago in Colossians 3:5, and disassociate ourselves from the likes of those who are still committing such sins every day.  When we begin to process that "the wrath of God" will one day be fully displayed because of the sins and the sinners that practice such things, it is easy for us to sit on our spiritual high horses.  It seems that God knew that we might respond that way, and He used Paul to speak directly to us. lest we fall to the sin of self-elevation.  This is what our Bible verse says today:

"In these you too once walked, when you were living in them."

There it is . . . we too once walked in the kinds of sins that will eventually cause God to avenge Himself with His wrath.  We are not off the hook.  We must now have a special kind of patience and compassion upon those who are still walking that way.  The kind of patience and compassion that God had for us when we were the ones who were stumbling on the path of sin. 

This is also important for us to consider because we are to be dying to our self and the sins that we commit.  To put to death all of our sins and idols is to be able to honestly say that we once walked in  them.  If we are not putting them completely to death, then they are still apart of our journey, a part that God clearly wants us to remove.

Who I once was and what I once did can no longer be a part of my walk of obedience, for my works were all about disobedience.  I was a sinner dead in my trespasses.  If I am now raised with Christ and truly focused on Him, if I am crucifying my flesh in order to live in the Spirit, then there is no sin that I am free to live in.  They are dead to me, and I am dead to them.

What sins are you currently still trying to live in while trusting in the blood of Jesus?  These are the very sins that belong in the "I-once-walked-in-them" category, where all sin should be.  It is time for the church to get off its SIN PATH and on to the PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.

The Barriers That Separate Us From God

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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!

Spiritual Healing Begins With Surrender

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 12)

"For quite a while now I have believed that a heart can never be transformed by an act of our will, mostly because our will resides in our flesh, and that flesh is ever-decaying and can never be improved.  I believe that, in the same way that we may not be saved without an act of God's will, we cannot be sanctified and transformed without the same kind of act of God's will.  When God transforms my heart, then my obedient actions follow.  If I choose to act out of my flesh, as I have when I have made New Year's resolutions, it is possible that I might get some results to begin with, but they are always short-lived.  I am capable of changing some things for a period of time, but only God can change my heart.  When God is given the opportunity to work out His will in my heart and life through my surrender and obedience to Him, there is a lasting, even eternal, transformation that takes place in me and in  my heart.

But there is one act of my will that God requires of me.  God is looking into hearts, not just to see if we will stop a particular sin.  He is watching to see if our will is desirous of lining up with His.  The specifics of our sin are far less important than the act of our will that wants to surrender and obey in child-like faith.

Our surrendered heart is seen when we are faithful to ask the Spirit to reveal our sin.  Our surrendered heart is seen when we are faithful to confess what is revealed to us as sin, knowing that it is displeasing to God.  Our surrendered heart is seen when we are faithful to place that sin under His full control so that He might be Lord over it.  This is the surrender that He requires of us.  When we bring this sacrifice of surrender, He, who is capable of transforming the heart we bring to Him, will be faithful to accomplish His goal in us--a spiritually healed heart.

When we put our sins and idols into His hands to deal with, God will then, by His Spirit, give some directives for our surrendered hearts to follow, directions that will challenge us to obey Him.  This obedience will then reveal to Him and the world around us that we have given Him Lordship over the sin and idol-stained chambers of our heart.  When we choose to obey His directives, and continually walk in surrender, heart change will occur.  This is the work of the Spirit, and this is the reason I refer to it as spiritual healing.  Spiritual healing will always be a matter of the Spirit's work with in us, not an act of human will.  Spiritual healing is only experienced when we surrender, and that surrender will bring victory to our spiritual lives."

The Dangers Of The Sin-Confess-Sin-Confess Cycle

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 12)

A diagram of a heart with broken chambers and a giant tear down the middle can be found in Chapter 6 of my book.  An assignment was give to the reader to fill in the broken chambers with known sins, idols, wrong attitudes, or anything in their life that does not align with God' Word.  It is always difficult to look at the truth of who we are when it is staring back at you in bold black and white.  But acknowledging our sin is the critical first step to removing it from our daily lives.  Today's blog addresses what can happen when we never really put our sin to death.

"How did you do with the soul-searching assignment in Chapter 6?  Did you fill in the heart with your now illuminated, identified, and magnified sin?  Did God reveal to you some things in your heart that you didn't even know were there?  Have you begun to keep charge of your heart by confessing these gods and sins to the Lord, and have you been praying consistently for Him to transform these areas of your heart?  Do you realize that once He has transformed each part that He showed you, it will be time to fill in a new heart diagram, and that this will continue for the rest of your life?  Have you completed the assignment?  Have you shared your testimony with anyone?  This is taking full vengeance on your enemies!  This the the hard work of the Inner Court.

With our gods and sins exposed, with our minds now set on their removal from our hearts, and with our prayers reaching the heavens for God to take control of these areas of sin, we begin to see just how important this process is to God.  Our sins are the very walls that separate us from intimacy with Him.  Sin makes God's children impure, unholy, and no longer set apart for Him.  To spare any of our sins for our own benefit breaks the heart of God.  In sparing the gods of our own hearts, we hinder, and even threaten, a deep and intimate relationship with God, and we stay in a constant 'sin-confess-sin-confess' cycle that so easily becomes our lifestyle.  We are not living authentic Christian lives when we try to keep alive the sins that can eventually destroy us.  These sins that we ignore, and thus spare, will have devastating effects on our walk, our witness, and our ministry."

Discovering The Sin Within Your Heart

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 12)

"Theory must always give way to practical application, otherwise all of our 'head knowledge' becomes wasted and worthless grey matter.  Can we turn our focus for just a moment to the Inner Court of our heart transformation?  I would like us to magnify that court right now so that we are not looking at the beginning or end of our spiritual journey, but just at the present, the here and now.

It is in the Inner Court where God allows us to see just how dark and sinful our hearts really are, and can be.  This court is a place of illumination.  Once in the Inner Court, once we have taken a good 'look around' at what is really hidden there, we often find that the sins, the gods, and the idols we find inside of us are so many that they are overwhelming to us.  We know that we are to be busy building our hearts into a proper and pure home for the Lord by sweeping out all that He would not enjoy.  Just like the Israelites of Haggai's day (that we looked at in Chapter 6 of Spiritual Healing), we know that we are to 'rebuilt' our sin-scarred hearts, which is the temple, the Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit. But again, just like the Israelites, we typically respond just as they did, don't we?  We put satisfying the desires of our own flesh ahead of the priority of cleaning out those very flesh-sins found in our hearts.

We follow after our own priorities, and we leave our sin-filled hearts in disrepair, desolate, and open to destruction while we continue living flesh-ruled lives.  Our breaches, fractures, and sins remain.  Our walk with the Lord and our very lives do not even remotely resemble the life of Christ!  We continually go our merry way, prioritizing everything else in life except our walk with Jesus and a desire to achieve a holy and pure lifestyle.  Following in the footsteps of the Israelites, our wrong priorities lead us straight to the obvious consequences, and some of them will be severe.  Our ministry for the Lord becomes fruitless, barren, and even non-existent.  In the end, when we do not concentrate on obediently living the commandments and repenting of our sins and idols, our lives reveal that our hearts have not been transformed.  Such transformation only takes place when we have been walking intimately with the Savior."

Tomorrow I will be continuing in this vain, by sharing a quote from Joanna Weaver's Having A Mary Heart In A Martha World.  Her personal testimony might help you more clearly see what you are doing that is keeping you from that very intimacy.

God's One Requirement

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(Excerpted from Cheryl Gnagey's book, Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

"It is time to tie up all that we have learned so far with a pretty bow.  Hopefully this will help you see the bigger picture of all that the Spirit has been trying to teach you.  As believers, we are on a journey toward the face of God, toward the greatest intimacy with Him that we can experience in this life.  This journey has included the study of the Tabernacle and how it applies to our walk of faith.  It has also included an in-depth look into our own hearts filled with sin and idols, and what God wants us to do with the idols we found there.  The bow that ties it all together can be summed up in just one word--surrender.  Oswald Chambers spoke of surrender this way:  'There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender.'"

God desires for us to be so surrendered to Him that we give Him everything we have and everything we are.  Our surrender will have many facets but will certainly include laying down the rights we think we have, aligning our words, thoughts, actions and plans with His, learning to put our hand in His so He may direct our paths, and leaving behind all thought of control.  Have you surrendered to God without any conditions?  Or is that the very next step in your journey toward spiritual healing?

Unarmed And Surrounded By The Enemy

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We all have gods and sins in our lives that we are commanded to overcome.  It is a spiritual battle to do so.  Is your armor uncomfortable because you do not know how to put to proper use?  Do you carry your "sword of truth" but have no idea how to wield it against your enemy, Satan?  Read on friends!

"POINT #2:  We must be fully armed when we cross into that place in our journey called the Promised Land, into the Holy of Holies where our gods will be dispossessed.  We must be prepared for this battle, and we must know what God's battle plan is.

Had Israel crossed the Jordan without any weapons, they would have most assuredly been annihilated.  The people who had been living in Canaan would certainly have banded together against an unarmed foe, and the defeat would have been a crushing blow to God's chosen people.  Without a battle plan, there would have been no organization, and therefore, no victory for God's people.   The same is going to be true for us if we attempt to just 'go in' and destroy every god, idol, attitude, or sin in our hearts that is contrary to God and His purposes.  Without weapons and a battle plan, we will surely fall to an enemy who does not want his territory encroached upon!

God has given us the perfect plan of attack when it comes to our spiritual battles, and the armor and weapons that He has chosen for us are perfect as well.  As our Commander-In-Chief, He has set us up to be victorious, if we will but utilize what He has already given us.  The problem is that we seldom choose to enter into this kind of battle, and when we do, our armor seems cumbersome to us because we have not been trained for this kind of war.  We are usually unarmed and unprepared because we have not even attended spiritual 'boot camp,' so we are ill-equipped for the battle with the forces of darkness."

(Quoted from Chapter 8, "Fully Following God's Commands" found in Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory)

The Chambers of Your Heart

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What is gathering in your heart?

Israel completed the job of rebuilding Jerusalem's wall.  The enemy could now be kept at bay because of their obedience to both God and His leader, Nehemiah.  Now the city was being turned from a broken down ghost town into the powerful city God intended it to be.  By a lottery men were chosen to live in Jerusalem.  Others would establish their home there because they were the leaders.  Still others simply chose to move their families there to be a part of this new and exciting plan of God.  But it didn't take very long for sin to return to the priesthood, and its slippery slope, that had landed their city in ruin became a disaster waiting to happen.  Little by little the disobedience of one priest of God began to clutter the temple of God with junk that was displeasing to Him.

While the newly rebuilt city was in its infancy, one of the priests (named Eliashib), who was over the chambers of the new temple,  thought it would be good idea to set aside a very large room for one of his relatives--Tobiah.  This Tobiah had been one of the men who constantly discouraged the men of Israel as they rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem.  The room Eliashib reserved for this vile man had formerly been used as a storage area for the temple.  It stored the grain offerings, the frankincense and utensils used for worship at the altar of incense, the tithes of grain, wine, oil, and the contributions that were reserved for the priests use.

Nehemiah had returned to service to the King of Persia when this sin took place, but when he returned to Jerusalem to check up on the city, he found this room that the priest had set aside for Tobiah.  Not only was Nehemiah incensed over the sin, he was appalled to learn that it was a priest who had broken such a strong and severe commandment of God.  You see, Tobiah was an Ammonite, and God had strongly forbid Israel to EVER allow an Ammorite or a Moabite to enter into the house of God!  And Eliashib, being a priest, would certainly have known he was breaking God's law! 

So displeased was Nehemiah that he entered the room set aside for Tobiah, and he threw out everything in it.  Next, he gave an order for the room to be cleansed of its unholiness.  Only then did Nehemiah call for the utensils and the offerings for worship to be replaced in the room.  Nehemiah also expelled Tobiah, and he was never again allowed into the temple of God.  

Once again we must bring this story into our 21st century lives, but the correlation is clear.  Our hearts are the temple of God.  So often we enter into a relationship with God, and we quickly rebuild the protective walls around our hearts to prevent the enemy from breaking in.  But once we do, little by little, we allow sin to reside within the walls, within its chambers.  The "little bit of sin" gathers more sin with it until we have a chamber that looks like the dirty, messy bedroom of a teenager!  Our true worship of God (the daily reading and study of our daily bread--the grain, our thankfulness for the precious wine of Christ's blood sacrifice, and our walking in the oil of the Spirit) is tossed aside to make room for the sin we desire so much more.

God is calling us all to spiritually clean out the chambers of our heart, and to put them in holy order!   Today, ask yourself what sins are cluttering your heart.  What is preventing you from the worship that God desires from you?  What is He displeased with in your life?  What have you allowed to creep into your life, bit by sinful bit? 

Don't just peek in the room and take an assessment.  God is calling you boldly walk into that room, bag up the trash, put things in their proper place, and then scrub it down until it is clean and pleasing to Him.  Will you be a Nehemiah today and cleanse the chambers of your heart?  Or will you be guilty of the same sin as the Priest Eliashib? Remember, as a believer you are of the royal priesthood of Christ.  Will you be content to allow the stench of dirty, rotten sin dwell in the same place the Holy Spirit calls His home?