Hmmm. What does it take to truly feel clean…to be clean?
I’m so glad God made a way to cleanse us from our sins so we don’t have to go through this! If he hadn’t, and wickedness was in the form of hair chemicals, it might look something like this video:
This morning at Brookwood, Fenton Moorhead preached a sermon he entitled, “Following Jesus a Day at a Time.” I went into it thinking I would hear a sermon beginning with “Begin every day with Jesus…” but to my surprise, I saw Jesus in a new light. No matter how old the Bible is, there is always more to be learned. Even when I have read a verse a hundred times, God can still teach me something new.
When saved, we often pray a sinner’s prayer repenting of our sins, asking Jesus to forgive our sins, and to come into our hearts as our savior. Our sins are as far away as the east is from the west. Gone. Forgiven. But what happens the next time we sin? Even though we are saved, we still possess a sinful nature. We are led by the Holy Spirit, but we’re in a battle of good and evil. No matter how “good” we try to be, we still sin. Daily.
I remember a conversation between my Church of God raised husband and his grandfather…
“Grandpa, if the Church of God believes you must ask forgiveness of every sin, will you go to hell if you die before you get a chance to ask?”
“Yep.”
“So if we were riding in this car, and you saw a woman and lusted after her, and then we crashed and died, you’d go to hell?”
“Yep.”
Now, being raised a good ‘lil Southern Baptist girl (sinless as long as I didn’t cuss, drink, or dance, lol), this is not what I was taught. Thank goodness for the “once saved, always saved” southern baptist theology, right?
Well, after today’s sermon, one of those little lightbulbs came on…I don’t think it’s about being “once saved, always saved,” or damned to hell for any sin we forget to ask forgiveness for. It’s about knowing what salvation really means…For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9) NLT
When we can realize and admit that salvation is not something we can work for, buy, or even deserve, but only accept…a gift from God that we must only accept. We must be honest in admitting that without the grace of God we would be nothing. But by his grace and our faithin him, we accept the gift he gave us when he sent his only son to die an excruciating death as the penalty for our sins…all of them.But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. (1 John 1:7-8) NLT
So…God knows our heart. We cannot hide anything from him. As long as we remain honest to ourselves, remembering that we are sinners, and at the same time we are living in the light of Jesus Christ, he will constantly and consistently cleanse and make us new, and we can continue following Jesus a day at a time.
