This is the statement that I almost tweeted/put as my facebook status. But before I clicked the "submit" button, I began to backspace the letters. I don't know if it's because I've known the Lord since I was a little girl, and have therefore heard countless amounts of "one line"/summary statements in church-- to the point that I often become "numb" to such statements. (Numb as in, I can hear it, but in reality not truly KNOW what means). Or maybe it's because it seems to have become the trendy thing to show your faith on facebook with these kind of one lined statements (no judgement, because I do the same thing), and today I didn't want to join the trend. Whatever the reason, I felt the sudden need to explain this sentence I was about to tweet/facebook. Here's the thing, God has been so amazingly & patiently teaching me these basic truths & basic foundations of the faith. And I personally think he knows me well enough (Psalm 139) to know that I sometimes don't learn from reading a simple "one line statement." Instead, he pursues my heart on the subject, speaks to me through various people, has me listen to a particular sermon at JUST the right time, and opens my eyes to his specific areas of his Word so that I can truly understand.
This is why I'm writing this blog, to explain my one liner. Here it goes:
Let's back up a little bit. This morning Sarah & I went on the pursuit of visiting a new church. (I'm still church shopping, and Sarah, even though already feeling at home in a church, graciously accompanied me). When we arrived in Sousa, we quickly found out that the church is actually in Puerto Plata (the complete opposite direction). It was already 10am (the hour this mystery church began), and if we head to to where it was actually located, we would have been 40 minutes late. So, we collectively decided to head home and separately listen to Sermons online.
I began the Austin Stone's sermon series on Idolatry/Counterfeit Love almost a month ago, and just haven't had the time to listen to the next part of the series. And today, because of of pure location ignorance, I had the time! So I hunkered down (how many times in your life do you get to use that word?) and prepared to listen to this sermon. About an hour and half later*, I find in huge tears as Matt Carter prays to close the sermon and as I journal through all that the Lord taught me. Tears because idolatry is so prevalent in my life, and tears because of these words he specifically prayed: "If the spirit has revealed to you that there is some person, desire, or thing that you have let take the place of God in your heart, don't sit there and think, 'alright I'm going to do better.' You just come to Jesus tonight. That's all you do. You come to him and you just confess it to him, and you ask him, 'Jesus will you change my heart, will you point me to you, will you draw me to yourself, will you show me the folly of going after this stuff. Jesus will you do what you promised you'd do in my life. Will you fulfill the longing that you placed in my heart for eternity, so that I'll be satisfied.'"
Let me tell you why the tears flowed, because in this prayer, in this sermon, in many other things leading up to this particular day in my life.. the Lord is showing me that the only thing I can do is come to him BROKEN, ask him to forgive me, and then ask him to heal me. Sounds simple, right? If you knew the amount of times I have subconsciously (and consciously) tried to heal myself, it all of a sudden wouldn't sound so simple. I am beyond broken and I need the Lord's forgiveness and healing. In that prayer I realized that is exactly what Jesus has promised to do. "You come to him and just confess it to him and ask him to change your heart." I prayed, journaled, cried and opened my laptop to begin a day of going through my to do list. Before I started the list, I opened up BibleGateway.com to read a quick psalm before I began. Before I was even able to type in the Psalm I saw that their verse of the day was this:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
Simple, right? This is the gospel, this is what I've known since I was 8.
Not exactly. Yes I know this, but how often do I INTERNALIZE it? That not only is the Lord going to forgive me of my sin, but he is going to CLEANSE me from it. He's going to gradually remove it from my life, and I need only to come to him broken, and follow his spirit on the journey of the cleansing.
So, my "one liner" for the day is this- I am thankful that I serve a God that not only forgives my sin, but also cleanses. Just like the Lord has been teaching me through various and just like the Lord showed me through today's sermon.
How I was able to truly come to this one liner, was a much longer, deeper process, then reading a website's verse of the day. Thank you Lord for being patient enough to continually teach me your amazing truths.
*Sidenote- sermons are definitely not this long. The speck of journalism in me obsessively tries to transcribe word for word when I listen to anything of importance. Gracias a Dios for the ability to rewind.
PS- For those of you wondering: "Is she ever going to write on her blog what has been going on the last 3 months in the DR?" I'm working on a blog post (s) to hopefully summarize it all, and will sometime post this week!
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