Let Him Cleanse Us

Dear Saints,

     I have been away on holidays for the past several weeks and feel refreshed.  I did miss spending time in ministering, but know that we all need to spend time, go to a quiet place to refresh our soul and rekindle that loving relationship with Him that He so much wants us to have with Him.  This is the bottom line, when you read about the first Church in Revelation (Church of Ephesus) in (Rev 2:1-4), it would seem that they were pleasing the Lord with all their "good works".  By this, they labored much through troubling times with patient endurance (that I know pleases God).  They would not tolerate evil (which God is pleased), they tested and appraised those who call themselves Apostles (like we should do), and patiently endured trials by bearing up the Name of Christ and through it, not ever becoming weary (as He would be pleased with).  Yet even through all these "so-called good works", God still had a charge against this Church.  Even through we may think that with all this labor, toil and patient endurance, is it still possible that we could be like this Church and lose our first love for Him?  I find it sobering to think that out of all our laboring and working patiently, persistently and faithfully doing the Lords business, we can still be confronted by Him simply because we have overlooked the one most important consideration which is to remain "IN-LOVE" with Him by loving to live His way.   

     When we remain in love with Him, it helps us to remind ourselves that He is a true Friend like no other person on earth can be compared with.  He alone remains faithful to me when others have proven to be otherwise.  When others don't have time for you, He always has special time for you.  He willingly offers to take all our burdens which no one else would dare do because He wants us to cast our burdens on Him (Psalm 55:22).  He is the only One who did not owe anything of Himself to us.  But yet, willingly paid a far greater price for me personally and chose to pay what we could not ever pay.  He tells us that a true friend would hardly dare die for another friend, yet He suffered and died for the rebellious sinners like I once was.  He offers to remove our tattered garment (every known sins we have ever committed against our Lord) and give us His spotless robe of Righteousness so we will be to the Father as though we had never sinned (Isa 61:10).  He continually and mercifully forgives our sins (though they may be many, He is always willing to forgive when we repent).  When others fail you, He never FAILs.  Many people may think He does, but He doesn't because He is trying to teach us to trust Him and test us to see if we do prove our love for Him.  The problem is that we have allowed impatience to overshadow us that has often hindered us to prove our faithful relationship with Him.  This is why true love (His Love for us) never fails.  Job did not fail God when all was stripped from Him, yet he still chose to worship God during these trying times and God was pleased with his faithfulness.  Not only did He restore everything back to Job, but restored double to him.  God wants to be that Great Rewarder to us (Heb 11:6b).  He wants to prove us to Him (with His help), that no matter what happens, we can remain loving, trusting in Him and being faithful to Him regardless of our circumstances.  Why would He have gone through so much pain, trouble and agony on our behalf if He didn't care for us or want the best for us in the first place?  He went through so much for us and gave His best for us, He would ask me, what is my best for Him? 

     I liked the revelation God revealed to me when I was reading about how Jesus girded Himself with a towel and washed the Disciples feet.  Even if anyone would have thought about doing that, I don't think anyone would have taken this action to willingly humble themselves enough to do this as Jesus Himself willingly did (The God of the Universe would do that for us)!!  When it came to Peter, he was not willing to let Jesus wash his feet.  I think He said this because he didn't feel right that someone like Jesus should stoop this low to do this task, when Peter probably thought, this should be the job of someone else while Jesus should be sitting on a throne as any earthly king would normally do.  He compared the mind of Jesus to that of an earthly king.  But here is the interesting part, In the second part of John 13:8 Jesus told Peter "Unless I wash you, you have no part with (in) Me [you have no share in companionship with Me] (Amplified Version). 

 

     When I read that part, I realized that when we come to Him, unless we allow Him to cleanse us (our heart, our past/repentent sins, cleanse our ways and every evil motive) and allow Him to fully restore us, He tells us that we will NOT be able to share in His companionship because we have failed to allow Him to love us enough and in turn to be able to love Him back to accept His offer to cleanse us.  Just like the scripture talks about cleaning ones feet, He goes further talking about our heart which is what He desires to wash.  But we need to allow Him to wash us, unlike Peter did not allow initially.  For Jesus mentions in vs 10b and 11 to indicate that no everyone was clean was because the one who was going to betray Him (which was Judas Iscariot) did not allow Jesus to cleanse his heart, which was why he ended up doing this wicked and detestable thing by betraying Him.  This is an indication of what may happen to a follower of Christ, who fails to allow Him to wash our hearts clean by coming to Him, to ask and accept His full pardon and forgiveness.  Otherwise, we too will fail in our fellowship with Him and He will tell us like He did to this Church of Ephesus that we have lost our first love (when we first got saved) which He will not be pleased.  He tells this Church that He will take away the very lampstand, even though they were full of "good works".  

     For us to be able to truly love Him, we have to know deep within and believe that He first loves us more than we can imagine, because we can't give anything good from our hearts and love Him or others back if we don't first learn to receive from Him.  Only He is GOOD and anything good from within is only because we first received His goodness within us.  It's always a good reminder to go to 1 Cor 13:4-8 and re-read this love chapter audibly and insert your name and let God speak to you personally that He fulfills that perfect love for you because He has proven His love for you in such a magnificent way far beyond our comprehension.  He foreknew every event, yet willingly bore the pain and allowed the guards to hammer those huge spikes through his hands with such excruciating pain, take on so much agony and far greater suffering than any man would have ever offered to do for us, just so we can be set free from sins bondage and be given life eternal.  This is just only a fraction of how He has proven His love for us.  How much more proof of His love do we need?  With love like that, let us receive His love from Him personally to each of us and in turn, be able to be in love with Him and be able to love others back.  Unless we first receive His love for us in order to love Him first and love others, anything else means absolutely nothing to the Lord. 

Will you consider buying my books in support of HelpingCopeThroughHope mission work in Zambia?  You may go to my link below to observe.

http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife  

In the Matchless Name of Jesus
Richard
Associate Director
Answers2Prayerhttp://www.answers2prayer.org/
 
Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him; I will set him on high, because he knows and understands My name. (Ps 91:14 Amplified Version)