“If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us (1 John 1:10).
Ouch! That hurts! If I say I’m a saint, that’s what Paul calls us and someone who is holy certainly isn’t a sinner, then I make Jesus out to be a liar. If I say I am a sinner, then I make Jesus out to be the truth, which is what He is, but I don’t like calling myself a sinner. No one, absolutely no one wants to be called a sinner. Even the worst sinners in the world can find really good excuses for why they did what they did. I give a workshop called “Uprooting Buried Lies.” Because of my past I asked the Lord for help with my interior chaos and He said, “It’s not what happened to you that brought chaos into your life, it’s what you have believed about yourself that has twisted your life.” When bad things happen, Satan is there to plant lies. So God gave me a prayer process to identify one lie at a time and with His help to find the root cause. The next step is to ask Him for His truth and for Him to verify that truth with two Scriptures. Then I ask Him to rip out the lie and plant the truth. This process has changed my life.
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"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).
There’s a dictum that says, “Pride dies fifteen minutes after the body.” Humans have a hard time saying “I’m sorry.” We seem to have the attitude that God is an understanding Father and therefore it’s not necessary to “confess our sins.” Knowing this to be a big step for us, God outlines the benefits of telling Him we missed the mark. Not only does He forgive our sins, but He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. That means He washes off every taint the devil has placed on our lives through his attacks. Of course Satan only had the right to attack because we were off in the darkness somewhere instead of walking in the light with God. Even so, God cleans up whatever mess the devil created while we were in our sin. I think for that I can overcome pride and confess the errors of my ways. All I can say is Yay for God! Hurrah! “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” (1 John 1:8).
What is sin? It is missing the mark. What is the mark? God, of course. God’s plans, purposes and pursuits for our lives. He wrote a book about each person He created describing the gifts He gave and journaling His hopes and dreams for our lives. I, myself, tried many avenues thinking each one to be perfect for me. They were all sin. It took me a long time to admit that because I was only trying to do my best. Who could fault that? God could. We are His creation, not our own. We are happiest doing His perfect will. “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
Light is positioned against dark in the Bible, dark being ignorance, obscurity, destruction and death while light is the Presence of God, all knowing, all power, all life, all liberty. There is a struggle between the soul and the spirit, the soul being the tools we use: emotions, intellect and will, the spirit being who we really are. God is a Spirit and we are made in His image. It is there that the Holy Spirit comes to live as He had no home in us before our new birth. If we are walking in the Light, then we are allowing the spirit to show us life as if through the eyes of God. Therefore, we can have fellowship with each other. That doesn’t mean that others want to have fellowship with us because they don’t necessarily want their dark deeds or dark thoughts brought to the light. When we are walking in the light with God, our thoughts, emotions and will directed toward Him, the Blood of Jesus continually washes us from all sin. When we spend time with our own dark thoughts, we are in obscurity, and when we choose to come back into the light, we must ask for that Blood to wash us again. We do not need to be born again a second time, only washed. |
Marty
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