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Sharing God's Word:
With this years Days of Unleavened Bread over, and returning to a World filled with the fruits of the
flesh, Do we pray daily to the Father to continue to forgive us of our sin, and for help to stay close to His Word,
knowing He is our Rock-and strength?
While kneeling to pray- have you ever had the thought of all the reasons the Lord has for not hearing you?
"Example"– I'm such a poor living example? My prayer life is so shallow? I read the Bible in the mornings and
rarely give it another thought in the day? He takes care of my financial needs and still I worry? What kind of
Christian am I? Why should He forgive me? What if the people I work with knew the poor Christian example
I am? And then in the morning, God sends an answer through the Holy Spirit.
I heard the garbage truck outside, running its usual early Friday morning route. The motor revved as
workers compacted the trash. Someone hollered, pick up the can that hit the pavement. The engine purred as the
truck softly moved forward to the next house. The noises were oddly comforting, and then the Holy Spirit
working in me- told me why, as I hear the workers taking away our garbage.
The sanitation system has ways of dealing with the trash, they have places to dump it, and methods for
disposing of it. It will be gone; we will never see that trash again. Their system works-our streets are clean and
our homes are free from the continual buildup of accumulated garbage and unhealthy conditions that it would
have produce. We owe a great debt to workers whom we rarely ever see.
In the same way, God removes the sins we have confessed to. They are forgiven and gone. We will walk
outside later this morning and retrieve the garbage cans we set out last night. They will be empty. We will set
them back inside our property or fence, ready to receive today's and tomorrow's garbage. That's the process; we
believe in and rarely do we question it.
Shouldn't we believe God just as strongly and surely? Shouldn't we take as fact that "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).
When He takes it away, God removes it totally and deals with it thoroughly. He buries it in the deepest
ocean, "He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and than wilt cast
all their sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:19). He then forgets it. “And their sins and iniquities will I
remember no more” (Heb. 10:17).
The point is, we'll never see that sin again. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed
our transgressions from us" (Ps 103:12).
There's a condition here! The garbage men-the sanitation workers-only remove what I set out. They do
not enter my house and walk through the rooms and comb through the waste baskets gathering up all the trash
they can find. That's my job. What I identify as trash and put in the appropriate container and set out for them
to pick up, they will cart away.
My job before the Lord is to identify His laws and name the trash in my life, anything unworthy of Him
and His laws, everything that interferes with my worship and obedience of Him, all that does not have His name
on it, whatever weighs me down and holds me back and hinders my faith-is my responsibility "Whatsoever is
not of faith is sin," we're told in Romans 14:23. "And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not
of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
We should make it a point to name anything the Holy Spirit calls to our attention- because "it" knows
what is needed to set on the curb-then pray, ”forgive me of all my sin, 0 Lord.” In confessing it to God the Father,
we are bagging it and setting it on the curb to be forgiven and remembered no more!
Because of the great and mysterious process that occurred when our Lord Jesus Christ died on the stake
and was resurrected three days later, the system works. His blood atones for our sins. His death paid for our
wrongs. He died in our place. He, and He alone, is the Savior. We are the beneficiary, the heir of His estate, the
one blessed by the curse of the stake. Only at His return to Earth will we learn the full dimension of the blessings
that are ours by, this, "His sacrifice."
Human language falters trying to fathom and encapsulate and describe all that is ours as a result of that
event on the hill outside Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.
We know it's not just a matter of saying the right words, of touching all the bases, but in asking the Father
for cleansing and forgiveness and for Him to fill us with His Spirit and to use us.
Now we should be ready to face a new day.