Like a Sponge part 3
It really does seem like we are (foolishly) trying to finish in the flesh what was started in the Spirit. As if to say, "God set me up, but now I have to walk it out." And if you've followed this ministry for any length of time you know the distinction I make between "walking it OUT," or doing it in your own power, and "walking IN it," or letting Jesus walk IN you! Look at Psalm 51:2 in the Message Bible, "Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry." This is the cry of the heart in the Old Covenant. "I'm not clean, but you can make me clean." Because that's what the Law of Moses showed the people: The Law of Moses demanded perfection without being able to produce perfection. Not even Moses himself could get into the Promised Land by keeping the Law. Nobody could. That wasn't the point of the Law. The point of the Law was to show us that we CAN'T keep it. To bring us to the end of ourselves, and bring us to Christ. We tried our best to "walk it out," but the standard was too high. So Jesus came and fulfilled the Law. And He did it both for us and AS us. He scrubbed away our guilt. He soaked the sins out of us and took away the sin of the world! And catch that phrase: "Soak out my sins." We've been talking the last couple of days about being so full of God--of LOVE--that there isn't room for anything else. Absorbing His love for us like a sponge and then letting it leak it because it's too big for us to contain. To me, this is that. We're not fighting with sin. We're fighting the good fight of faith. We're not focusing on what we're NOT supposed to do--because that's the best way to end up doing it--we're focusing on what HE did! Let me give you an example. If you need to go to the bathroom, but you can't because you're in the car, the more you focus on needing to go... even though you are trying NOT to go... the harder it will be to hold it. Because what you magnify is what manifests. But if you instead focus on something else, the praise and worship song on the radio, say, then it becomes much much easier to hold it. If you're always thinking about "bad behavior" even in the context of trying not to do it... I'm telling you, you're going to do it. But if, instead, you let God wrap you up in His love... then all of that other stuff just fades away. When we are immersed in Him--and that's what the word, "baptize" means--everything else just soaks right out of us. And I think that's an important picture for another reason. We still, wrongly, seem to believe that we have a "sin nature." That we are sinners and so it's only natural for us to sin. But think about a dirty dish. When you soak it... the dirty part separates. Because it's NOT PART OF the dish. It's foreign. It's UNNATURAL. The washing of the water makes it (makes US) clean by getting rid of that which never belonged in the first place. And I'm not saying it doesn't seem like we can get really dirty really easy. Sometimes it seems like everything we touch we make it worse instead of making it better. But look at what Jesus said in John 15:3, "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." The cry of man's heart before teh cross was, "I'm dirty... make me clean." Then when Jesus arrived on the scene--when the Word of God, which is love, arrived on the scene--He said, "You ARE clean through the Word!" God's love MADE us clean. He presented us to Himself as a bride without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing. He soaked us in His love and soaked OUT our sins. "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18). "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire" (Revelation 1:14). He cleaned us by His Word. By His love. By conforming us to His image (that we were already made in). And now we ARE clean. As He is, so are we in this world!