Go a few days without a shower or brushing your teeth and you begin to feel grungy and gross. I’m on a waiting plan currently to have a bad tooth extracted. It’s not fun and it hurts. By the time it is removed you will probably have a chance to read this. God calls us to be clean and purified. As sinful humans we need that it’s like needing a bad tooth removed. “Houston, we have a problem.” We need to come to God for cleansing and often.
2 Corinthians 6:16-18
“What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols. For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’ ‘Therefore come out from them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Touch no unclean thing, I will receive you.’ ‘I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters.’ Says the Lord Almighty.”
God wants to be part of our lives and that should be a cause for celebration. But he’s going to have to extract a tooth or two. We have a part in it too.
2 Corinthians 7:1
“Since we have these promises, dear friends let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting reverence out of reverence for God.”
We need to seek God in humility and ask him to purify and cleanse us. We have to be willing to turn from our sinful ways and have him remove anything in our lives that doesn’t glorify God. Until we reach Heaven we’re supposed to draw closer to God and become more like him.
Hebrews 12:1-3
“Therefore, Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith , who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning it’s shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
The tooth extraction much like God’s cleansing of us won’t always be easy but it’s necessary to make us more the person that God wants us to be. Like my friend Mr. Wilson always said. “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.”
God first. And his best for our lives first.
They could not by Sandi Patty So I'm going to let you in on a story behind this song. I grew up on the music of Sandi Patti and I've literally heard this song hundreds of times. This week I was driving around Corpus Christi doing something or another and I actually listened to the words and this song describes how the people of Jesus' day simply didn't understand God's plan at all and it gets to this one line that says "And when at last they took from him what willingly he gave could they keep him in the grave? They could not praise God they could not." It's emphatic and it's the message of the cross. it's foolishness to those who refuse to believe but wisdom to the believer.
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