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I get distracted. It seems to happen too easily. It must be the “shiny new object” syndrome.

  • Jesus challenges me to focus on what God wants.
  • God’s goal for me is to love.
  • That is a “right now” kind of thing.

Love is the true worship of God. I must break with the distractions. I must live for Jesus today.

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God

ESV (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Corinthians 7:1.

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When we confess our sins, God promises to forgive us. But this promise is not a “magic rabbit’s foot” that makes it easy for us to disobey God!

  • Of course, cleansing has two sides to it: the judicial and the personal.
  • The blood of Jesus the Messiah, shed on the cross, delivers us from the guilt of sin and gives us right standing (“justification”) before God.
  • God can forgive because Jesus’ death has satisfied His holy Law.

But God is also interested in cleansing a sinner inwardly. David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”. When our confession is sincere, God does a cleansing work in our hearts by His Spirit and through His Word.

The great mistake King David made was in trying to cover his sins instead of confessing them. For perhaps a full year he lived in deceit and defeat. No wonder he wrote that a man should pray “in a time of finding out”.

When should we confess our sin? Immediately when we discover it! “He that covers his sins shall not prosper; but whosoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy” (Prov. 28:13). By walking in the light, we can see the “dirt” in our lives and deal with it immediately.

  • 1 John 1:7 (NASB) —But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
  • Hebrews 7:26–28 —For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the Law appoints men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath, which came after the Law, appoints a Son, made perfect forever.
  • Hebrews 9:26–28 —Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And since it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so the Messiah also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
  • Hebrews 10:10 —By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus the Messiah once for all.
  • Hebrews 10:14 —For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
  • 1 John 3:4–6 —Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins have seen Him or knows Him.