Category: Are You In Need of Cleansing?

²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our LORD. ~ Romans 6:23^NIV

The wages of sin is death, but God’s gift of eternal life is in Christ Jesus. What exactly does that mean? Have you ever heard the expression, “Pay the Piper?” Some people will say, “You have to pay the Piper if you want to dance.” Well, it is the same concept that Paul is teaching, only this is not figurative, this is for reals, and for keeps.

Sin, when dabbled in, demands payment when it is all over, and it only knows one currency, that is death. Nothing else will satisfy its payment demands.

Therefore, when we indulge in sin, we must pay with our own lives since the wages of sin is death.

But on the flip side, there is good news. Jesus has paid the demands of sins with His own death. Peter put it this way,

¹⁸ For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

1 Peter 3:18^NIV

Through Jesus, the wages that sin demanded, is no longer a standing debt against us, and now He offers us a gift, free of all charges. All we have to do is say, “Yes, LORD, I accept Your free gift, Jesus,” and He will give it to us.

Have you accepted His free gift? Are you living for Him? If not, here is how. Repeat this prayer and mean it from your heart, and Jesus will come into you and give you His free gift of life.

Dear Heavenly Father, please forgive me of my sins. I am so sorry for offending You. Please help me now to live the rest of my life for You. I joyfully accept Your free gift of life. Thank You, Jesus, for dying on the cross in my place. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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¹⁴ Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” ¹⁵ They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” ¹⁶ So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. ~ John 19:14-16

It was the day of Preparation. The Passover was to start in about three hours. Pilate had cross-examined Jesus and found nothing to condemn Him for, especially capital punishment. He thought he would try one last attempt. He had Jesus flogged mercilessly, then he presented Him to the Jews and said, “Behold your King.”

He thought that would prick their hearts to see Jesus so pitiful, and being their King, surely, they would have pity on Him and change their minds. But instead, they hardened their hearts and cried out, “We have no king but Caesar.” So, Pilate delivered Jesus over to them to be crucified.

Today, you are being presented with that same statement, “Behold your King.”

Will you accept Him as King? Will you continue to accept Him when the flow is against Him? The majority are yelling out, “Away with Him. We do not want or need this man.” Will you be caught up in the heat of the moment? Or will you stand out like a very sore thumb—a twinkling light in a sea of darkness?

Jesus died so that you might live. He took your sin and my sin, and all the sin of the world that whosoever will, can come and receive mercy. Jesus is coming back to get those who are waiting for Him. Those who are not crying out, “Away with Him.” So, again, the Holy Spirit is saying, “Behold your King.” Because it is one of the Spirit’s jobs to remind us about Jesus. Therefore, make sure that you are not with the crowd crying out away with Him but with the few who are saying, “I receive You, dear LORD, and I accept Your sacrifice on my behalf.”

Dear Heavenly Father, please help each and every one of us who are clinging to You to go against the grain. To go against the crowd and to swim upstream against the flow. Help us to live for You, and to speak out for You, and tell others of Your great love. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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⁶ Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? ⁷ Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸ Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. ~ 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

The NIV says, “Get rid of the old yeast.” In Scripture, yeast, or leaven, represents sin. In this passage, Paul is dealing with sexual immorality in the church there at Corinth. One of their members has taken his father’s wife as his own wife. Therefore, Paul instructs them to get rid of the yeast. Get the sin out of their midst because if they do not, it will infect the whole church, one by one, and soon, the whole batch will be infected with sin.

If you think about it, that is basically what is happening in the church today. We tolerate the leaven in our church because the person is a celebrity or they are a good tithe payer, and we don’t want to upset them. Or the church simply bows to the political pressures of society, ignoring God’s commands to us. But that is not Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian church. He told them straight up, get rid of the yeast that is in your presence, or it will infect your whole church.

It is the same thing that God instructed the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land. Get rid of the sin in the land. Smash their sacred altars. Breakdown their Asherah Poles. Destroy anything that is used for idol worship. If you do not get rid of all of that, it will be a snare to you. They will be like briers in your eyes. Because a little leaven leavens the whole batch.

It is the same with the new Christian. God does not expect you to get saved and then change overnight, but He does expect you to seek holiness, without which no man shall see God. That means you don’t keep making the same mistakes you made last year or even last month. You don’t use grace as an excuse for your own slackness. God understands, or I know I’m not living the way I’m supposed to, but thank God for Grace. No, God wants you to mature because His Son suffered and died so you can live a higher life.

Paul puts it this way: Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed; therefore, let us get rid of all the yeast, which represents sin, out of our lives so that we can pursue holiness. So, this Easter, make it a point to get rid of the yeast of malice and evil out of your life. Get rid of quick-temperedness, course joking, slack-talking, cussing, watching things Christians have no business watching, and whatever else that prevents your spiritual growth.

Father, help me to live the things I believe, to practice what I preach, and to be an example to those who watch. Help me to let my light so shine that others may see my good works and glorify You. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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³⁷ If one of their carcasses falls on any seed that is to be sown, it is clean; ³⁸ but if water has been put on the seed and one of their carcasses falls on it, it is unclean for you. ~ Leviticus 11:37-38^CSB

The LORD gave many laws and statutes to Aaron and Moses to tell the people. These laws were a shadow of things to come. God said that if a dead carcass of one of the unclean lizards falls on any of the seed that is to be sown, the seed will remain clean, but if it’s been watered, it has become unclean. Why is that?

In the parable of the Sower, Jesus explained that the Word of God is the seed, and the different types of fields receiving the seed are four different types of hearts. See, the Word of God cannot be polluted by false doctrine, misinterpretation, and twisting of Scripture unless someone hears it and accepts it. The seed must first be planted and watered in order to corrupt the seed because our words can affect whether the seed grows into a good fruit-bearing tree or a bad fruit tree.

The Word of God is powerful and is not subject to anyone’s sole interpretation. There is only God’s interpretation. So when you hear the Word of God preached or taught, you have to weigh it against what the Word of God says, lest you believe false truths and your watered seed becomes unclean.

Dear LORD, please open my eyes and ears to Your Truth and Your Truth alone. Fill me with a spirit of discernment so that I might not be tripped up by false doctrine and false interpretations. Help me to be like the Bereans who searched the Word of God to see if what Paul said was true. Teach me to see the Truth, LORD, so that I might never accept or teach anything false. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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⁶ You are not to come near any close relative for sexual intercourse; I am the Lord. ⁷ You are not to violate the intimacy that belongs to your father and mother. She is your mother; you must not have sexual intercourse with her. ~ Leviticus 18:6-7

Have you ever read the book of Leviticus and just thought to yourself, “Why did God even need to address this? This is just common sense.” That’s how I felt about these verses, and then I felt like God brought to my mind the warnings on bleach bottles and other poisonous liquids. These are common-sense rules, but there are always those who will misuse the product and then try to sue the company for their own idiocy. The same is true with the Law.

God gave us laws and commands not because we’re stupid or lack common sense but because the more we give into darkness, the more our vision is perverted, and the more we give into our own fleshly desires. Imagine if God didn’t give us any commands or laws but expected us to follow them. On Judgment Day, would we not be able to say, “But I didn’t know it was a sin.” Therefore, the LORD addresses the black-and-white areas plainly and clearly so that there’s no room for grey to appear.

So, what are we to do? We get rid of grey, and we stick to the original outline. We don’t give into our flesh, but we crucify it. We don’t quench the Spirit; we feed it. We don’t blur the lines between right and wrong; we call sin sin. We stop making excuses for our sin, and we strive for holiness.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Avoid The Perverse.

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¹⁷ Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person. ~ Matthew 15:17-20

The mouth only speaks what is in the heart. In other words, whatever is in abundance in the heart, that is what the mouth cannot help but speak. Why? Because it is the most dominant, making it the most influential.

Ever heard the saying, “The squeaky wheel gets the most grease?”

Whatever the heart is full of will spill out of it and into the mouth and consequently be expressed in words.

Therefore, if your heart is full of

• Hatred
• And anger
• And slander
• And accusations
• And talebearing
• And gossip

That is what the mouth speaks because the mouth speaks only what it hears coming from the heart, and what it hears, it repeats. So, if you want to know what is in a person’s heart, listen to their words. Not only what they say but what they do not say.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and What’s In Your Heart?

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¹¹ The mouth of the righteous is a well of life, But violence covers the mouth of the wicked. ~ Proverbs 10:11^NKJV

Because of the words spoken by the righteous, there is life, a well of life. But the words of the wicked are not the same. Violence seeps in, and violence covers the mouths of wicked men.

We are to put away filthy talk from amongst ourselves when we are Christians because words defile us. It is not what goes into the mouth but what comes out of the mouth that defiles us, according to Jesus (Matthew 15:11).

Words bring life, or they bring death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Whether good or bad, whether healthy or harmful, you will eat the fruits that you cultivate with your words.

There is wisdom in the words of the childhood song, “Oh Be Careful Little Mouth.”

Oh, be careful, little mouth, what you say,
Oh, be careful, little mouth, what you say.
There’s a Father up above looking down in tender love,
So, be careful, little mouth, what you say.

Truly our words hold the power of life and death because in them is the power to create or to teardown.

The very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible states that God spoke everything into being. It says that God said, “Let there be light, and light was.” It didn’t hesitate, and it didn’t stop being. And so it continued on for the next five days; God said, “Let there be, and there was.”

God’s words are creative; how can we, His children, the Bride of the Lamb, speak any different? We must speak words of life.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Be Careful What You Say.

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¹ But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. ~ Titus 2:1

As an online Church, we get firsthand encounters (through the comment section) that we wouldn’t necessarily see in person. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are expecting to one day have a physical church, but for now, the LORD is showing us things and preparing us for the future. So, with that said, my eyes have been opened more and more temperature of the majority of people who claim to be Christians. The majority that I come in contact with are those who will argue their belief to the ground but never be able to show you one single verse to prove their belief.

What a sad state of the world. We are to be Christ to the world, and Christ is the Good Doctor (Mark 2:17). Let’s now put that into perspective. Imagine going to the doctor because you hurt your ankle, and instead of doing tests to see what’s going on with your ankle, your doctor walks in, looks at you, and says you need brain surgery. He hasn’t done a single test but yet is jumping to a conclusion that doesn’t fit the evidence before him that he refuses to acknowledge. Would you go to that doctor?

The majority of us have become like doctors today who don’t try to fix problems, don’t know the root or cause of a problem, yet will put you on addictive and harmful prescription medication that doesn’t fix the problem. This is what we do when we push beliefs that we can’t defend or even find evidence for in Scripture and refuse to accept the evidence shown to us. If we are going to be Christ to the world, we have to be able to show the Word of God to the world. That can only start by first being a student and a studier of the Word of God, to make sure what you are being taught is truly from the Word of God.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Cling To Sound Doctrine.

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³⁵ And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸ therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” ~ Matthew 9:35-38

I recently posted a short that collected over 3,000 views. To say the least, I was ecstatic, but the more views I got, the more comments I received that were filled with insults, digs, and hatred simply because my views differed from theirs. The more I read, the more my heart began to break, not because my feelings were hurt or because I was offended by their comments but because they are people claiming Christianity. That means that they are supposed to represent Christ to the world.

Imagine if I was an unbeliever and this was me digging into the Bible for the first time; I would be completely turned off by Christianity because of these people. The internet has allowed us to feel comfortable insulting, mocking, and hating others. We don’t think twice before we spew hatred in the comment section while still arrogantly saying that we are Christians.

Imagine how many souls they come in contact with every single day and how many of those souls they’ve turned away from Christianity because of the bad fruit that they bear. The more I think about it, the more my heart aches. There’s a reason the laborers are few. It’s not because there aren’t enough people who know about Christ; it’s because there aren’t enough people who know Christ.

Here’s what I mean. It’s not because people don’t know about Christ that the laborers are few; it’s because our hearts are so cold that we don’t love enough to labor in the fields. We know who Christ is. We know His name. His book, but we don’t know Him. We know things about Him, but we don’t have a relationship with Him.

Christ then goes on to admonish us to pray that the Father will send laborers. He’s not saying praying that more souls will hear about Christ, but that laborers will come. Yes, we’re praying for those who have never heard, but we’re also especially praying for those who have heard and accepted but haven’t changed. Those who are still filled with hatred. Those who refuse to accept correction or guidance. Those who cherry-pick. Those who know of Him but have yet to pick up their cross and follow Him.

Dear LORD, please forgive me for all the times I didn’t share Your love with people. For all of the times that I was a poor witness for You. Please, LORD, have mercy on Your Church and begin to open the spiritually blind eyes. Melt the cold hearts of those who represent Christ to others. Raise up a standard in all of Your Church that we might not turn others away because of our hatred and mockery, but that they would know You are God because of our love and our good works. Fill your field with laborers, LORD God, so that souls might be harvested. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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