Skip to main content

Let Us Draw Near

This is another article written some years ago by my wife Bessie.

"Let us draw near to God with a sincere [“true” in KJV] heart…having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience." (Heb. 10:22 NIV)

Hebrews is a reasoned treatise explaining how Christ fulfilled all the Levitical law in offering Himself as a sacrifice for sin. On the basis of all that Christ did for us in opening a new and living way (10:20), the exhortation follows: Let us draw near to God.

I have been impressed so often with this thought and have mentioned it enough that our daughter Heather made a cross-stitched sampler of this verse which now hangs on my bedroom wall. I am still hoping and waiting for someone to put it to music because it sings in my heart, and I think it needs expression.

I have been so taken, however, with the thought of drawing near that I have neglected the part of the verse that gives our responsibility in the drawing near. We are to draw near with a sincere heart. How are we to have a sincere heart? “Having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience.”

Isn’t this the source of many of our spiritual problems? We do not desire to draw near to God because of our guilty conscience; or if we try to draw near to God, we are aware of a barrier, and we become discouraged. The Psalmist recognized this when he questions in Psalm 24:3,
Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart.
We cannot approach God with unconfessed, unforgiven sin in our hearts. Again the Psalmist said in 66:18, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

The only way to a pure conscience is found in Hebrews 9:14: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God.”

We recognize that our acceptance by God initially is by His blood, but it is a continuous process as well in our day by day acceptance by God.

“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin” (1 John 1:7). There is a continued need for cleansing as we walk in the light and a continued provision for cleansing.

Let us begin to sing with Charles Wesley,
O for a heart to praise my God
A heart from sin set free
A heart that’s sprinkled with the blood
So freely shed for me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Is Obedience So Hard?

There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a

Getting Old

This is a post for those who are getting old or considering themselves old, from 65-100. Right now, I am 91.* I will be 92 in October. I have my own house, but I cannot live in it alone because of my physical inability to move around. One of my sons lives with me. All of us will have to make some adjustments. That includes money, relatives, your own ability and willpower to stay independent, etc. My advice is if physically and financially you can live independently, you should certainly do that. If you do, you will still need to have visits from your family frequently. You need your family. Even if you don’t need them to take care of you, you need them for the fellowship. The more fellowship you have, the longer you’ll live. If you can stay independent do it, but only if friends and relatives can see you often. In my case, I can’t walk, and I can’t do much physically. So, whether I like it or not, someone else has to get me up, get me showered, and get me dressed. I am blessed to have

Three Types of People Christians Aren't Loving

There are three types of people in the world that Christians do not love with the Gospel . The first type are the people we witness to but do not love. The second type are the unbelievers that we do not witness to. The third are people we love but do not witness to. That sounds like doubletalk. Let’s change it. 1) We witness to people we love. 2) We love everybody and witness to them with love. As Christians, we have the fruit of the Spirit—love. We are commanded to love our neighbors and our enemies. The first thing is to have the love. The second is to choose to love our neighbors and enemies. Sometimes we can’t make the choice because we have lost the fruit of the Spirit, love. We lack the fruit of the Spirit of love because we are under the chastening of the Lord because of unconfessed sin. In order to get the love back, we must confess sin. Once we get the love back, we can choose to love our neighbors and enemies and preach the gospel to them.   Written December 22,