Come As You Are

Week 2  Abide and Adhere

Day 12

Come As You Are

Turn to the Lord ahead of self-chosen modes of comfort and catch a thrilling glimpse of the intensity of His love.

Don’t wait to become worthy before you run to His arms, come to Him now, come as you are. Your freedom journey cannot begin apart from the sustenance He provides. The fuel for this journey is Christ’s love.

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O

ur tendency is to hold the Lord at bay until we can become righteous. This is self-defeating because the Lord is our righteousness! We can’t become right ahead of partaking of Him, but we nevertheless stumble repeatedly over the barrier of attempted self-justification. In so doing, we discover an excellent recipe for depression: give up self-comfort, determine to allow God to route out every hidden sin, look sorrows squarely in the eye, but fail to abide in the Lord. 

Apart from steadfast focus upon God, we will either drown in our own sorrows or grasp onto worldly offers of comfort. It is only as we come to Him despite the stench of failure that emanates from our sin-stained hearts that we are offered the blessed release of casting our cares upon Him. 

To put it another way, we must give up the idea that we must be fully prepared before we begin a freedom journey. Instead, we find we must enter the pathway sin-stained and burdened if we are to begin at all. There is no preparation we can make in our own strength; the cleansing we crave happens along the way.

Satan’s whispers go something like this: “A perfect God requires successful efforts to obey, and you have failed. You need to get your act together; look at yourself—you are naked in your sin—for shame! Hide from the Almighty, or He will destroy you.” 

When we feel steeped in shame, stamped with failure, and stained by sin, we want to hide from God. But our Heavenly Father has provided the cleansing Blood of His Son so we don’t have to run away. 

Delve into the Lord and surround yourself with thoughts of Him. Obedience is the heart’s response to the love we discover through faith in our Savior as we walk the freedom path. 

Pray:  Dear Lord, when I have sinned please help me turn quickly back to the warmth of Your love so that constant realignment to You becomes my habit. Teach me that availing myself of the cleansing Blood is not shameful; what is shameful is when I fail to partake of the salvation You’ve provided at such cost. Lord I come, I gladly receive the forgiveness You’ve purchased for me, and I praise Your name. Amen.      

~~~

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,

 in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

 As they go through the Valley of Baca

they make it a place of springs;

 the early rain also covers it with pools.

 They go from strength to strength;

each one appears before God in Zion.

Psalm 84:5-7