A Clean House

The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
9 He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.
10 He does not punish us for all our sins;
he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
11 For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
12 He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
13 The Lord is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
14 For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust.        Psalm 103:8-14 (NLT)

Have you committed a sin? My response to that question would be: “You mean today?”

People who really know me would agree with the statement that I am hard on myself. I expect more from myself than I do anyone else. It was a difficult internal fight with myself to accept that I could not be “good enough” and more, to accept that I continue to sin and fail to be the child of God that I want to be. And there’s the problem. I never forgot when I sinned. I kept such a ledger! I would confess my sins to God but I never erased those sins from my ledger. I kept them and watched them continue to add up! God – forgot!

God doesn’t just forgive, He totally forgets. He takes His perfect eraser and removes any mark on that ledger. He burns all the evidence and clears the hard drive of each nanobyte. God can do anything and everything but He cannot remember my sins once I confess them and He forgives them. He can not and will not remember them!

“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.”         Isaiah 1:18 (NLT)

No, my LORD doesn’t remember but I do. In that corner of my heart is a closet where the ghosts of my past lurk, waiting to pop out and remind me of who I used to be. I am a different person and yet those ghosts of past sins linger with a stinky old smell that clouds up my new life. Instead of leaping and dancing like I should, I walk with a limp.

Are those ghosts hanging around because of God? Was He kidding when He said He wouldn’t remember my sins? Was He promising more than He could deliver when He said He would clean me as white as snow? Does God lie? NO! A lie, a hedging of His words is not part of God’s nature! His love is never conditional. He who is perfect love does not hold a grudge. If He does, then He isn’t God.

If God didn’t forget my sins then how could I pray? How could I sing praises to Him? How could I enter His presence if the minute He saw me He remembered … “Oh, there’s Jody. She was the one that …” I could not enter the throne room of God in filthy, sinful rags. So how do I enter?

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.27 And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.    Galatians 3:26-27 (NLT)

And there it is. When I come into God’s presence, He sees the Christ in me. I am covered in Jesus’ righteousness, not my own. And this was God’s idea, not mine. It was His plan and His way for us always to be together.

So today I am cleaning out that cellar in my heart. I am calling on Jesus and with the power of His Spirit I am exorcising those ghosts of past sins and welcoming the Light of God’s Truth. The windows are open and the sweet smell of God is throughout my clean spiritual home.

Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) written & sung by Chris Tomlin