Saber Ministries

“Washing in the water of the Word. Do you feel and know yourself cleaner for being with Jesus? You should. Do you experience this through being with fellow believers? You should. Do you experience this in a worship service? You should.”

I wrote this musing several weeks ago after spending some time with my friend enjoying coffee, conversation and prayer. I felt cleaner for having been with him, and as a result I’ve been thinking, should not that experience mark us as we interact with Christ and anyone Christian? In Luke 5:12,13 we read the following account;

“While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus he fell on his face and begged him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him saying, ‘ I will. Be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him.” Do we have the kind of longing to be clean that this guy had? Do we fall on our faces and beg Jesus because we are so desperate to be clean? Not much. The reason for this is that we’re under the illusion that we are pretty clean just as we are. O that we could see our inner leprosy, our deep down inner corruption more like this guy saw his outward, diseased state. For this to happen we have to be close to the light of the Word, and not as though under a twenty five watt light bulb hanging thirty feet off the ground, but as  under a two hundred and fifty watt heat lamp hanging but three feet away. When we expose ourselves that way to God’s counsel, we begin to see much more clearly, and that kind of light also gives heat.

A friend of mine told me the other day that he was getting back into the word more deeply, and in the same conversation relayed how much envy and jealousy and anger he had been feeling toward some co-workers, emotions that he did not think were in the system, or at least not much. The Bible brings light and thus exposes those dark places in the soul, and without the Holy Spirit working through it, we remain dumb and often completely oblivious to reality. We can remain well hidden even to ourselves, which is why the Psalmist wrote, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.” Psalm 19:12 

   
But having found the leprosy within us and wanting like our fellow leper, to be clean, what can we do?

Ephesians 5:25 and 26 helps us out; “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” Though this is primarily about the role of the husband in marriage, by extension, it tells us how the Living Word ought to be working in us, transforming us and making us more like Christ. “Washing in the water of the Word” brings us into desire levels for personal holiness that we would otherwise not have. It also reveals us for who we really are deep down, and that’s often unpleasant. Consider the word as fast flowing, cleansing water and you have a chicken turd on your arm in full view. You know it’s there and people close to you suspect it even though you wear long sleeve shirts. Imagine being profoundly concerned with the chicken turd, when unbeknownst to you, and hidden by the turd, was a  malignant melanoma, that left undetected would result in your early demise. You deal with the turd and low and behold there’s something far more serious underneath! My friend experienced this in thinking that lascivious sexual thoughts were the real biggie in his life, but as the water of the word did its cleansing, he began to see that he had bigger issues with anger and envy and jealousy underneath, which are rivers that flow from the great Lake of Pride.     

There is more to be said, but this must suffice.