What a week

Our church has been participating in and celebrating a world-wide call to Pentacost which is known as "10 Days to Pentacost" as we have had prayer meetings every night at the church and elsewhere since May 1st. The Lord really has burned in mine and others' hearts to begin believing again all that God has promised to us through His word and we have fallen so short to wordly pleasures over Him and His promises and blessings. One of the visions that I got was that God has to tear down idols (worldly possessions)and/or we have to be ready to lay down our idols that we have replaced Him with, before He can move how he wants to. We sometimes ask Him to reveal Himself mightily but we are unwilling to lay down our idols so He can move. He is just waiting. I know I have things I still need to lay down, yet at this time, God is not really being clear about what that is, or I am just not hearing him right. I'm still praying about that.

But in the process, God is speaking to me through a study that our Home Group is doing of the book "The Normal Christian Life". It is based out of Romans, which has always been kind of a hard book for me to delve into. But with being able to talk it out with Tim and others, God is revealing so much about the value and satisfaction that Christ's death, burial, and resurrection is to me and everyone in the world. I couldn't believe it took til I was 32 years old and a Christian for 24 years before I GOT IT! God sent His son to die so that we can be reconciled to Himself for eternity. We can't nor have we ever been able to attain that. It was only accomplished by Christ's shed blood and death on the cross. The blood was shed for our "sins".The cross was bore for our "sin nature". We sin because we were born sinners. We are not sinners because we sin. It is our nature to sin, so God had to do something about that. I know that this has been taught to me before, and I've heard it many times in my life, but for some reason I couldn't completely grasp it to the point that I could live it out

So God gave me a vision last week to help me grasp the value of Christ's shed blood that was a huge light-bulb moment for me. I never really could grasp what the blood meant for me or any of us, but now I have. So here it goes.

When I am walking around in condemnation over my sin, I might as well be sitting in a courtroom waiting and actually expecting a death sentence (even thought I am eternally saved). The enemy has me where he wants me and is throwing every sin at me, accusing me of what I did wrong that day. God is my judge and Jesus is my Advocate or Defender by the way in this setting. Then God asks Jesus to bring Him a bowl of shed blood to the Judge's desk. At tha moment, God says, "I am satisfied with this blood". Bethany is free and will always be free. I did nothing to attain that. It was freely given because God said the shed blood covered all my sins. Why the blood? We really don't know, but that's what God said, and it is our responsibility to believe God's word. Therefore I should never be putting myself in the courtroom again. So how many times do we put ourselves back there so God can remind us of His forgiveness? He has already forgiven us! It happened 2000 years ago and it still remains. We don't have to grovel for it or ask for it. We should confess things, but God says "your sin is as far from me as the east is from the west." It is forgotten and you are forgiven and it has been forgiven even before it happened. So now we can approach Him every day with boldness by the power of the blood of Jesus. And we can use the blood of Jesus as a weapon to ward off the enemy whenever he wants to condemn us for screwing up yet again. The devil can't argue with Christ's shed blood. He was there when it happened for goodness sakes. He saw it happen. And we have victory because of it. Thank you Jesus!

I am still trying to chew on so much more, so this is just the beginning my sure...