You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
Remain in me, as I also remain in you.
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.
Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
-John 15:3-4
I am already clean.
That is what the Scriptures are teaching me.
There is nothing I could possibly do to be more spiritually clean than I am at this very moment. The moment I heard the Word, repented of my sin, and turned my life over to Christ, I became wholly, beautifully clean. It can become fairly easy to believe the lie, that I am somehow not clean.
It is easy to believe the lie that… God is displeased with me. A friend shared this quote a while back, and it shines brightly today: “You are doing better than you think.” I think of it pretty often. It’s not because of me that I am doing better than I think, but it is because of God and His work in my life.
God is not done with me yet, either.
When life breaks me, I can trust God is working beneath the surface. He works in all these troubling circumstances that I find myself crawling somewhere in the middle of it all. God has this. More important than the stuff I find myself in the middle of. The hard stuff my life is entangled in. God has me! There is no greater treasure than that. I know to whom I belong. Though I may forget more often than I remember. I know where my identity lies. I am a child of the Most High God!
God has cleansed me.
He loves me with an everlasting love.
In this love letter from my Abba Father, the words I feel being whispered to my spirit are these:
“Stay with me. You are clean. You are made new. You are mine.”
I may struggle to believe or have faith, in the midst of life-crushing situations, but God has all of this and holds me near and dear. In the middle of the hard stuff, I know I need to make my time alone with Jesus (spending it in His Presence basking in His sweet intimacy) a priority. I need to cry out to Him. I need to not allow emotions to build up. I need to just run to God. There isn’t anything I can really do about the circumstances themselves, but knowing to make my intimacy with Christ at the top of my list is a starting place.
And… it is the hardest, yet most rewarding, thing I can do in the middle of the hard stuff.
