The topic for this blog post came from work earlier today. As some of you know, I work for a painting company here in Kearney. It is an amazing job to have, definitely if you are like me and you like to stay moving. Going into work this morning I was not in a good mood. My mind wasn’t in the right place and I was a little depressed. The job today was to take down wallpaper in an 120 year old house and clean the walls to get rid of the glue. As I was cleaning one of the walls, I stopped and just looked at it. The thing that kept coming to mind was that is how God sees us.

I started this blog with the verse Isaiah 1:18 which reads “…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”. This really got to me because looking at that messy and icky wall, I got intimidated. But listen, I worked on this wall and I got it to be clean. Afterwards it wasn’t so intimidating. God’s promises us that no matter how deep the stains of your sins are , He can remove it. He can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Interesting fact: Hebrew for “scarlet” radically means double-dyed, so the deep-fixed permanency of sin in the heart can really only be washed away by God alone. No mere tears can wash that stain away.

The word “I” is repetitive in this bible verse. The means of settling sinfulness is the word “I”. Notice how Isaiah, while sharing God’s message, didn’t say “offer some more”, or “punish yourself by inflicting physical pain on your bodies”, or “do x y z”. As a means of settling, the answer is “I”, meaning God. God wants us to be more centered towards Him, a person, and not the actions that we do, no matter how noble they might be. Sometimes we get too caught up in doing things, that we forget that the word “WHO” is more important than the words “what”, “how”, or “when”. “Who” talks about Lordship. “Who” talks about abiding in the Lord. And “Who” is about christ-centeredness. They are non-negotiable. If we’ve anchored ourselves to the right “Who”, then not only will your sins be settled, your “what”, “how”, “when”, and everything else will follow.

Don’t forget to remind yourself every once in a while “who is your source?” Is it God or the world?

Love,

Emily

“In retrospect, I can see that ‘wait’ is the most precious answer God can give us. It makes us cling to Him rather than cling to any outcome.” – V. R. River