DaySpring Daily Word of Inspiration: James 4:8 – Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Our passage today is wonderfully profound. As we peel back the layers of scripture, we find insight and conviction for those of us who consider ourselves true Christians and those of us who are looking to establish a real and rich relationship with God. May the God of love touch your heart to grow from this point forward! So let’s delve into the text.
We all intellectually understand that God is light and there is no darkness in him. His brilliance actually repels darkness; that meaning, he can never be in the presence of darkness – nor can it be in his presence. What does that say for us scripturally speaking? Well let’s start from the end and move backwards. We can’t take our sinful selves to God as is. Let me explain. God loves us all and he wants us to come to him as we are, however, he loves us so much that he doesn’t want us to stay that way! Does that make sense? He loves you enough to accept you as a sinner, but he doesn’t just leave you as a sinner and accept your sin. He loves you even more by wanting to make you better through the washing away of your sins and covering you in His righteousness. He wants us to be cleaned up! Yes, we all come to Christ messed up in our hearts, minds, actions, wants and desires but he provides the tools (his bible, the local church, church family, etc.) for us to wash away these defects and impurities that have plagued our lives for so long.
Why is that important? Well as we touched on earlier, we can’t come to God nor will he be able to come to us if we aren’t or haven’t begun the journey of making a transformation in our lives to rectify some of the deficiencies we have. We have to desire the cleaning process if we want to get closer to a supremely clean (sinless) God! We can’t change ourselves (if we could, we all would and wouldn’t trapped in the same mess over & over again), but the presence of God actually brings in the power – the power to change, retool our minds, and get closer to him. Think about every miracle that has ever happened. Every one, I’ll wait…….now consider this, the powerful result didn’t bring about God’s presence, it was God’s presence that brought about the power result. God’s presence brings about miracles – that means he has to be there (or near) for something miraculous to happen. We can’t expect to see powerful, life-changing results if we’re not actively washing ourselves in Jesus’ blood as to help us repent and be blameless Christians. This is our active duty in getting God to come near to us. As the scripture points out, “come near to God”. We have to make a move in his direction with a genuine desire, effort and showcase that we want his light to overpower our own darkness. That’s the only way he will come near to us; is by our showing we want that clean, bright, blameless, and righteous relationship with him.
God has already made the first move. When he sent Jesus to die for our sins, he put it all on the line. Now, it’s our turn to make a move in his direction. Today we pray that we all see our need to get clean and washed in the blood of Christ. It’s the guaranteed way to ensure God is coming near to us as we continue walk toward him in his ways. There are two ways to get God’s attention. One is by our continual and perpetual actions in righteousness and the other is in our continual and perpetual actions of darkness. How close are you to God today? Is he coming closer to your life or is he staying as far away as possible because of the sin (darkness) you allow in your life? We pray, no matter where you are today, that you begin your journey to the light and may you find God running towards you with open arms. In Jesus’ name, AMEN!