Being Cleansed (Ephesians 5:12)

I've struggled mightily with whether or how to write this post. I don't want to hurt feelings, anymore, of people Heaven has given me a heart for. But there comes this moment when I am brave and need to say something of what needs to be said.

This post is about the confusion and practice of evil doing that has grown from the seed of something King David said. David (a man, and a flawed man, not God) made a "covenant" with a friend some time before the friend died a horrible death. That friend was someone who David, before being saved or anointed by God, put in place of a woman's love, the Bible says.

David made many spiritual missteps.

David's confessed spiritual wrongs, apart from salvation in Jesus, were never without consequence. David lost his first child. A son of David sexually assaulted a daughter. David's kingdom fell. And, long before all of that, David's friend died a terrible death -- and that death was not so that David would live a life of faith. The friend, Jonathan, wasn't a friend laying down his life in the sense that Jesus gave his flesh that we would have life and life abundantly. Instead, Jonathan's death was a punishment for sins that went without repentance at a time when Jesus had not walked the earth.

Both David and Jonathan did go on to bear children. And David made the best of that by acknowledging he had made a man's covenant (like men's peace treaties) with Jonathan. David remembered Jonathan's son, who was crippled, and David brought that son into his royal court to live, "because of Jonathan," David said (not because of hope in the Messiah who David was looking forward to). David was honoring a men's treaty moreso than any thought or prayer of faith. And that's just the God-honest truth about that.

Much different than any treaty of man, we are saved because of a covenant directly from the mouth of Heaven. When God Himself spoke to us, He gave us something stronger (and, frankly, more conditional) than promises among men. And because mankind is very flawed, God's covenants with us often have been broken. Just think about how well anyone is living the ten commandments that Jesus brought forth into His everlasting covenant with us, His church.

Sadly, only because people break covenant with Heaven daily, countless people think the love of Jesus is unconditional. What's forgotten is that, different from being unconditional, Heaven's love is longsuffering. God allows us, His church, to suffer long, but that's only to give men time to repent of the hell that's in their hearts against us.

Unwilling to repent, countless souls perish, lost, without Jesus.

As I say this, I think about countries where faith is forbidden and forbidden fruit is celebrated. I think about how ministry in Christ reached a child. I think about that child being saved. She realized her salvation in Jesus. But because of where she was living, her life was taken shortly afterward.

To the country that disallowed her faith, that means some kind of cleansing. But, to me, it means looking forward, all the more, to leaving the unclean in heart, one day. And it means, meanwhile, prayers all the more, for who I've been given to love in Christ (prayers that all will be clean: spiritually cleansed in heart).