Cleaning house

A passage and a whole slew of thoughts: 

1 Cor. 5:1-2 I also received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn't be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you're so above it all that it doesn't even faze you! Shouldn't this break your hearts? Shouldn't it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn't this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with?

3-5 I'll tell you what I would do. Even though I'm not there in person, consider me right there with you, because I can fully see what's going on. I'm telling you that this is wrong. You must not simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own. Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master. Assemble the community—I'll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power. Hold this man's conduct up to public scrutiny. Let him defend it if he can! But if he can't, then out with him! It will be totally devastating to him, of course, and embarrassing to you. But better devastation and embarrassment than damnation. You want him on his feet and forgiven before the Master on the Day of Judgment.

6-8 Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it's anything but that. Yeast, too, is a "small thing," but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this "yeast." Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient. The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast. So let's live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread—simple, genuine, unpretentious.

9-13 I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn't make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn't mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You'd have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn't act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can't just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I'm not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don't we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.

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Reading this passage struck me with heaps of convictions. One, I don’t like even bringing up this kind of Scripture. This would be a passage I would conveniently choose not to highlight. I’d rather focus on loving people than confronting them. But sometimes, confrontation is a part of love.

2010, you’ve been. . . (how to put this politely?) an interesting year so far. In Dec, I had everything I thought I had ever wanted, and I felt pretty empty. I realized there was no “if only this would happen” left to fill the void. I felt distant from God and any sort of peace. I realized there were two particular sins I had let gain a strong foothold in my life. They had become so commonplace and routine and a part of "me." I was long past feeling guilty about these sins. I thought that because neither one was at the highest level it could be, I was ok. I was serving two masters and reaping the harvest of emptiness. At this point I completely surrendered my life to God crying on my knees that all I wanted was his peace and his will. 

My life has been completely turned upside down since. One, I have this peace every single day. I have joy from the Lord, something I had completely lost sometime in college and hadn’t even noticed. I feel God’s presence with me, and I am floored. I’ve never felt so whole. Because there is a huge difference between knowing God as Savior and knowing him as Lord. I have never allowed the latter in my life; I’ve always been able to justify any action or thought to satisfy my selfishness to live however I pleased. I felt like I deserved to have God and worldliness. 

Back in Dec, I prayed for God to remove anything from my life that was a distraction from him. I was genuine. I was dead serious. And I was completely unaware of how much that process was going to hurt. And is really hurting. 

I was prepared to give my sin up. I was not prepared to give people up. Some people the Lord has removed from my life may be temporary and are for their benefit as well. 

Other people have been poison in my life, and I’ve been drinking from the cup thinking my spirit was immune. I have let their and other people’s words into my heart which up to this point, has been completely unfiltered. I have let them speak into my life and my heart without any discretion. I was allowing myself to think their wayward and spiritually immature voices had a place in my life. In this vessel of God. In my body, I carry around the power that conquers death. That’s about all I can handle. You already have all you need. You already have more access to God than you can handle. 1 Cor 4:7 or 8 I have no more room for these voices who whisper numbing deception. 

I should have learned this lesson about a year and a half ago. I let poisonous words go straight into my heart believing they were worthy/truth. I wrongly assumed that since these words were coming from people who call themselves Christians, that they must have merit. But from the mouth comes the overflow of the heart. The words completely poisoned who I was, and as a result I started becoming the person these words said I was. A troubled, depressed, resentful person who said and did actions congruent with who I believed I was. At this time, I didn’t believe God loved me or had any sort of plan for me. I’ve never been so miserable and alone or done such hurtful things to others in retaliation. 

God is still teaching me to let go of remnants and scars from this time. More accurately, he’s saying if you won’t let go of these things that have no place in your life, I will remove them for you. You know those relationships that bring more hurt than healing? Where the other person consistently reveals that s/he does not have your best interests anywhere near his/her heart? Those are the ones I, for some masochistic reason, cling to, and God is saying I want to replace these with something so much better. Not just life, but life in abundance. And God doesn’t take without also giving. A new season is coming and has already come bringing healing. 

God, I’ve gotta say, I’m a little nervous about what’s coming next. What other unholy presence that I’ve come to love and cherish is about to be uprooted? My consolation, my joy is that my Lord is living inside of me, speaking words of love over the wounds. My Lord is walking beside me giving me peace where there was none. 

God has been teaching me that there is no such thing as “my.” Every relationship in my life is either a blessing from God, or a distraction that’s become a stronghold, or someone who is purposefully but perhaps unbeknown to them, bringing me down. My family, my friends, my money, my aspirations are not mine at all. And the sooner I fully understand that, the smoother the sailing will be. 

My Lord is burning away things I once held as precious. He is revealing to me that I was choosing to play in the mud instead of living in the kingdom. 

Back to why I don't particularly love Scripture like the one above: I always feel like, who I am to be calling people out on things? Who am I to say something is wrong when I used to deal with the exact same things or am currently dealing with other issues? But all I know is I am who God says I am and nothing else. I am not my past nor am I defined by former attitudes and actions. God says I’m a sinner and a hypocrite but that I have been forgiven as if the sins were never committed. He says I am now blameless and pure, chosen and loved. He says I am worth it. That is what he’s been telling me in Thailand when former strongholds are seemingly saying the exact opposite. 

He is saying vengeance is mine, and I don’t need any help, thank you very much Lauren Schade. He is saying that those who destroy his sacred temple - my heart - are not going unnoticed. 

He is saying that he will separate the goats from the sheep, and that I am his. 

My Lord is constantly reminding me - through the words of family and true friends and his gentle whisper which is his peace that utterly transcends understanding - who I am. He is stamping out demonic words that say anything contrary to what he has already established. 

Cleaning house has never been so painful or exhilarating. Then again, when had I ever said what God already knew - this life is yours and I sure as hell can’t do it on my own. And please, please just shine through me. Let my life be worthy of the call I’ve received.