Recently the Lord has been impressing on my heart the truth about my sinfulness. No, I haven’t been committing any gross sins beyond the usual “petty” things, but He’s been reminding me of various things regarding sin, repentance, cleansing, and submission. A statement that Bruce Wilkinson of Prayer of Jabez fame made comes to my mind first of all. He pointed out that the old man never gets any better. We are just as prone to sin today as we were before we were saved. This clarified to me that when we walk in the Light it is merely a continued submission of self to the Holy Spirit (1Jn. 1:7). And the more we submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit, the less we will hear the prodding of the flesh. However, they’re still there and if we listen to them even for a moment, we can fall and fall hard. Recent events in the American Christian world have shown that.

My brother commented on this during a recent meeting we had, saying that it scared him to see a prominent leader fall like that. He said that what it did was drive him to “clean house” with God and to meditate on what it means to “delight yourself in the Lord” (Ps. 37:4). This has been impetus for me to consider as well and bring into line with something that the Holy Spirit has put on my heart to pray: “Holy Spirit, show me the things that I must set aside so that you can fill me more.” Frequently our lack of filling is not from the desire to be filled, but from the fact that we are filled with things other than the Spirit. These must be emptied and He will fill the spaces they leave. I have not yet apprehended all of this, but by God’s grace, He will allow me to do so as I faithfully submit to Him and listen to His promptings rather than the whispers of the flesh.