A Disciples Notebook

I literally think that this is the best blog that I read! A Disciples Notebook always has encouraging and convicting and TIMELY posts. I would highly recommend reading it regularly. Can I also suggest going back to: The Way to Devotions and Stillness Before the Lord. These are excellent! What a blessing!

I really want to share this one, Completely Clean (below), though. Seriously it's so awesome to remember this truth. It's articulated by none other than the amazing C.H. Spurgeon, and it really makes my heart swell with joy and hope in the Lord!

Completely Clean
Posted by jerrywhite on Feb 3, 2011

Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”
John 13:10 (ESV)

~~~

“It may encourage you to call to mind the people who were praised. They were not cherubim and seraphim, but men, and notably they were men filled with weakness. There was Peter, who a few minutes afterward was brash and presumptuous. But it is not necessary to name them one by one, for they all forsook their Master and fled in His hour of peril. Not one among them was more than a mere child in grace. They had little about them that was apostolic except their commission. They were very evidently men who had the same passions that we do, yet their Lord declared them to be clean, and clean they were.

This is nourishment for those souls who are hungering for righteousness and worrying because they feel so much of the burden of indwelling sin: cleanliness before the Lord is not destroyed by our sins and weaknesses or prevented by our inward temptations. We stand in the righteousness of Another. No amount of personal weakness, spiritual anxiety, soul conflict, or mental agony can mar our acceptance in the Beloved. We may be weak infants or wandering sheep, and for both reasons we may be very far from what we wish to be. But, as God sees us, we are viewed as washed in the blood of Jesus, and we, even we, are ‘clean every whit.’

What a forcible expression, ‘clean every whit’—every inch, from every point of view, in all respects, and to the uttermost degree! Dear friend, if you are a believer, this fact is true even for you. Do not hesitate to drink of it, for it is water out of your own well, given to you in the covenant of grace. Do not think that it is presumptuous to believe this statement, as marvelous as it is. You are dealing with a wonderful Savior, who only does wonderful things. Therefore, do not stand back on account of the greatness of the blessing, but rather believe even more readily because the message is so similar to every thing the Lord says or does.”

Charles Spurgeon

Joy In Christ’s Presence, 167-168