Last Thursday night at The Rock we had an awesome night of worship. Instead of having a message, there was a lot of music and different stations where we could go and worship God in different ways. One of the stations was for repentance. The instructions were simple, put sackcloth on your head, take ashes and either wipe it on your arm or face and confess sins to God. This was something that was done in biblical times, although I am not clear on the specifics. The sackcloth is itchy and the ashes represent our sin.
After finishing the station, I went to another station and grabbed a sheet of paper. Immediately I realized that because my hands had ashes on them, everything that I touched became dirty. This is so true of our lives. We are sinful human beings, which means that even the things that we do that are the most glorifying to God still have our sinful fingerprints all over them. We are covered with the ashes of our sin.
The awesome thing is that Christ died to cleanse us of our sin. 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God's love for us is not dependent at all on our actions. In fact, the way to please God is to draw near to Him (Hebrews 11:6) The bible does not say that we must have a 2:1 righteous act to sin ratio for God to be pleased. It says, "And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him." God is pleased when we seek Him and He rewards us when we seek Him. That is such an awesome promise!
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