Not In Our Own Strength
On the back of this discovery follows the actual putting away and casting out of what is impure. This is something that you are simply bound to do. You must come with these sins, especially with those that are most strictly your own troublesome sins. You must acknowledge them before God in confession and make renunciation of them.
You must be brought to the conviction that your life is guilty and shameful life. You are not at liberty to take comfort from the consideration that you are so weak or that the majority of Christians live no higher life. It must become a matter of earnest resolve with you that your life is to undergo a complete transformation. The sins that still cleave to you are to be cast off and done away with.
Perhaps you may say in reply that you find yourself unable to do away with them or cast them off. I tell you that you are quite able to do this. You can give these sins up to God. If there happens to be anything in my house that I wish to have taken away and I am unable to carry, I call for men who will do it fr me. I give it over into their hands, saying: "Look here, take that away," and they do it. So I am able to say that I have put away this thing out of my house.
In like manner, you can give up to God those sins of yours against which you feel yourself utterly impotent. You can give them up to Him to be dealt with as He desires, and He will fulfill His promise: "I will cleanse you from all your filthiness."
There should be a definite understanding between you and the Lord. You on your part must confess your sin and bid it everlasting farewell. Wait on Him until He assures you that He has taken your heart and life into His own hands to give you complete victory.
Experiencing Christ
If the knowledge of sin at conversion is superficial, so also is the faith in Jesus. Our faith, our reception of Jesus never goes further or deeper than our insight into sin. If since your conversion you have learned to know the inward, invincible power of in in you, you are now prepared to receive from God a discovery of the inward, invincible power of the Lord Jesus in your heart as you have never known before.
If you really long for a complete deliverance from sin, to be able to live in obedience to God, God will reveal the Lord Jesus to you as a complete Saviour. He will make you know that although the flesh with its inclination to evil always remains in you, the Lord Jesus will so dwell in your heart that the power of the flesh will be kept in subjection by Him. Then you will no longer do the will of the flesh.
Through Jesus Christ, God will cleanse you from all unrighteousness so that day by day you man walk before God with a pure heart. What you really need is the discovery that He is prepared to work this change in you. You may receive it by faith here and now.
This is what Jesus Christ desires to work in you by the Holy Spirit. He came to put away sin - not the guilt and punishment of it only - but sin itself. He has not only mastered the power and dominion of the law and its curse over you, but He has also completely broken and taken away the power and dominion of sin. He has completely rescued you as a new-born soul from beneath the power of sin. He lives in His heavenly authority and all-pervading presence in order to work out this deliverance in you.
~Andrew Murray~
(continued with # 45)
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