Lately I have been receiving a lot of personal benefit from taking a specific verse, one that is very familiar to me, and doing a word by word study of it. It has been nothing short of stunning, and also alarming, to discover what I do not know. When you have been around Christianity as long as I have, it is easy to become so familiar with the lingo that you miss the meaning, and therefore the benefit of applying God's promises to your life. If the promises of GOD are no longer "...exceedingly and precious..." (2 Peter 1:4), if you can speed-read through passages without standing in awe or falling before GOD in worship, it may be that we are in the place of no longer treating as sacred and precious what GOD has declared is.
This morning I took a fresh look at 1 John 1:9, breaking it down word by word, looking up each word, so I understood each word, which allowed me to understand the meaning of the entire verse as I never have. Here is the verse as many of you already know it. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (KJV). After my brief study I wrote the verse in a way that is helping me better grab ahold of the precious significance of it. Here is my uneducated version.
"If we will bet on God by believing and acting on what He has said, and will say about our rebellion and failures what He says about them, He will then immediately act according to what He has covenanted to do, observing His own divine and unchangeable laws, which allow Him justly to separate our sins from us, thereby making us morally and spiritually clean before Him."
Yes, I know it is wordy, but does it help? Does it give you a better grasp on the exceeding and precious reality of the verse? Does it encourage you to believe it? Does it help you to see the benefit of confession, while inspiring you to run to God for forgiveness and cleansing He offers, rather than away from Him. Does it inspire you to fresh faith in God, your heavenly Father and His Word, to once again view His promises as fabulous and extravagant? Did I hear you just say, "Yes!"? "Exceeding and precious", "Fabulous" and extravagant". Really? Do we even know what those words means? Among all the other things we have, do the promises of God stand-out as extraordinary and priceless? I believe that there are places in the world today where, without a single doubt, they do.
Maybe this devotional exercise is just for me, and not so much for you. Maybe! However, if the Word of God has lost its' majesty, if you can burn through scriptures or repeat memorized passages without weeping at the wonder of what God has given to you, may I suggest a change in approach? It isn't that the promises of GOD have the ability to be exceedingly precious, but that they always have been, truly are, and will forever be. Amen! I am preaching myself happy!
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