Enter the Tabernacle with Eyes of Faith

(HT: Puritan Fellowship)

"Lord....have mercy on me, a sinner...
.....again."

Pastor Garrett Holthaus of Lakeside Road Chapel has just completed a 4-part sermon series on avoiding and conquering spiritual drift. I would really, really recommend it to you ladies, as you know first-hand how much of a stuggle it can be to return to the prayer closet when you battle a life-dominating sin such as an eating disorder.

A major cause of spiritual drift and taking our eyes of off Jesus is, of course, prayerlessness. This is especially true when we know we've sinned, and are too ashamed to face Him. I remember so well, even though it was so many years ago, feeling like a hypocrite for even attempting to repent (again)! The failure of the sin itself, coupled with the additional sin of prayerlessness, keeps us needlessly away from the Throne of grace. Holthaus says this:

"The only thing that keep sus from the Throne of grace is ourselves. If your sins can keep you from the presence of God, then it was your own rigteousness that got you there in the first place. In fact, it's when we've sinned that we need most to draw near to God."

He quotes Octavious Winslow (a Puritan preacher I've just recently discovered who wrote more on the nature of divine love than anything else):

"Learn to take your guilt as it comes, and your corruption as it rises, directly and simply to Jesus. Do not allow the guilt of sin to remain long upon the conscience. The moment there is the slightest consciousness of a wound received, take it to the blood of Christ. The moment a mist dims the eye of faith so that you cannot see clearly the smile of your Father's face, take it that instant to the blood of atonement. Let there be no distance between God and your soul. Sin separates; but sin immediately confessed, mourned over, and forsaken brings God and the soul together in sweet, close and holy fellowship. Oh, the oneness of God and the believer in the sin-pardoning Christ; who can know it? Only he who has experienced it. To cherish, then, the abiding sense of this holy, loving oneness, the believer must build his house in the fountain [of Christ's blood]. He must wash daily in the bronze lavar that is outside the Holy Place; then, entering in within the veil, he may draw near to the Mercy Seat and ask whatever he will of Him Who dwells between the cherabim ."

Holthaus concludes, "You don't go as a criminal goes before a judge; you go to Him as a child goes to a Father."

Keep that message in mind, as you face another day...perhaps your first one of prayerful repentance.