Change Your Clothes
“Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes.” (Genesis 35:2)
The Lord is working overtime in my heart and life these days. Through Scripture, dreams, relationships, and just in the everyday of life, I hear Him. And I’m pressing into Him with renewed vigor and passion.
I couldn’t have chosen a better church to lead. Embrace in High Point, North Carolina, is small, tiny even, and very much off the radar. Just this morning, during my prayer time, God brought to mind a passage that describes this church to which He is leading me -
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (I Corinthians 1:26-29)
I consider myself as belonging to this group of worldly weaklings, and I rejoice in my place. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
All this is really preliminary to what I want to share with you today. I write monthly devotionals for “Living Life Magazine.” Our writing staff is continuing to work our way through the book of Genesis, which will be found in the August and September issues of 2022.
One of the passages assigned to me was God’s command to Jacob/Israel to return to Bethel, the place where he first encountered God. Remember the ladder from heaven with the angels descending and ascending?
Anyway, in preparation for the return to Bethel (literally, “House of God’), Jacob instructs his family and servants to (1) get rid of their idols, (2) purify themselves, and (3) change their clothes.
As I read, studied, and meditated on this rather obscure verse of Scripture, God spoke to me in a very personal way. Let’s be honest, shall we? All of us have idols, things that we set our affections on, things that are not in keeping with God’s call to purity and devotion to Him. I can tell you that these idols often go unnoticed by us a great deal of the time. But when God is preparing us for a new work of grace, a new place of service, He is certain to open our eyes to the grip they hold on us.
And God will make it very clear to us that we need to get rid of these things. In the process, God instructs us to “change our clothes.” That’s the picture behind these words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:22-24 -
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; and to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
“Corrupted by deceitful desires.” Indeed! Like mirages in the desert, our world is filled with things that promise to quench our thirsty spirits but leave us choking on the sands of disappointment. These are our idols, those things we give our allegiance and passions to rather than God. And in order to experience the righteousness and holiness (think, living water) that Jesus promises, we must recognize and put these things away, clothing ourselves in Christ.
That’s what’s going on with me these days. And maybe by sharing it with you, God can encourage you in your own walk of faith. I pray that He does.
In Christ,
Dan
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