Clean

Great weekend with the leaders of Open Door church. I was blessed to have some time in consultation with Al Yoder and Wayne Shenk, our church overseers. What an honor, to spend time with these men! I learned much, and accepted a 6-month challenge.

The Give Me Love venue is making good progress. Thank you, Judy K, for sponsoring the sanding machine to help us refinish the hardwood floor. I love that our community is getting involved this way. Meeting with Levi and Clayton tomorrow at 2pm to generate a list of things we need help with.

Sarnowski has been faithful in his work-out schedule–I haven’t. I have been out of the gym since mid-December. So my return in the morning necessitates I get to bed on time tonight, and I’m about to do just that.

Why don’t we sign off by dwelling in John 15:3–”you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

It would seem like this verse doesn’t say very much. It’s just an in-betweener on the way to something more important. 

Quite the opposite. Here’s the set up. I’m the vine, my father’s the gardener. He cuts and he cleans to ensure maximum fruitage. You however, are already clean, and you’re clean because of what I told you. The word I have (already) spoken to you. 

What do you mean, I’m already clean? Is this the new-creature, all-things-are-made-new speech? Do you mean the same thing Wayne meant when he told me I have a pure heart?  I’m clean because of what you told me? Well, what is this word that you have spoken?

Hebrews 4:12 pictures the word of God as a sharp instrument that cuts through the BS, trimming fat off lean, and lies off spirit. The question I have for you is, what is the word he has already spoken to you that makes you clean? Clean, in this context, means ‘ready for fruitfulness.’ He just explained one verse ago that the gardener cleans(prunes) so that you may be even more fruitful. So what has he said to you that renders you fruit-ready?

I don’t know! That’s not for me to know. But you need to, don’t you? I need to know for me. I have been going over the things I know that he spoke to me, and realizing how they have served to purify my heart, slice at a time. I am clean not because of something he has yet to speak to me, but something I’ve already heard.

I realize he was speaking this verse to men (disciples) he’d just spent about 3 years talking to. So maybe I should also look at what he spoke to them. We have on record only a very minute portion of all that he spoke to them, but somewhere in his discourse to them is a cleansing word. Maybe we’re not on the hunt here for a particular word in all those conversations, but maybe the cleaning agent is the conversation itself, the exchange between my words and His. Maybe its the flow of his words through me that cleans me. 

You are already clean, ready to bear fruit, because of what He said to you!

Well, what has He said to you?