This was one of the biggest questions that lingered in my own soul for years on my healing journey. Before I was walking with Christ, the idea of being pure was something I had wrecked or something I rolled my eyes at—that was for “good girls.” After He rescued me, this question echoed inside me. While I could say I was rescued, I didn't feel like pure was a word that could be applied to me.
Since we've been tracking with Rahab’s story, it’s fair to tell you that this truth grabbed hold of me in Joshua 6:22-25. While she and her family were lead out of the rubble of Jericho, and were ushered into lives of wholeness there’s this strange pause. She and her family were placed “outside the camp.” They were Canaanites and they had lived lives that God had warned His people against. According to the laws God had given, they were “unclean.” While this may seem exclusive to us or even seem harsh or unfair after her great show of faith in God, I believe there is something here for us. It’s gloriously connected to a wild story that spans Acts 10-11.
Peter was struggling with his old life. He wanted to embrace his new story and live in the freedom Christ had purchased for him, but he was conflicted. He had a hard time living consistently, radically free. His issue: Jewish laws about food. His deeper issue: calling something pure. His even deeper issue: believing it’s pure and living freely in that truth.
God showed up and through a series of vivid images said, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." (Acts 10:15)
According to this verse, who makes and declares things clean?
Are clean things allowed to be called impure?
As Peter retold this incredible, freeing experience to a group of friends that had been “outside the camp”—non-Jews who had become followers of Christ--he added a heart layer to what God had shown him. “But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:28) The deepest issue: calling people pure.
Peter closed the old story to embrace the new life God had for him by saying this, “If they've believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, [and He has made and called them pure], and for certain this is true, who was I to think I could oppose God?” (Acts 11:17, my paraphrase)
When we don’t know that God has called us pure, we can feel torn or stuck like Peter. We want to embrace living beyond our pasts and leaving behind those old feelings of sin or shame—the dirty feeling—but we aren't sure what that means or if we even can.
When our deepest issue is believing God has called us pure, we can run into more shame or even sin.
The shame script that plays in our heads and hearts can be that we feel like we have to live outside the camp forever, watching others go into freedom, into faith community, and they get to be and feel pure. “But not so fast Rahab. Not you.” Somehow, in the midst of our desire to be free of our pasts, Satan has injected a lie that says, “You can be rescued, but you can’t be restored. And more than that you can’t be free. You won’t feel pure because you aren't pure. So, this far in living beyond your past and no farther.” And then he invites us to blame anyone but him for this lie coursing through our souls. We blame ourselves with every memory, dream, temptation, and old story that pops into your head. We may quietly, lamely begin to blame God for not making us feel more pure or totally free, and we may question His power or His love for us.
Sometimes this can lead us to temptation. We are tempted to be jealous of others that look so free and pure. We are tempted to despise, dismiss, or even reject them for seeming on the outside the way we long to be on the inside. And it leads to bitterness in our hearts.
If I can press into this a bit further, some of us may even blame the Church. We might say at times that we don’t want to be judged, so we won’t go there. Don’t get me wrong, I know the brokenness of people in the Church means that we can hurt one another. I've watched a well-meaning woman practically hand another woman a proverbial scarlet letter and let her know it suited her well (a story for another day). But I've been the woman that rejected the Church because I didn't want to be judged. In reality, I didn't want to be exposed for not feeling as pure as they seemed. I wasn't satisfied living outside the camp and feeling unclean. I wanted to be pure. I had no idea God said I was.
I wonder if you didn't even know God has called you pure.
I wonder if it’s news to you that you might be going against God’s way for you by not believing that what He has called pure, you can’t call dirty.
The ache of our hearts and the lie of the enemy has been exposed.
Now you know. Now you want to believe which means live it. So, how has God called you pure? Is it just that easy?
Come find out tomorrow.
But in the meantime, get ready to leave the fringe of the camp. There’s more to His story in you than just the rescue. That was just the start!
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
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