Under the Sword

By: Carole L. Haines

Be gracious to me, God, according to Your faithfulness;
According to the greatness of Your compassion, wipe out my wrongdoings.
² Wash me thoroughly from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin.
³ For I know my wrongdoings, and my sin is constantly before me.
⁴ Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight,
So that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.
(Psalm 51:1-4 NASB)

I long to live with that kind of honesty both in my heart and in my relationships with others. As I take this inward journey with God, I am finding an awful lot of things that I do not like inside myself. I am under the sword of God, His Word.

 For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. ¹³ Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable. (Hebrews 4:12-13 NLT)

Crying out within, tears of grief flow as I discover those deeper layers of manipulation, pride, and self-will within myself. It is not pretty, surgery never is. Yet God cannot free us from what we will not admit. We must see it, recognize it, and agree with God’s revelation of it in order to truly confess what He shows us. He reveals it to us so we can be free. But we must be made aware of it, and that process is very hard. We must go under the Sword of God, His Word.

I cried out to Him last night about stuff I see in myself that I am so desirous to be freed from. As deeper layers are being revealed it’s hard to look at it.

I said, “Jesus, I just feel so naked, so exposed, just overwhelmed by how much still needs changing.”

I sensed in my spirit, His gentle assurance that He, Jesus, knows the humiliation of nakedness, exposure, and shame. Not His own shame, but ours for He carried all of it.

We always see pictures of Jesus depicted as having been crucified with a loin clothe covering Him. But as I researched it, it seems Jesus was crucified naked, exposed, stripped of all covering. He hung there completely uncovered, and was separated for the first and only time in all eternity from His Father and Holy Spirit as He cried out,

“My God, My God! Why have you forsaken Me?”

I just kept thinking, God, I am so glad Jesus never has to go through that again for us. I am so ashamed that my pride, my self-will, my sin, my rebellion caused Jesus to be paraded through the streets as a spectacle.
Holy God, Precious Jesus, Spirit of the Living God, I see now that I must be stripped naked too, of all that hinders me from being conformed into the image of the Risen Christ. You have promised never to leave me nor forsake me. You were forsaken so that I would never be.
Thank You, Jesus, change me, strip me of all that is not of You. Clothe me in Your robe of Righteousness and cleanse my body, soul and spirit. Amen!