Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. James 4:8.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Each time you sin, you pull back from Me and put distance between us.
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But you are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. Hebrews 10:35-39.
Whatever is not from faith is sin. Romans 14:23. For the victory that overcomes the world is your faith.
Adam put up a dividing wall between himself and Me.
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. Isaiah 59:2.
And sin still is a wall that you put up, but I keep knocking at your door to come back in and offer you the banquet of My Word, which includes forgiveness, healing, plenteous redemption, wisdom, comfort, compassion, every good thing and perfect gift, and above all, Love. And, as David put it, with My help you leap over a wall and take down a whole troop of enemies. I alone give light to your lamp.
But Jesus, for all those who receive Him, knocked down that dividing wall of sin as if it had never been for He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. A redeemer has come to Zion (the mountain of grace). I saved you with outstretched arm, Jesus is the arm I reach down to save you, My arm of flesh.
And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought salvation to Him . . . “A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” declares the LORD. “As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the LORD: “My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says the LORD, “from now and forever.” Isaiah 59:16, 20-21.
Jesus ransomed and redeemed you by His Blood. Receive Him with JOY as Zacchaeus did and Salvation will have come to your house today. He is knocking to come in and put you right with Me so we can fellowship again. Reconciling God and man in His own person as God and Man.
It was following My directions with a joyful shout that brought down the walls of Jericho, and they were massive, and they did not just fall out flat but they disappeared from view, having sunk down and gone underground. Jesus went to hell for you, like the seed that falls in the ground and dies, and when I raised Him up as the first born again Man, the first born of many brothers, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, I raised you with Him, cleansed, forgiven, and entirely new, and seated you in Him in Heaven with Me. No dividing wall.
But this sweet fellowship is interrupted when you pull away and accept and say words that contradict Mine and what I have done for you in Christ Jesus. But if you have pulled away from Me, I give you the solution, draw close to Me.
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4:7-8.
Return, I am always right there with you with My everlasting arms open to receive you. And though your sins are red as scarlet, I make them white as snow in Jesus.
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the LORD, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” Truly, the mouth of the LORD has spoken. Isaiah 1:18-20.
But pulling away by sin always weakens your fellowship with and confidence in your relationship with Me. You put up a wall that you hide behind. Like Adam and Eve hid themselves in the Garden.
Draw close means to walk in My Light and close to Me you will not sin. I guide you with My eye upon you and if you are walking with Me, you will know My loving eyes are upon you constantly day and night. You will see it in miraculous direction and protection all day long as you go about your business. But never lose awareness of My presence and nothing will pull you away.
I have set the LORD continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely. Psalm 16:8-9.
There is never a time I am not looking at you with love to protect you from all that would harm you and all that is evil, but more than that, to prosper you and give good success to your endeavors.
But you can choose not to pay attention and to look away and be pulled by other things. If you do not check the activity of the devil, just as in the game of chess, he will take captive the piece of your life he is after.
And as in the first parable My Son told, the devil is after one thing, because if he gets that, then you are easy prey for him. He is after My Word in your heart. He wants to pull you out of My Light. He is after our fellowship which is only possible by keeping My Word.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. John 14:23.
Without submitting to My Word alone as your ultimate authority, solution, and answer to everything, you cannot resist the devil and he will not flee from you. And if you are sinning against My Word deliberately with no repentance you are walking in darkness even now. And what fellowship does light have with darkness? None.
My apostle John who wrote a gospel account and three epistles that I have placed in My Book, the Bible, and he called himself the “beloved disciple.” And he is. Just as David was a man after My own heart. Why do I call him that?
The answer is simple but profound and if you will do it you too can have the confidence of the beloved. John is the only disciple who was not put to death for His witness to Jesus. There were numerous attempts to do so, even exiling him to Patmos at an older age, but he knew Me and he stayed close to Me, and no one could take him down until he was good and ready, fully satisfied, to depart this earth.
John stayed close to Jesus, even to the foot of the Cross when all the other disciples of the twelve had fled and Judas betrayed Him and then betrayed himself by taking his own life. He let the devil into his heart and the devil used Judas to destroy Judas himself. Be careful about letting the devil make you so remorseful that he uses you to condemn and murder yourself.
And John stayed so close that his faith never failed him. He was the first to run to the tomb and believe that Jesus had been raised up as He had promised. The woman saw Jesus first but John was the first to believe without seeing Jesus, just the empty tomb. And look at the respect he showed to Peter. He outran Peter being younger but he waited and let Peter, his elder, go in first and then he entered as the lesser.
John was so close to Jesus, by his own choice, that Peter motioned to him at the Passover supper the night Jesus was betrayed to find out the inside information of who would betray Jesus of their number. But if they had had the same loyalty and love that John had for Jesus they all could have been just as close and called “beloved.”
Draw close to Me and I will draw close to you and share with you My secrets.
The secret of the LORD is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant. My eyes are continually toward the LORD, for He will pluck my feet out of the net. Psalm 25:14-15.
And the closer you are to Me in the continuum of life the more like Me you become until seeing you is like seeing Me. John stayed close to Jesus consistently and he is the only writer of the Gospels or of epistles that revealed to you the awesome truth that I do not just have love for you, though I do, but I AM LOVE. And also that I AM LIGHT. In Me there is no darkness, only the Light of Life that enlightens every person who will open to My Light shining in My Word, shining on the Face of Christ.
Love, true beautiful forever life-giving love, comes in the knowing. In the closeness of knowing who I AM. Knowing what I am about in your life and in the world, and who I AM to you in every area and circumstance of your life, both now in the world and forever in eternity. For in My Light you see Light and better still, you become Light. And in the Light sin goes as if it had never been. Driven out by the Light, cleansed by the Blood, all from Love. Me. Let Me help you to be Love as well, for love never fails.
And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:5.
If you stay close, very close, to Me, you will never sin again. For everything you once thought so important that could pull you away from Me in sin, will look like nothing but rubbish to you compared to the joy of knowing Me and seeing the miraculous happen every time you call to Me and cast that care on Me.
I love you. It is when you come to the realization that all you really need to live a wonderful, glorious, wealthy and healthy life is Me, it is then you can turn away from sin and always walk free in the Light. Come sing in My marvelous light. Draw close, stay close, and never pull back. Like David, like Mary, like John, and above all like Jesus, your hero. Live your life through Him and you will never sin.
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 1 John 4:9.