Thread by @BethMooreLPM

This 8th day of 31 Days of Prayer had me in Mt 8. I can’t read these 6 words of Jesus without being moved:
I am willing.
Be made clean.

He’s responding to a leper who yearns to be healed of his “uncleanness” (per OT Law). I was no leper but I know what it’s like to feel unclean.

Some of us who have been sexually abused cannot look back on a single day of our childhood, strangely even before the events, & find a time we felt clean. Even when we get old enough to process the gospel truth that it was not our fault nor our uncleanness in any way. Each has

his or her own story of how they responded to the abuse so mine certainly isn’t everyone’s. But as for me, that feeling of being made dirty was so thoroughly formative that I believed I belonged in the mud. And I wallowed & wallowed in it, heaping shame upon shame. I had a heart

for God so I’d repent & repent. And because I was not healthy enough emotionally to embrace & absorb God’s forgiveness, it would be necessary for me to re-confirm my filthiness. So back to the mud I would go. I lack the vocabulary to describe the misery of the constant cycle.

I’ve said many times that I didn’t become obsessed with studying the Scriptures so I’d find healing. I became obsessed because I’m a student and I love to study & nothing had ever so fascinated me. But, meanwhile, God was slowly retraining my thoughts. Literally changing my mind.

I don’t know an exact moment that I began to believe what Jesus was saying. Not just read what he was saying. Not just admire what he was saying. But to believe & receive for myself what he was saying. Still, somewhere along the way it started sinking in. I was well into my 30s &

very active in ministry but I still carried that same sense of shame. That same conviction that other people in church/ministry were “clean.” They didn’t have my junk. I had just accepted this as the way it was. The inevitable burden of my sinful past. But then over & over in

Scripture, “I am willing. Be made clean.” I began to realize that it was not Jesus who was unwilling. It was me. There wasn’t one dramatic moment when everything changed. More of a gradual realization. But there could be one moment for you. One moment when the truth of the Gospel

speaks louder than your past, than your constant destructive cycle, your self-condemnation, the lies you tell yourself.

Loved of God (that’s you, no matter who you are), Jesus knew everything to come—all the worst parts—and was already more than willing all those years ago when

He hung on that cross.

All you have to do is believe it. Receive it way down in the recesses of your heart where we store all the lies that slowly kill us. Let the truth in.

“I am willing.”

The question is, are YOU?

You’ve been made clean by the power of the cross. All the

mud heaped on you that was none of your fault. All the mud, if you were like me, you then heaped on yourself. All of it, gone. All of you, CLEAN.

Be willing. Believe Jesus.