Bro. John:
I was awakened a few days ago with the Spirit speaking these words in my ears:
“If you keep rubbing a dog’s nose in his mess, he’ll never lift his head up.”
As I pondered what I had just heard from the Lord, the words seemed a little odd, but then, we are God’s peculiar people, so who am I to second guess anything or any way God wants to speak to us? I knew it was from him. It felt like a true proverb – a door of opportunity being opened to learn more from Jesus. Then your dream and message came a few days later, and it came together for me. I’d like to share how he opened it up to my heart.
In your email sermon you said, “We are stuck on repenting, and can’t get past it! Constant repenting is an irritating, grating sound to God’s ears. Jesus wants us to stop this repenting. He wants us to just repent, get over it, and move on!”
Constant repenting and rubbing our noses in our own messes of our own making both keep us from lifting up our heads and being the child of God he has made us to be and wants us to be! He knows who we are and where we are before we even know. But it’s not God who keeps rubbing our noses in our messes — it’s us! And he wants us to lift our heads up and do what we were created to do as a child of God in this beautiful kingdom he has put us in. If we need to repent, he will let us know, if we keep our hearts true to him. Then, as you said, repent, get over it, and move on! How in the world can we worship him in Spirit and in Truth if we are always walking around with our heads down! We should be the most thankful people on earth that he has given us His Spirit, made us his children, and given us a NEW PAST! I know it and believe it because he told me so! We are not products of our earthly union anymore! We are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, waiting to get home to our Father and His Son, Jesus! It’s time to let it go, repent, and move on. It’s time to get our noses out of our messes, lift up our heads in praise to Jesus, worship him the way he desires — in Spirit and in Truth!
I have been so blessed with what the Spirit told me and your message on repentance, Bro. John! I really am trying to keep this short, but I must say that reading about the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 added to my joy. When Jesus told her to go and get her husband, he already knew she didn’t have a husband, but had in the past had 5 husbands! He did not win her heart over to him by rubbing her nose in her past. He just let her know that he knew her and had something better for her — living water! She didn’t pout or get angry at what he said about her husbands, she just went excitedly into the city to tell her experience with the man “which told me all things that I ever did.” What a beautiful story! Jesus knows everything about us and he knows how to get our hearts to repentance. And if we are heart-seeking when he does, repentance comes easy and joy comes in the morning! It doesn’t take grinding and struggling and hard-seeking. He mercifully taught me that in 2006.
This has been so very good to me today. I have felt the joy of that “water springing up into everlasting life!” Let’s lift our heads up and be the children of God he has made us to be! Let us stop rubbing our noses in the old past of our messes and rejoice that we are no longer there! Praise Jesus forever! He is worthy! He is good! He is faithful to his Word! And HE is the Lifter Up of our heads!
Love,
Sandy 🙂