"For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. (Malachi 3:2b-3 NRSV)
There are few who will believe in and accept the forgiveness of God so completely as to let God bury their sins in God's forgiving mercy; or who, having once accepted that forgiveness, will leave their sin with God forever. They are always reopening the vault where they have deposited their sin, and are forever asking to have it back in order to fondle it; reconstruct, query, or worry over it; wear it inwardly. Thus their sin ties them to the past and finally dooms their lives in both the present and the future…
Forgiveness… can only be received by those who will accept its conditions.
To be cleansed and to accept the cleansing, then to move on into the present and the future as a forgiven and restored one, is the gift of the deepest prayer.
-- Douglas V. Steere in Dimensions of Prayer, published by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN. Used with permission.
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