You want to give people proper counsel when they’re struggling with anything? Send them to closeness with God. Send them into the intimacy… Send them to draw near to God. That’s where the healing is. Didn’t Jesus say that? “Abide in me.” “Without me you can do nothing.” (John 15) There’s no cleansing aside from Me. You go from Me, you go to any other thing, and you’re going to find that it doesn’t work. You’ll bite and you’ll devour one another. “Really? I am purposely setting my mind to become perfect! I’m seeking perfection, and in the end I’m gonna bite and devour?” You will. If you try this with your back towards God. You try moving into any other way, and it can it can be packaged very beautifully. It can seem like it’s very good, very religious.
“Well, what you really have to do, is you have to start keeping the festival’s.” “You really want righteousness in your life? You really want to reach the next level? Read John Owen.” Now, brethren if we go to John Owen and you read the glory of Christ, or communion with God, and He sends you to the foot of the cross. He sends you to the throne. He sends you to Eden. That’s good. But you see the problem is, we can start to think, “Ah, if I only have the right library.” No. The right library is the library that sends you to nearness to God. That’s the issue. That’s always the issue. The nearness of God is my good.
So, if I’m gonna cleanse myself let me put myself there, near to God. Cleave to the Lord, for apart from Him you’re in the realm of failure, break down, defeat. The prophet Hosea says this, “Come.” Where? Where Hosea? “Let us return to the Lord.” That’s what he says, why? Yes it’s true He’s torn us. “But what happens if we draw near Hosea?” He’ll heal us, that’s where your healing is. You know what it says? It says right in that same context in Hosea chapter 6, “that His coming forth is as the dawn.” What’s coming forth? His coming forth when you draw near to Him. He comes forth to meet you. And Hosea says this, “He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains, that water the earth.”
See it’s the water symbolism again. Showers, spring rains, you want the cleansing? You want to stand out under the showers? The waterfall of God’s healing abundant grace? Where do we go, Hosea? “Well come, let us return to the Lord.” Whatever artificial cisterns, whatever substitutes, that hold no water, that you have been drawn away to you, you come. Come.
