Video coming soon. The video teaching for Day 35 is still in production. Read the full lesson below, it will be added here as soon as it is ready.
Yesterday I told you something was coming: a deeper work the Lord wants to do, not in your behavior, but in your heart. Today, let's talk about exactly what that is.
Here's where I want to start: if you've walked through this curriculum honestly, your guilt has already been dealt with. Fully. Not partially: fully. If you've confessed your sin and put your trust in Christ, you are clean. Not "getting cleaner." Clean. That question is closed.
So if I'm not talking about guilt today, what am I talking about?
Sanctification: a different kind of cleansing
I'm talking about something the Bible calls sanctification: a cleansing that isn't about your record before God, but about the actual condition of your heart. Not "am I forgiven" (that's settled), but "do I love God with all of my heart, or only part of it?"
Let me show you this in Scripture.
In John 15, Jesus tells His disciples the night before the cross: "You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you." The Greek word for "clean" (katharizo) is usually used for a leper Jesus has cleansed from disease. Jesus looks at eleven imperfect, still-stumbling men and says: you are clean.
A few weeks later, in Acts 2, those same men are filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Later, in Acts 15, Peter looks back on that moment and says God "purified their hearts by faith." Purified. Cleansed. In the original language, it's the exact same word: katharizo. The word Jesus used to say "you are already clean" is the word Peter uses to describe what happened when they were filled with the Spirit.
So here's the question: if they were already clean in John 15, what got cleansed in Acts?
This is the deeper work Level 5 is built for.
Six levels of scripture-grounded teaching, built to take you from forgiven to free.
A second, deeper work in an already-forgiven heart
I don't think Peter is describing guilt being removed twice: they hadn't been messing up and needing forgiven again. I think he's describing a second kind of cleansing: a deeper work, in the same heart, that had already been forgiven. Not a cleansing of sin's penalty, but a cleansing of the heart's divided loyalties, divided joy. A further purification: so a heart that already belonged to God could now belong to Him more fully. Undividedly. Without the leftover residue of self-rule and self-love still competing for the throne.
Not "you're more forgiven than you were." You can't be. It's finished. But you can be more free. More single-hearted. More able to actually want God: not just obey Him, not just resist sin in front of Him, but desire Him.
Some of you have been walking with the Lord a good while, trying to live obediently, and you still feel a war inside between what you know you should want and what you actually want. That gap isn't a sign something's wrong with your salvation. It's a sign there's more for the Spirit to do in you.
This is what Level 5 is really about. Not white-knuckling harder. Asking God for a deeper work: one where the temptations you've been fighting so hard start to lose their pull because your heart actually wants something greater instead.
A prayer to pray today
Not "forgive me": that prayer's already been answered. Pray this instead:
"Lord, purify my heart by faith in the same way that Peter needed it, and received it. Clean out what's left of my divided loyalty, my divided joy. I don't just want to obey You. I want to want You, with everything."
That's a prayer God loves to answer.
This is Day 35 of Victory Over Pornography. Continue to Day 36 →