Heart Tracks - The Cesspool

"But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord...Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God." Genesis 6:8-9...."No matter how ungodly the environment you may be in, God will always find you and walk with you." Henry Blackaby..."The only cure for addiction is an addiction to the cross." Unknown..."The world has lost it's power to blush over it's sin. The Church has lost it's power to weep over it." Leonard Ravenhill

We are living in the midst of a cultural cesspool. Our "eyes" are bombarded with an unending supply of sensual/sexual images, affecting not only men, but women as well. Lust in every form has been given free reign, and we see it through every type of popular media today. This is tragic. What is more tragic is that in too many ways, a portion of the Church have become captive to the cesspool.

There's always been a cesspool, and as horrid as it may be today, this is not the human race's low point. The time of Noah was. Not only did evil abound, it was embraced by all of mankind. The things of God were a total mockery. Hedonistic pleasure was the pastime of everyone. Noah, and through him, his family, were the only exceptions. Yet in the midst of a tidal wave of filth and depravity, Noah remained pure, dedicated and surrendered to His God. He was in a cesspool, but the cesspool was not in him. Men and women of his time had long ago lost the ability to "blush" over the depravity of their times. How close are you and I to doing the same? What secret sins, pleasures and decadence do we harbor in our hearts? Where do our thoughts and meditations draw us? Do we bring them captive to Christ, or do they bring us captive to the enemy, to the cesspool?

I was talking to a spiritual mentor the other night and we spoke on this very subject. He said he had talked with a professional counselor and asked the question of how, in a culture such as ours, can not only men, but women, remain pure in Christ? He said such could only be experienced by those who placed all of themselves into all that Christ is. There is safety, freedom, and life nowhere else. We have to know and experience this, and not only as concerns sexuality, but in every area of temptation. Lust takes many forms and the enemy will come against us in seemingly unlimited ways with it. The Psalmist said that our only refuge is found in "the shelter of the Most High." As we live in Him. That place where Paul said, "We live, move, and have our being." In that place, the cesspool cannot touch us. No matter how deep and wide it gets, or what form it takes.

The cesspool continues to shatter lives, marriages and families within His Church. Once godly people have turned aside from Him to pursue various desires of their flesh. They find places to hide from Him. Sometimes those places are called "church." Years ago I knew a wife who left her young pastor husband for another man. Not long after that, she called a preacher I know and asked if she and this new man could attend his church. He refused her. Held her accountable. Not in a spirit of harsh judgement, but a heart longing to see her restored. I don't know what happened to her beyond that, other than she never returned to her mate. I expect that she continued to seek a place that would not have a problem with them. I feel sure she found one. A religious spirit seeks for the appearance of godliness. The yielded spirit seeks Him.

I can tell you that I'm a man who has been bombarded with the very temptations I speak of. What has passed before your eyes and mind has passed before mine as well. They still do. I have learned, and continue to learn, that my only hope and deliverance is found in an addiction to Him. Only in Him do I find freedom from the cesspool. Only in Him will you find the same.

C.S. Lewis said that "The Christian's nostrils must always be attuned to the inner cesspool." We in the church can spend so much time decrying the presence of filth in the world. Dare we allow Him to reveal the filth that may well be inside us? We are walking through a cesspool, but as Blackaby says, He will find us there and walk through it with us. And it will not pollute us. Indeed, spiritually, He will make us to walk on top of it. Best of all, if you find yourself trapped in the cesspool right now, He can and will lead you out of it. From the miry clay of death, to the solid Rock of His Life. Noah lived not as a perfect man, but a man perfect in His devotion to His God. He did so apart from the fullness of His Holy Spirit. He lived above the cesspool. For we who have been given His Spirit, what limitations could there be? If you're trapped in the cesspool today, or any part of you has been polluted by it, look to Him. He reaches down in order to pull you up, and out. No longer immersed in the sludge of the pool, but washed in the water of Life.

Blessings,
Pastor O