From the Desk of Cheryl Hauer
On the Jewish calendar, we are now into the month of Elul, a time of getting our “accounts” in order and preparing for a new year…the next holiday on the Jewish calendar. As Christians, this holiday season is a wonderful opportunity to join with our Jewish friends and neighbors, as well growing numbers of Christians around the world, in introspection, repentance, renewed surrender to the Lord and rejoicing in His forgiveness, faithfulness, and extravagant love. As laid out in the Scriptures, this 40-day festival period is God’s roadmap for ending the year cleansed and ready to begin the next with a clean slate, as an empty receptacle prepared for God to pour into us all that He has in store. And it all begins with Elul.
Elul is the month of soul-searching or, as some Jewish sages call it, the month of accounting. Any good businessman knows that in order to keep his business profitable and strong, he must keep detailed, ledgers and regularly create a profit-and-loss statement. So, they say, we need to do an annual audit of our own “spiritual business.” The month of the Elul provides the opportunity to examine all we have done throughout the year and make sure our “accounts are in order.”
One goal of such a reckoning is holiness, becoming more and more like our heavenly Father. Unfortunately, we often try through our own best and most sincere efforts to make ourselves holy. But holiness is not the result of our own hard work. We can only prepare for it by making ourselves receptacles into which God can pour His holiness, and that happens through repentance and surrender.
King David was a firm believer in accounting. Often asking God to reveal to him even his hidden sins, David was quick to repent and cry out to God for forgiveness. With great passion and pain, he confessed that he knew his sins were committed against the Lord Himself, which caused David great anguish. Once he had acknowledged his iniquity and repented, he asked the Lord for a right spirit and a clean heart. He had done his accounting and sincerely repented; he was now a cleansed receptacle. He trusted God to do the rest.
Portions of this post were excerpted from Repent the Day Before You Die, a 40-day devotional journey by Cheryl Hauer and Rebecca Brimmer
Blessings and Shalom,
Issachar Community
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