Daily Devotional – 6/4/18 “Breakout before breakthrough!”

When a person suffers with acne and they try new medication to fix the affected areas, there is normally a breakout that occurs. Does it look good, no but it needs to happen. See, during my research I found that when you switch to new medications and/or treatment, your skin has to purge or detox itself. When this happens, all of the ugly stuff lying dormant under your skin comes to the surface. Why? Because this new treatment plan doesn’t just treat the surface but it is attempting to get to the root of the problem and in order for the new medicine to work, it first has to clean out the mess that is occupying the space it needs. And for somebody reading this, you are trying to figure out why it seems that everything is popping out, around you, all at once. Everywhere you look you see pimples (Pain, illness, mistakes, persecution, longsuffering, emptiness and sadness) and scars (shame, calamity, accusations, rebuke and stumbling blocks). You can’t make sense of it and no matter what you do, you can’t get rid of it. Beloved, it’s because you switched to a new treatment called Jesus and in order for Him to clean you up, He first has to clean you out and this means getting to the root of the problem. Jesus is going beneath the surface because this time, when you asked Him to clean you up, it is for real and you are ready.

This is why folks are showing their true intentions. God is purging them from your system. This is why relationships that once worked, aren’t satisfying you anymore. God is purging them from your system. This is why the job laid you off. God is purging them from your system. Wondering why it feels like your place of worship is no longer fitting, God is purging them from your system. Old stuff popping up out of nowhere, God is purging them from your system. Jesus needs all of the mess gone because if He was to leave it, it runs the chance of attaching itself to the new treatment and causing it not to work. Does it look and feel good, nope but it has to be done. Come here David. In Psalm 51 he requested of God a clean heart after he’d had an affair with Bathsheba. David had a need to be cleaned so he cried out, “Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night. Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.” God did but first He had to bring the mess to the surface. He couldn’t cover his breakout and neither can you so stop fighting the breakout because afterwards comes your breakthrough. Yes, the breakout is ugly and painful but the breakthrough is unmistakable and precise.