Daily Manna · Day 311 · November 7
Drawing Near with Assurance
“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”
You have been waiting until you are in better shape before you come back to God. You never decided that, and you would not say it that way. But you missed your prayer time twice, you snapped at someone, and you gave in to the same habit again, so the plan became to come back once things settle down. The week you never meant to spend away from Him has turned into most of a month.
That delay usually grows out of a respectable worry: the feeling that walking casually into God's presence would cheapen something holy. There is something right in that feeling, which is why it is so hard to argue with.
Now look at the words Hebrews uses, because they are not a visitor's words: "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." That is the language of a priest being set apart, straight out of Exodus. When Aaron and his sons were consecrated, they were washed with water and sprinkled with blood, and that ceremony put them in place to serve inside the sanctuary. Three verses earlier, the letter has told you what makes this possible for you: "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." The holiest place was the inner room, where only the high priest went, once a year. The crowds never got past the courtyard.
So this verse does not picture someone slipping back into a building and hoping nobody notices. It pictures a priest being put into his place. Notice too that both actions are done to you. Your heart is sprinkled and your body is washed, and you did neither of them yourself on some better morning. Jesus did them, by His own blood.
The door is open now, and you do not have to wait for later. You are welcome to come in the condition you are really in, and to name plainly the thing you are ashamed of. Nobody is asking you to arrive clean, because the cleaning is what He does. No later, tidier version of you would be more welcome than the one reading this today.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 311 is Flesh and Blood (Ephesians 6:12).