Cerdos en La Sala Frank Ida Hammond

Other books by Bob Sorge:
D UNRELENTING PRAYER
D LOYALTY: The Reach Of The Noble Heart
D FOLLOWING THE RIVER: A Vision For Corporate Worship
D ENVY: The Enemy Within
D SECRETS OF THE SECRET PLACE
D Secrets Of The Secret Place COMPANION STUDY GUIDE
D GLORY: When Heaven Invades Earth
D DEALING WITH THE REJECTION AND PRAISE OF MAN
D P
AIN, PERPLEXITY, AND PROMOTION: A prophetic
interpretation of the book of Job
D THE FIRE OF GOD’S LOVE
D THE FIRE OF DELAYED ANSWERS
D IN HIS FACE: A prophetic call to renewed focus
D E
XPLORING WORSHIP: A practical guide to praise and
worship
D Exploring Worship WORKBOOK & DISCUSSION GUIDE
POWER OF THE BLOOD: Approaching God With Confidence

Copyright © 2008 by Bob Sorge
Published by Oasis House
P.O. Box 127
Greenwood, Missouri 64034-0127
www.oasishouse.net
All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of
the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson Inc.,
Publisher. Used by permission.
Edited by Edie Veach.
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be

reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in reviews,
without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008932340
International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9749664-4-1
Dedication
To my daughter, Katie.
You caught our baseball, Katie, which symbolizes the

many things I desire to hand down to you and all my chil-
dren and grandchildren. If there’s anything I wish for you
to catch from me, it’s this: The dignity and delight of liv-
ing in confident righteousness before the throne of God be-
cause of Christ’s sprinkled blood.
May you have grace to pledge your heart to approach
God all your days. And may you pass this heritage to all
your children—natural and spiritual—that God will birth
through your life and witness.
Your beauty, integrity, and consecration are stunning.
You’re the light of my eyes, Sweets.
So very proud,
Your dad
iii
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1 How God Feels About The Cross . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 2 Loyalty To The Blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 3 The Power Of The Blood . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Chapter 4 The Sprinkling Of Blood . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 5 Seated Between Father And Son . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 6 Drawing Near To God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Chapter 7 Holiness Proximity To The Throne . . . . 67
Chapter 8 Standing In Holiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Chapter 9 The War To Remain In Holiness . . . . . . 93
Chapter 10 Righteousness Pearl Of Great Price . . . 105
Chapter 11 Sprinkled In Innocence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Chapter 12 My Baseball Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 13 Our Pledge To Approach God . . . . . . . 143
Order Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
v
In tro d u ctio n
I
It is impossible to overstate the significance and power of
the blood of Christ. As you walk through these pages, may
your heart thrill at the magnificent privilege the blood of
Christ has provided us—the exhilaration of burning in ho-
liness at the throne of God.
At a glance, here’s where this book will take you:
D You’re going to see why the blood of Christ is so im-
portant to God, and why He responds so passionately
to those who place their faith in it.
D You will gaze at the horror and wonder of Calvary.
D While the blood of Christ accomplishes many things
for us, the primary focus of this book is on what the
Bible calls “sprinkling with blood.” It’s absolutely crit-
ical that the church recover all that God intended for
the sprinkling of Christ’s blood to accomplish in our
lives.
D I will share in a personal way how the Lord has brought
me, through the sprinkling of blood, into new places
of intimacy with Him.
2 POWER IN THE BLOOD
D Your heart will burn at the glorious possibilities that

open to those who devote themselves to living in holi-
ness.
D As you consider the righteousness that Christ’s shed
blood grants the believer, you will find great boldness
to approach the throne of grace with confidence.
D By the time you finish this book, my prayer is that you
will gain an entirely fresh resolve to live every day of
your life, like Jesus, in the bosom of the Father (John
1:18).
Chapter 1
HOW GOD FEELS ABOUT the CROSS
I
If you want to know what someone feels most passionately
about, ask them about their highest joys and deepest sor-
rows. Their cheeks will flush; their eyes will flame; their
words will tumble; their face will light up animatedly. Not
only do they feel deeply about it, they remember every de-
tail. That’s because the stronger the emotions, the stron-
ger the memories. Emotion-laden events and experiences,
whether joyful or sorrowful, constitute the basis for some
of our most passionate convictions, values, and opinions.
In the same way, if you want to know what God feels
most strongly about, talk to Him about His highest joys
and deepest sorrows. I am persuaded there is nothing God
feels more strongly about than the cross of His Son. While
God has known many sorrows (Isaiah 53:3), there was
one that eclipsed all others. Never has anything torn and
lacerated the infinite depths of God’s heart as deeply and
severely as the crucifixion of His beloved Son. And He’ll
never forget.
Look at His cross and all you see is blood. Blood on His
scalp, blood on His face., blood on His neck, blood on His
shoulders, blood on His arms, blood on His hands, blood
on His back, blood on His chest, blood on His legs, blood on
His feet, blood on His cross, blood on the ground. It was a

spectacle of blood.
And then came waves of divine wrath as the deeply
offended God unleashed upon His Spotless One the pun-
ishment for our sins. As the Son endured the barrage of
fiery indignation, creation itself turned dark at noonday
because of the terror. None of us
When you come to knows just how astronomical the
the cross, you’re
pain of God was during those in-
getting God at His
terminable hours of what Thomas
highest passion.
Dubay calls, “consummate splendor
in monstrous horror.”
It’s because of the intensity of the suffering of the
Trinity during the crucifixion that that event stands out,
far and above all others, as God’s most memorable event
ever. Because of the pain He and His Son endured, God
has deeper convictions and stronger opinions about Cal-
vary and what it accomplished than virtually any other
topic.
Come to the cross and you find a God who is inflexible
regarding alternatives, dire in consequences for those who
reject it, lavishly extravagant toward those who receive
it, and immediately responsive to those who reach for it.
Why? Because when you come to the cross, you’re getting
God at His highest passion.
Jesus’ Abandonment Left God Undone

During His crucifixion, Jesus had dove’s eyes for His
Father. By that I mean He had eyes for His Father only.
(Doves have no peripheral vision.) Jesus’ preoccupation
with His Father during His suffering is revealed in the
way He directed four of His seven cross utterances to His
Father.
How God Feels About The Cross 5
“‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know

what they do’” (Luke 23:34).
“‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken

Me?’” (Matthew 27:46).
“‘I thirst!’” (John 19:28).
(No, Jesus was not saying to His tormentors,

“I am thirsty, please get Me a drink of water.”
He was saying to His Father, “Abba, I thirst
for You, I long for You, You are My source,
My life, My all, and I’m desperate for You.”)
“‘Father, “into Your hands I commit My

spirit”’” (Luke 23:46).
The majority of His seven sayings on the cross were
addressed to His Father. Why? Because the only way Jesus
could endure the horror of Calvary’s torment was by fasten-
ing His focus on His Father.
It’s at the zenith of Calvary’s sufferings that I imag-
ine the Father saying to the Son, “Turn your eyes away
from Me, for they have overcome Me” (Song of Solomon
6:5). In other words, “Son, why are You looking at Me
like that? Here I am, pouring on You the bitter cup of My
wrath against mankind’s sin, and there You are, standing
on the nail, lifting Your lovesick eyes to Me, and giving Me
Your love. I am overwhelmed by Your unparalleled devo-
tion. Look away from Me! The look of your eyes is too
much for Me, it’s more than I can bear!”
I suppose the Son answering, “But Abba, where else
can I look? You alone are My life. You are My purpose,
My sustenance, My universe. I have nowhere else to turn.
Even though You are slaying Me, I will always trust You.”
Again, I imagine the Father’s response, “Son, I am ut-
terly overwhelmed by Your love. I am crushing You and
still You are loving Me. Turn your eyes away from Me, for
they have overcome Me. Your love has ravished My heart.
As surely as I live, I am Yours forever!”
Calvary shook heaven to the core. God was undone.
Jesus’ fixation on His Father during His suffering moved
God’s heart to its very foundations. Could it be that God’s
heart has not yet recovered?
It Seemed To Last Forever

There’s a Scripture that says, to God a day is as a thou-
sand years (2 Peter 3:8). There was one day that, to God,
seemed to last a thousand years. It was the day His be-
loved Son hung on the cross. That day went on…and on…
and on…and on. It never seemed to stop.
And then the verse goes on to say, to God a thousand
years is as a day. To us, Christ’s crucifixion happened 2,000
years ago; but to God, it happened just a couple days ago.1
God has not forgotten even a modicum of the torments
of Calvary. The cross is as fresh today in God’s mind as the
moment it happened.
The cross was intense not only in its horrific suffer-
ing but also in its interminable duration. The pain just
never seemed to stop. The nightmare seemed to stretch
on for a thousand years. When you see how violent the
torment was, and how long it lasted, you understand why
God feels so deeply about it.
How could the Father do it? How could He take the
fierceness of His judgment against sin and pour it upon
the Darling of His bosom? How could He watch His be-
loved Son writhe on the cross and not cease the horrific
onslaught of everlasting wrath? Wasn’t there a point where
1 Jesus is described in His present glorified state as “a Lamb as though it

had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). That’s because Christ’s sacrifice is as
fresh in God’s mind as if it happened just moments ago.
He said to Himself, “I can’t do this anymore”?

There had to come a point where the Holy Spirit stepped
in and said, “Abba, I will help You. You can do it. You can
pour out the fullness of Your wrath upon Your Son. You
can empty the vial to the bottom. You can do it.”
There had to come a point where the Holy Spirit
came alongside the Son and said, “Jesus, I will help You.
You can do it. You can drink the cup of the Father’s wrath.
You can drain the cup to its very dregs. I am with You; You
can do it.”
The work of Calvary was completed only through the en-
abling power of the Holy Spirit. This is what we see in He-
brews 9:14, “How much more shall
The cross is as fresh
the blood of Christ, who through
today in God’s mind
the eternal Spirit offered Himself
as the moment it
without spot to God, cleanse your happened.
conscience from dead works to
serve the living God?”
Jesus needed an angel to get through Gethsemane
(Luke 22:43), but He needed the Holy Spirit Himself to
get through Calvary (Hebrews 9:14).
The sacrifice of Calvary was so utterly terrifying that
it could be accomplished only through the empowerment
of the Holy Spirit. Such extreme measures necessitated
the joint labors of all three Persons of the Godhead. The
extremity of the horror became the stark backdrop against
which the radiance of this “great salvation” blazes with
unrivaled magnificence.
Faith In The Blood Unlocks Heaven
The blood of Christ means as much to God right now as

it did the moment it was shed. It’s as fresh and atoning to-
day as it was 2,000 years ago. Every glance at Christ’s blood
produces unfathomable emotions within the breast of God
because it reminds Him of His Son’s extreme devotion and

the massive work of redemption that His blood purchased.
This is why faith in the blood is so powerful.
When you invoke the blood of Christ, you unlock the
infinite passions of the eternal God. Believe in Christ’s
blood and the heart of Abba Father turns seemingly inside-
out as He eagerly lavishes upon you His glorious favor. He
opens the storehouses of heaven for those who look to the
blood because He honors those who honor that which is
most precious to Him.
There are two groups for whom the Father has extreme
convictions: Those who receive the blood of the cross, and
those who reject it. Invoke the blood and you are instantly
as rich as Jesus Christ Himself; spurn the blood and you
remain under everlasting condemnation. Because when it
comes to the cross, He feels that strongly about it.
How Valuable Is The Blood Of Christ?
You know the value of something based upon what

someone will pay for it. If, for example, someone is will-
ing to give you $10,000 for your car, that amount tells
you what kind of value they place on your car. The same
principle holds true with the price
You know how valu- of your redemption. You know how
able you are to God
valuable you are to God by looking
by looking at what
at what He was willing to pay to
He was willing to
redeem you. God paid the most as-
pay to redeem you.
tounding price—the blood of Jesus—
to get you. Now that you know how
much He paid to procure your loyalties, you also know
how valuable you are to Him. You are more valuable to
God than the universe itself!
Furthermore, you know how valuable something is
according to what can replace it. If your house, for example,
can be replaced with $150,000, that sum becomes the

measurement of how valuable your house is. The same
principle holds true with the price paid for your redemp-
tion (which was the blood of Christ, 1 Peter 1:18-19). To
estimate how valuable the blood of Christ is, we must con-
sider what can replace it.
What can replace the blood of Christ? What can do what
the blood did? What else, besides the blood, can cleanse
your sins, wash away your guilt, and present you before
God faultless and with great joy? Search the universe over,
from eternity past to eternity future, and you reach but one
conclusion: The blood of Christ is irreplaceable!
That’s why we rightly say that the blood of Christ is
the most valuable commodity in the entire universe. For 33
years God had blood. Never in eternity past has God had
blood, nor in eternity future will He ever again have blood.2
When the Second Person of the Trinity took on a human
frame and became flesh, human blood pumped through
His veins. Then, when that blood was shed at Calvary, it
was the blood of God that dropped to the ground. It was the
blood of God that was carried to the mercy seat of the altar
in heaven. It is the blood of God that stands today in the
presence of God and cries on your behalf something better
than that of Abel’s blood. Abel’s blood cried, “Vengeance!”
2 After His resurrection, Jesus claimed to have “flesh and bones” (Luke
24:39), He did not claim to have blood. Paul asserted that “flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50) be-
cause, as he went on to say, blood is associated with corruption, but
the glorified body is incorruptible. This may be why John, when he
saw the resurrected Christ, said that “His head and hair were white
like wool” (Revelation 1:14). It’s not only that His hair was white, but
His head also. A white head indicates the absence of blood. Further-
more, Hebrews 2:14 puts Christ’s participation in “flesh and blood” as
a past-tense reality. It is on the basis of this scriptural evidence that I
affirm there is no blood in a saint’s resurrected body, and that Christ
no longer has blood in His glorified body.
Christ’s blood cries, “Forgive them! Accept them! Exonerate

them! Justify them!”
Never again will God have blood. If God’s blood was
to be shed, it had to happen during that brief window of
time when Christ lived on the earth. One reason God’s
shed blood can never be replaced is because God will nev-
er again have blood.
No amount of money can replace Christ’s blood. Gath-
er the cumulative wealth of all the nations into a great
heap, and still you don’t have enough currency to pur-
chase even one drop of Christ’s shed blood.
If you owned our entire solar system and could pres-
ent it to God as payment, it would not be enough to pur-
chase a droplet of Christ’s shed blood.
The soul of man is extremely valuable before God, be-
ing more valuable than all the money in the world (Mat-
thew 16:26). But even if you laid your precious soul down
at the feet of God, you could not purchase a single drop of
Christ’s shed blood with the sacrifice of your soul.
As the rarest treasure in creation, the blood of Christ is
irreplaceable!
Revel in the glory of this sublime truth, dearly beloved
of God: You have been purchased by God with the most valu-
able thing in the entire universe. His desire for you was so
intense, so astronomical, that He paid the highest price to
get you. “Behold what manner of love the Father has be-
stowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
(1 John 3:1).
O blessed blood of Christ!
Blessed be the Lamb of God who shed His blood for
the sins of the world. And blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who conceived such a lavish gift
for mankind.
Chapter 2
LOYALTY to the BLOOD
T
There is nothing more important to God than the cross
of Jesus. And the primary feature of that cross is the shed
blood of the Lamb. God the Father is intensely loyal to His
Son who laid His life down unto death, and when you
place your faith in the blood of Jesus, you are touching the
Father’s heart in His most tender place.
When you demonstrate your loyalty to the blood by
believing in the cross of Christ and invoking the blood of
Jesus over your life, the Father takes the full measure of
His loyalty to His Son and sets that same love upon you.
The Father loves you with the same infinite passions with
which He loves His dearly beloved Son.
Why should you be surprised at the extravagant, un-
conditional affections of the Father for you? You have the
blood of Jesus upon you!
The declaration of Scripture about this is absolutely
stunning. The Bible says that when we are under the
blood of Christ, God the Father no longer prefers His first-
born Son over us, but He accepts and loves us equally with
the same measure with which He loves His only begotten
Son. You are as loved as Jesus!
Jesus was the one who articulated this truth in its
clearest terms: “‘…that the world may know that You
have…loved them as You have loved Me’” (John 17:23).

Just how does the Father love Jesus? The answer is so
vast that we will gratefully have an eternity to explore the
depths of this holy love. When, before the foundations of
the earth, the Son surrendered to the Father’s will to serve
as the Lamb who would take away the sin of the world,
the heart of the Father exploded in infinite affections for
His only Son.
As uncreated God, the Son was able to receive and re-
ciprocate the fiery affections of His Father. However, in
becoming the Lamb, the Son would of necessity empty
Himself of some of His privileges to take on, forever, the
confines of a human body. By becoming flesh, Jesus sub-
mitted to the limitations of a human body. When creating
the human frame, therefore, I can imagine the Son saying
to the Father, “Abba, I want Us to create man with the
ability to love as deeply as We love. Because when I take
on human flesh, I don’t want to be diminished in My abil-
ity to love You.”
I suppose the Father answering, “Son, I feel exactly the
same way about this. Therefore, let’s infuse into Adam’s
being the ability to experience a full and complete range
of emotions, from severe sorrow to extravagant joy and
love. In terms of his emotional chemistry, We’ll make him
exactly in Our image.”
When God created Adam, a body was prepared for him
that would suit the Son of God Himself. This is why you
have such incredible capacities to love God. Your frame
was created with Jesus’ humanity in mind. Little won-
der David said we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”
(Psalm 139:14). God made us fearfully with the capacity
to suffer horrific pain; and He made us wonderfully with
the capacity to enjoy exhilarating pleasure. We have the
capacity to love and enjoy God at levels no other creation,
including even the angels, has been given.
Loyalty To The Blood 13
When we realize how Jesus not only said “yes” to the

cross in advance, but also prepared a body at Adam’s cre-
ation that would enable Him to suffer horrifically, our only
fitting response is that of loving adoration and honor.
Honoring The Cross
Suppose someone decided that he or she wanted to

honor the cross—what should he do? Should he weep in
empathy and sing doleful songs?
No. Jesus didn’t die to get your pity. Even He Him-
self said, “‘Do not weep for Me’”
(Luke 23:28). If you really want to
honor His sacrifice,
The greatest way you can hon-
you will believe in
or the bloodied sacrifice of Calva-
the efficacious work
ry is by placing your faith in the that He accomplished
redemption Jesus purchased and on your behalf and
believe that God raised Him from receive its benefits.
the dead, unto the saving of your
soul.
The greatest way you can honor the stripes that were
laid on Jesus is by placing your faith in the punishment He
bore, unto the healing of your body and soul.
If you really want to honor His sacrifice, you will be-
lieve in the efficacious work that He accomplished on your
behalf and receive its benefits.
The Glory Of The Cross
The cross gives significance to the pain of the world.

Without the cross, all the anguish of the human race
would be considered senseless suffering. But now, all the
distresses of mankind are viewed against the backdrop of
the cross.
In the silhouette of Calvary’s twilight, I see a God
hanging there who is not removed or insulated from my
suffering. This is not a God who is impervious to my

pain. Rather, I see a God who has intentionally inserted
Himself into my world of pain, drinking more deeply
from the cup of suffering than any other human being
ever has.
Consequently, no one can look at God and say, “You
don’t understand. You have no idea what I’m going
through.” To the contrary, He empathizes with our suf-
ferings from first-hand experience. He who suffered in
the body cares for all who suffer in their bodies, since He
Himself is in the body also.
It’s the cross that makes our Gospel universally rel-
evant. You can take it anywhere in the world. Take the
Gospel to the worst hell-hole on the planet, and you have a
message to lift the lowest life. Find the most destitute, sin-
scarred, addiction-bound, demon-possessed, filthy human
specimen you can possibly find, and you’ll find someone
whom the Gospel can take up in its arms. Why? Because
the One who suffered on the tree sank lower than any
other person that He might raise up the chiefest of sinners
and seat them at His table.
O the wisdom and glory of the cross! The blood of His
cross has my fealty forever!
When I can’t make sense of my journey, I go back to
the cross. When I can’t process my pain levels, I go back
to the cross. When my wound seems incurable, I go back
to the cross. When I can’t see my way forward, I go back
to the cross.
When it feels like He’s withholding from me, I go back
to the cross. Because sometimes the accuser hits me with
that ancient accusation, “God’s withholding from you. He
could deliver you right now, but He’s holding out on you.”
That accusation is as old as the hills. It dates all the way
back to the Garden of Eden, when Satan first accused the
Father to Eve. Essentially, his accusation to Eve was, “God

knows how much better you would be if you ate of the
tree. That’s why He’s withholding it from you. He doesn’t
want you to become everything you could fully be.”
That’s still one of the accuser’s favorite accusations—
“God’s withholding from you.” He’s probably tried that
one on you, too.
But the cross nailed that accusation. Because when I
look at the cross, I see a God with nails in His hands, a nail
in His feet, a crown of thorns on His brow, and stripes on
His back. As He hangs there with arms spread wide, He
says to me, “I give you My mind. I give you My soul. I give
you My heart. I give you My body. I give you My strength.
I give you My all. I give you My last breath. I give you My
last drop of blood.”
I declare to you that my God withholds nothing from
me! He has given me His best. He has given me His all.
His extravagance has empowered me, in turn, to withhold
nothing from Him. He has given me His everything, and
now I give Him my everything. I am His, and He is mine.
God doesn’t ever have to do another thing for me,
to prove that He loves me. If He
never does anything for me ever
again—if He never blesses me, if Jesus didn’t want to
He never answers my prayer, if do the cross.
He never delivers me—the cross
is enough to prove the authentic-
ity of His undying affection. It’s because of the cross that
I know He loves me!
And since His cross has made me so confident in love,
I will never be silent; I will never relent; I will never let go;
but I always lift my cry to my God and call on His name,
until He fulfills His promise and delivers me.
Loyal To The Cross
When someone is loyal to you, you never forget. You

always remember the brother or sister who supported you,
believed in you, took the heat for you, and stood with you
when times were tough. There’s an unusual dimension of
love that is manifest whenever loyalty is present. It’s out
of the ordinary. Whenever this kind of loyalty is demon-
strated, you never forget it.
Similarly, the Father will never forget the Son’s loyalty
on the cross. The Father vexed His Son’s soul, even unto
death, and still the Son remained loyal in love. And the
Father will never forget.
Nor will Jesus forget your loyalty to Him. When you
give Him your love and serve Him regardless of the pain,
regardless of the adversity, regardless of the warfare, re-
gardless of the perplexity, He takes it personally. He calls
it loyalty, and He never forgets.
I will tell you why my crucified
The cross was Savior has won my endless loyalty.
the ultimate act
It’s because He did the cross even
of loyalty.
when He didn’t want to. The cross
was the Father’s will, not the Son’s.
Jesus didn’t want to do the cross.
“Nevertheless, not My will, but Your will be done.”
So why did He do it? There’s only one feasible answer.
He did the cross out of loyalty to His Father. The prayer
of Gethsemane was not primarily an issue of surrender; it
was an issue of loyalty.
It’s in the Garden that I hear a Man crying, “Abba, I
just need to hear it from You one more time. Since We last
talked about this, have You found another way? Is it pos-
sible for this cup to pass from Me? I don’t want to drink
this cup. But if there is no other way, then I will drink it,
Abba, for My loyalty is Yours. Above all else, I am Yours
and You are Mine.”

The cross was the ultimate act of loyalty.
When the Father looks at this loyalty, He says, “I will
never forget.”
When I look at this loyalty, I say, “I give my heart—
the entirety of my being—to You. Since You were loyal to
Your Father even unto death, that makes You safe to fol-
low. So I will be loyal to You all my days.”
I pledge my troth to the blood of His cross. His extrava-
gant sacrifice has won my everlasting devotion. Now I will
follow Him wherever He goes because, above all else, I’m
loyal to the Lamb.
Chapter 3
THE POWER of the BLOOD
W
When we’re awakened to the glory of the cross and the
blood that was spilled there, our hearts reach and yearn
for greater insight into what His blood accomplished. We
would be lost without the blood of Calvary. The blood
of Jesus is the most powerful cleansing agent in the uni-
verse!
Here are some of the ways the power of Christ’s blood
is made effective in our lives.
Washes Us From Our Sins
When we place our faith in Christ and confess Him as

our Savior, He washes us clean of all our past sins! “To
Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His
own blood” (Revelation 1:5).
The Bible points to this reality in several ways. It says
our sins are forgiven by the blood (Isaiah 53:5; Ephesians
1:7; Colossians 1:14; Hebrews 9:22); it says we are justi-
fied by His blood (Romans 5:9); and it says we are sancti-
fied through His blood (Hebrews 13:12).
Under the Old Covenant, sins were not completely
washed away, because “it is not possible that the blood
of bulls and goats could take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).
Rather, sins were covered over by the blood of animals.

The New Covenant is far superior. The blood of Christ
does not simply whitewash over our sins; it actually re-
moves them so that He doesn’t even remember what our
sins were (Hebrews 10:17).
Cleanses Our Garments
The redeemed of the Lord are clothed in linen garments

that are “white and clean” (Revelation 19:14), reflecting
the dignity to which Christ has raised us. In our former
way of life, we were clothed with filthy garments stained
by sin (Zechariah 3:3-4), but now in Christ we are clothed
in honorable robes of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). The
fine linen we wear is said to represent “the righteous acts
of the saints” (Revelation 19:8).
Although Christ’s blood ran red,
The blood of Jesus those who cleanse their filthy gar-
is the most power- ments in this crimson tide are said
ful cleansing agent to “‘have washed their robes and
in the universe! made them white in the blood of the
Lamb’” (Revelation 7:14).
Purchased Our Redemption
We were slaves to sin (Romans 6:20). Historically,

only the rich ever had slaves because they were always so
expensive to buy. We slaves didn’t come cheap. To redeem
us, Jesus had to pay a sufficient enough price. What was
the price tag on all these human slaves?
Psalm 49:8 answers that question: “For the redemption
of their souls is costly.” Talk about an understatement! To
buy these human slaves would require the ultimate price.
It would mean the shedding of His very own blood (Acts
20:28; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 1 Peter 1:18-19).
Jesus paid the price to buy us from our slavery and
The Power Of The Blood 21
make us “slaves of God” (Romans 6:22). The blood of

Christ has delivered us from sin’s power that once held
our lives. Hallelujah! Now, instead of serving sin, we are
servants of God.
Jesus is an exceedingly wise Merchant. He’s not about
to pay an exorbitant price for a possession that isn’t worth
the purchase price. When Jesus looked at us, and then at
the price that was required to buy us, He calculated the
cost and determined that we were worth it.
Provides For Our Healing
In looking forward to Calvary, Isaiah prophesied,

“The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by
His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Isaiah was point-
ing specifically to the scourging that Jesus would receive
prior to His crucifixion. The blood that was drawn by the
whips in Jesus’ scourging is the basis for our healing in the
New Covenant.
Peter confirmed that when he wrote, “by whose stripes
you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Peter used the past tense
(“were healed”) because our healing was accomplished
that day during His scourging. Today, we embrace His
healing of our bodies as a work that has already been ac-
complished.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus agonized for hours
on the cross? Why didn’t He die a quick death, like the
lambs that were sacrificed in the Old Testament? Wouldn’t
a quick death have been adequate for Jesus, the innocent
Lamb, to atone for the sins of the world? But instead, He
died a slow, torturous, agonizing death. Why? One reason
is because His cross did more than atone for sins. It also
paid the price for sorrows, griefs, pains, sicknesses, iniqui-
ties, and peace of mind (Isaiah 53:3-5). Through faith, we
are now healed from our griefs and pains and sicknesses.
If I was healed then, I’m healed now. The blood of Je-

sus heals me. It is through faith in the blood of His scourg-
ing that we pray for the sick and they recover.
Silences The Accusations Of The Evil One
The devil is constantly accusing God’s people, point-

ing out their sins and shortcomings, and telling them they
are unworthy to stand before God. But we have been given
a weapon to silence His accusations: the blood of Christ.
Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,
“Now salvation, and strength, and the
kingdom of our God, and the power of His
Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren,
who accused them before our God day and night,
has been cast down. And they overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of
their testimony, and they did not love their
lives to the death” (Revelation 12:10).
Many of Satan’s accusations are based on sins we have
actually committed. However, the blood of Jesus is our
weapon against his accusations. We receive the cleansing
of His blood, stand faultless in the presence of God, and
then declare to our accuser, “You have no right to accuse
me of that sin because it has been washed away by the
blood of Christ.”
Lester Sumrall told of the time he ministered deliv-
erance to a demonized girl in the Philippines. She only
spoke a local dialect, no English. But the demon in her
began to speak with pure, unbroken English. The evil
spirit first cursed the Father, then the Son, then the Holy
Ghost, and then the blood of Jesus—in that order. Lester
observed that the way the demon cursed the blood seemed
as though it believed the blood of Jesus was alive.1
I am told it was C.S. Lewis who said, “On the back
of Satan’s neck is a nail-scarred footprint.” The Lamb is
the ultimate military strategist! In six hours, Jesus undid
6,000 years of the accuser’s oppression over mankind.
Cleanses Us From A Guilty Conscience
The blood silences the accusations of our enemy. But

he’s not the only source of accusation. We also receive ac-
cusation from another source: ourselves. Our own con-
science often smites us, accusing us of sin—because we’re
so frequently and painfully aware of our own failures.
There may be nothing more immobilizing in the be-
liever’s life than feelings of guilt. When you feel guilty before
God, you can’t pray, you can’t exercise faith, you can’t receive
healing, you can’t believe for finan-
cial provision, you can’t worship— Jesus looked at the
you’re hamstrung. That’s why it’s price required to buy
so vitally important that we receive us and determined
the provision of Christ’s blood for we were worth it.
the accusations of our conscience.
How much more shall the blood of Christ,
who through the eternal Spirit offered
Himself without spot to God, cleanse your
conscience from dead works to serve the
living God? (Hebrews 9:14).
The conscience is a strange, unpredictable thing.
Sometimes it operates with total accuracy; other times, it
misses the mark completely. It misses it during those times
when we are standing justified in the presence of God but
1 H.A. Maxwell Whyte, The Power of the Blood, New Kensington, PA:
Whitaker House, 1973, page 29.
our conscience is still jabbering away, trying to convince

us that we’re still unclean. When fighting that battle with
our own accusing thoughts, all we need do is simply pray,
“Jesus, cleanse me with Your blood,” and the accusations
of our conscience are immediately silenced.
The blood cleanses the conscience! Wow! It’s here
that we really see the power of the blood. No self-help ef-
fort could ever pacify one’s conscience. But the blood si-
lences the loquacious tongue of an evil conscience.
When your conscience is cleansed, you actually feel
clean. In the technical (legal) sense, justification means
that you are clean, whether you feel like it or not. But the
blood takes it a step further and actually makes you feel
clean. O the power of the blood!
Cleanses Us From The Defilement Of Recently

Committed Sins
This cleansing happens through what the Bible calls

“the sprinkling of blood.”
We live in a sin-ridden, defiled world in which it’s in-
credibly easy to get soiled—sometimes without even real-
izing it. Even with the most sincere efforts to live in godli-
ness, we often become defiled simply by living in a defiled
environment.
This is where the sprinkling of
The blood silences
blood demonstrates its power. When
the loquacious
we ask Jesus to sprinkle us with His
tongue of an evil
conscience.
blood, we are immediately cleansed
from anything that might stand be-
tween us. Any distance that might
have developed between us is immediately removed, and
we are emboldened to wrap our arms around our Father
and abide in His embrace.
The sprinkling of blood is a powerful and glorious
reality, and it is to this sublime truth that we now direct

our focus.
Chapter 4
THE SPRINKLING of BLOOD
O
One of the most empowering, liberating, and revitalizing
things you can do is acknowledge, on a daily basis, the effi-
cacious power of the blood of Jesus Christ upon your life.
And I want to tell you how to do it: By getting sprin-
kled with blood every day.
When I stumbled onto this secret, I found sprinkling
with blood to be so meaningful that it has become my dai-
ly practice.
Why Get Sprinkled With Blood?
“When I was made a new creation in Christ,” some-

one might respond, “the blood of Jesus was applied to my
life and I was cleansed of my sins. I already have the blood
of Jesus over my life, so why would I need to repeat that?
Isn’t once enough?”
Good question. It’s true that when we come to Christ,
the blood of Jesus redeems, cleanses, and justifies us (makes
us righteous) in the sight of God, as the following verses
testify:
In Him we have redemption through His blood,
the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches
of His grace (Ephesians 1:7).
Much more then, having now been justified

by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through Him (Romans 5:9).
Knowing that you were not redeemed with
corruptible things, like silver or gold, from
your aimless conduct received by tradition
from your fathers, but with the precious blood
of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot (1 Peter 1:18-19).
To Him who loved us and washed us from our
sins in His own blood (Revelation 1:5).
When we were redeemed and justified by the blood
of Christ, that was a one-time work of Christ’s blood that
need never again be repeated. Once purchased, our justi-
fication is sure and secure. You only need to be redeemed
once. One application of Christ’s blood redeems you, once
for all.
There is another application of
In sprinkling, I Christ’s blood, however, that is to
receive His blood be repeated as frequently as desired.
upon myself; in It’s the sprinkling of blood. It’s ap-
Communion, I propriate to get sprinkled with blood
take His blood
many, many times. The sprinkling of
into myself.
blood does not give you the justifica-
tion of redemption; with sprinkling,
you’re after something different.
“But I receive the Lord’s Table every day,” someone
else might object. “Isn’t that enough?”
Again, good question. Receiving the Lord’s Table, even
on a daily basis, is powerfully enriching, but the receiving
of the cup of Communion is a different operation of the
Spirit from the sprinkling of blood. When I drink the cup,
I am remembering and identifying with His death. His
blood becomes my drink which sustains and nourishes
The Sprinkling Of Blood 29
me. However, when I am sprinkled with blood, I am

cleansed from a guilty conscience. Both operations of the
blood are wonderful but distinct from each other. In sprin-
kling, I receive His blood upon myself; in Communion, I
take His blood into myself.
“Well, then, what exactly is the sprinkling of blood?”
Thanks for asking!
What Is The Sprinkling Of Blood?

The best answer is found in the book of Hebrews.
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter
the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and
living way which He consecrated for us,
through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having
a High Priest over the house of God, 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 (Hebrews 10:19-22).
When we ask Jesus to sprinkle us with His blood, we are
asking for a fresh application of the blood of Christ to our
hearts so that we might draw near to God with a clean con-
science.
How do we get our hearts sprinkled with blood? By
simply praying along these lines, “Lord Jesus, sprinkle me
now with Your blood.” How do we wash our bodies with
pure water? Water points to the word of God (see Ephe-
sians 5:26), so we wash our bodies in the water of the
word by taking time to meditate and pray in a portion of
Scripture.
This passage is describing what might be termed a
“spiritual shower.” Just as you might grab a shower or
bath in the morning to freshen up and get that clean feel-
ing, you might also consider grabbing a “spiritual shower”
while you’re in the cleanup mode. How? By asking Jesus

to sprinkle you with His blood, and then by washing your-
self in the pure water of God’s word (Scripture reading
and meditation). The blood cleanses your heart, and the
word cleanses your body. After you’ve been sprinkled with
blood and washed in the word, now you’re really ready to
tackle your day!
Peter made it clear that the sprinkling of blood was
more than just a one-time application of Christ’s blood at
our regeneration.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the…
elect according to the foreknowledge of God
the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit,
for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:1-2).
While the NKJV says “for obedience,” it would be
more accurate to render it “unto obedience” (KJV). The
meaning of the verse is that the elect are sanctified unto
the goal or end of obedience and being sprinkled. The
Greek word for “sprinkled” is passive, literally “being
sprinkled,” which hints at a recurring process.
Peter is telling us that the purpose of our calling is that
we might come into obedience to Christ and be sprinkled
with His blood. These two things characterize the Chris-
tian life: obedience and sprinkling.
The Spirit sanctifies us, Peter asserts, in order to bring
us “unto” obedience. The word “obedience” pretty much
sums up the Christian life. It starts and ends with obedi-
ence. However, none of us lives in the perfection of 100%
obedience. That’s where sprinkling comes in. Sprinkling
with blood is God’s gracious way to cover us when we
fall short of perfection. We pursue obedience with fervent
resolve, and then get sprinkled with blood to cover our
deficiencies.
Obedience is not a one-time event that, once fulfilled,

is now behind us; rather, it is a daily, ongoing practice. The
same is true for sprinkling. Obedience and sprinkling are
recurring processes in the life of the believer. To the degree
we fall short of perfect obedience is the degree to which
the sprinkling of blood is relevant to our lives on an ongo-
ing basis.
I do not view Peter to be presenting sprinkling as an
obligatory requirement but as a glorious privilege. If Christ
provided sprinkling as my means of remaining confident
before God in the wake of less-than-perfect obedience, why
would I ever want to neglect such a wondrous benefit?
Let me insert one qualifier here. When we’re sprinkled
with blood, it doesn’t mean we now have license to live
in compromise. We are not saying,
“It doesn’t matter how you live, We obey Him
because Jesus will cleanse all your with resolve and
sin with His blood.” No, it does sincerity; then, we
matter how you live. Sprinkling get sprinkled with
blood because of our
with blood was never designed
shortcomings.
by God as a permission-granting
mechanism to give believers more
boldness to sin; rather, it is God’s provision for those who
are wholeheartedly pursuing radical obedience.
We obey Him with resolve and sincerity; then, we get
sprinkled with blood because of our shortcomings.
Just as surely as we fall short of the fullness of com-
plete obedience on a daily basis, even so we need to be
sprinkled with blood every day. This is what John meant
when he wrote, “But if we walk in the light as He is in the
light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
So what is the sprinkling of blood? It is a fresh applica-
tion of Christ’s blood to the believer’s heart that cleanses
from all defilement or guilt of sin, purifies the conscience,

and thus empowers him or her to draw near to God with
confidence. And it can be invoked as frequently as desired.
The Basis For Drawing Near
Let’s be real clear about this: The only basis upon which
we draw near to God is the shed blood of Jesus Christ ap-
plied to our lives. As Paul wrote, “But now in Christ Jesus
you who once were far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). When we’re under the
blood, we’re as acceptable to God as Jesus Christ Himself.
And the inverse is equally true. Without His blood on
our lives, no one is ever accepted into God’s presence, for
“without shedding of blood there is no remission [of sin]”
(Hebrews 9:22).
When I have had a bad day—that is, a day in which
I’ve failed to attain full obedience—I am still able to draw
near to God, despite my failures. Why? Because I can con-
fess my sin, receive the sprinkling of His blood, and im-
mediately draw near to God with confidence. My basis for
drawing near is just one thing: the blood of Christ.
When I have had a good day—that is, a day in which
I have felt victorious in my Christian walk and have done
nothing to knowingly step outside the lines of obedience—I
am still not qualified to draw near to God on the merit of my
own righteousness. Why not? Because my own righteous-
ness, at its height, is still inadequate to qualify me to draw
near to the holiness of God. Isaiah made that clear when
he wrote, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our
righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). So again,
even when I’ve had a great day of holy living, my basis for
drawing near is only one thing: the blood of Christ.
My basis for drawing near to God, therefore, has nothing
to do with my performance as a Christian. Good day or bad
day, breakthrough or failure, joy or sorrow, exhilarated or

depressed, full of the Spirit or running on empty—none of
that determines my acceptability to God. I don’t draw near
on the basis of my personal victories, nor am I excluded be-
cause of personal defeats. I can always draw near to God, but
only on the basis of one thing: the sprinkled blood of Christ
applied to my heart.
The Blood Makes Me Righteous
Only perfect righteousness can draw near to God

(Psalm 24:3-5). God will not allow defilement into His
presence. To draw near to God, all defilement must be
washed away. The only thing that cleanses sin is the blood
of Christ. It makes us clean and righteous in the sight of
God.
When God sees the blood of Christ on our lives, He as-
cribes to us the performance record of Jesus Christ. Jesus
alone was able to live the kind of righteous life that satis-
fies God. When under the blood, God sees us “in Christ,”
and Christ’s scorecard becomes ours. As 2 Corinthians
5:21 tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be
sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God
in Him.” The blood has the power to make us the very
righteousness of God in Christ.
The blood satisfies God’s righteous standard so that
we do not merely receive a reluctant hearing at the throne;
rather, we receive an enthusiastic embrace from a loving
Father who has been beckoning and yearning for intimacy
with us.
The Purpose Of Sprinkling

There is one primary reason to get sprinkled with
blood. Hebrews specifies it clearly.

the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new
and living way which He consecrated for us,
evil conscience and our bodies washed with
pure water (Hebrews 10:19-22).
The purpose of sprinkling is to draw near to God.
The blood doesn’t automatically bring me near. The
blood only qualifies me to draw near. After I have been
sprinkled, I must then take the next step and draw near.
It’s theoretically possible to get sprinkled with blood and
then not give God another thought for the rest of the day.
But if I do that, I have totally neglected the entire purpose
of sprinkling.
The purpose of sprinkling is not to feel clean. True,
the sprinkling of blood cleanses the conscience and gives
us a clean feeling before God. But some believers make
the mistake of getting their con-
The purpose of science clean through sprinkling
sprinkling is to and then taking off and going about
draw near to God. their day. Sprinkle, sprinkle, then
VAMOOSE—they’re gone. They’re
clean, but they’ve missed the whole
point! The purpose of sprinkling is not merely to get clean,
but to draw near.
Instant Intimacy
If you’re like me, you don’t have room in your day to

take an extra 15 minutes in the morning just to push and
fight your way through to intimacy with God. You need
“instant intimacy”—a way to approach God that places
you immediately in His presence and embrace. The key to

instant intimacy is found in the sprinkling with blood.
Here’s how I do it. I simply pray, “Lord Jesus, sprinkle
me now with Your blood,” and I believe that He does it
right then and there. Because of the blood, I realize in that
instant that I have full access to the throneroom. So I see
myself (with the eyes of faith) coming immediately and
boldly to the throne of grace and stepping into the courts
of the King. I make one simple petition and BOOM, I’m
there, in the immediate presence and glory of Almighty
God.
“It’s me again, Lord!”
I’m able to stand before Him with confidence, not be-
cause my past 24 hours were spiritually spectacular, but
because I am covered with the precious blood of the Lamb.
His blood gives me the right to step into the command
center of the universe. Now I sit with Christ in heavenly
places, in His place of advantage, seeing with His perspec-
tive, sharing in His authority, and wrapped in the embrace
of His eternally fiery affections.
What is the nature of this intimacy? To speak of it, I
need to point to the intimacy of the living creatures at the
very throne of God.
There are four creatures who are distinguished, above
all the angels and cherubim, as having the closest proximi-
ty to the throne. When John was shown these “living crea-
tures” (Isaiah called them “seraphim” or “burning ones”),
he was struck by their stunning appearance (for example,
they had eyes all around and within their being) and by
their unending eulogy, “‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Al-
mighty, who was and is and is to come!’” (Revelation 4:8).
But he was also struck by their immediacy of presence
at the throne. John describes them as being “in the midst
of the throne, and around the throne” (Revelation 4:6).
Notice they’re not on the throne; they’re in and around the

throne.
No one has closer access to the throne than these
living creatures—no one, that is, except the one who is
sprinkled with blood. Through the blood of Christ, we are
not merely brought to the throne, or around the throne,
or even in the throne; we are brought into the very bosom
of the One on the throne (John 1:18). When we come to
God, we step past angels, past cherubim, and even past
the living creatures, into a place of intimacy that is shared
only by the Son of God: the bosom of the Father!
The sprinkling of blood brings us instantly into the
intimacy of the Father’s bosom. Don’t be surprised if,
once you’re there, you find yourself echoing the glorious
refrain, “Holy, holy, holy!”
Bringing My Issues Into The Throneroom
I’m so glad that I don’t have to clean up my perfor-

mance record before drawing near to God. If I had to get
my act together first before drawing near, I would never
get there! Here’s the wonder and power of the blood of
Christ: His blood qualifies me to come into the inner sanctum
of God’s glory even when I have not yet fully perfected the
Christian walk.
I have likened God’s glory to radiation, and the sin-
issues in my life to cancer. Coming into God’s presence
is like getting cancer radiation treatments. Without the
blood, I would never be able to bring my cancerous issues
into the light of His radiating glory. But now, because I’m
sprinkled with blood, I can expose my cancerous heart to
the radiation of His fiery presence—and stay there.
It’s not as though Christ’s shed blood has dumbed
down God’s standards, so that He now allows all kinds of
trash into His courts. God’s standards for what can enter
His presence have never changed. Here’s what Christ’s

blood has accomplished for us: It has elevated our status
and qualified us to meet God’s righteous, holy standards.
Now, with the blood covering us, we are fully acceptable
to God and pulled into His embrace. He sees us as already
perfected in Christ, with Christ’s righteousness credited
to our account. In the eyes of God, the only thing that
stands between us and full maturity is time. And time is
no problem for God; it doesn’t limit Him in any way. To
Him, our maturity is as good as done. We’re acceptable
to Him now. And it’s here, cradled in the arms of our Be-
loved, that we are transformed “from glory to glory” (2
Corinthians 3:18).
The presence of God is the place of change. Getting
into God’s presence is our only hope for change. If we’re
disqualified from drawing near, we’re consigned to hope-
less failure. Thus, drawing near to God becomes our high-
est priority in life. Little wonder we’re so grateful for the
blood of Christ! The blood of Christ is our sole authority
in drawing near to the heart of our affectionate Father.
Here, in the light of His glory, there is no twisted vestige of
my corruptible past that can long maintain a defiant hold-
out. It’s just a matter of time—everything must change!
A Holy Escort To The Throne
Daniel received a powerful vision in which he saw

the Ancient of Days on His throne. Then he saw Jesus ap-
proaching His Father’s throne. Daniel wrote, “‘I was watch-
ing in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of
Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the
Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him’”
(Daniel 7:13). This verse says “they” brought Jesus near to
the throne of heaven.
Who, I want to ask, are “they”? Who are these crea-

tures who are escorting Jesus? We’re talking about escort-
ing the Second Person of the Trinity, the uncreated Son,
into the very presence of the First Person of the Trinity,
the Ancient of Days. Who qualifies for such an august as-
signment?
Who, of all God’s creatures, has the nobility, the splen-
dor, the dignity, the weightiness, the eminence, the wor-
thiness to serve in such a high and holy role? Whoever
“they” are, they certainly must be big-time dignitaries!
Heavyweights. Serious dudes.
Perhaps they’re angels, or cherubim, or seraphim,
or living creatures. Is there another category? I have no
idea.
When I read the words, “They brought Him near be-
fore Him,” my heart cried out, “Oh Father, give me that
kind of an escort into Your presence! Let me be accompa-
nied by angels or cherubim or seraphim as I draw near to
You. I’d like as regal an escort into Your presence as Jesus
Himself has.”
Back came the reply, “I’ll do that, and one better.”
And then I was shown the escort I have into the Fa-
ther’s presence:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were
far off have been brought near by the blood
of Christ (Ephesians 2:13).
Beloved, we have a more dignified and glorious escort
into the presence of the Ancient of Days than cherubim
or seraphim or living creatures; we are escorted into God’s
presence by the most precious entity in the entire universe—
the blood of Jesus Christ!
When you approach God with the blood on your life,
you are ushered through the ranks of heaven’s hosts, mov-
ing past where the angels stand. You come to where the
cherubim are, but still you keep moving forward. You come
to the seraphim, but your place is closer still. You come to
where the living creatures live in the throne of God, and
you step beyond even their proximity to the throne. The
blood brings you nearer than any of heaven’s hosts, right
into the embrace of the Father Himself.
Sprinkled Every Day
Since we have such a glorious entrance into the pres-

ence of God, we should take advantage of the sprinkling
of blood more often. In fact, I’m recommending we make
it a daily practice.
I realize that I’m suggesting something that has not
been consistently practiced by
99% of believers. I reckon that You have a more
most people reading this book ful- dignified and glori-
ly agree that receiving the sprin- ous escort into the
kled blood of Christ is a powerful presence of the
means of cleansing one’s con- Ancient of Days
science. My hunch, though, is that than cherubim or
most Christians rarely do it. We seraphim or living
give mental adherence theologi- creatures.
cally to its efficacy, but in terms of
actual practice, most of us almost
never invoke the sprinkled blood over our lives.
It might be tempting to think, “I’ve been doing okay
without it. My pastor has never mentioned it. My friends
don’t practice it. I don’t know anybody who gets sprinkled
every day. If it’s so important, why isn’t anybody doing
it?” I’m not meaning to sound challenging or accusatory;
rather, I’m wanting to entice you with an invitation to
something glorious.
Is it possible that God has something greater for you
which you haven’t fully tasted yet?
The frequency with which we get sprinkled with blood

might find its similitude in the Lord’s Table. The question
is often asked, “How often should one receive Commu-
nion.” When Jesus said “as often as” (quoted by Paul in 1
Corinthians 11:25), His inference seemed to be, “as often
as you might desire.” You can do it monthly, weekly, daily,
or even more than once a day if you like. There are no
rules that say, “You’ve had Communion today; you can’t
have it again until tomorrow.”
Sprinkling with blood operates in a similar way. You
can receive sprinkling as often as you desire.
Getting sprinkled with blood has
Jesus died to bring
become an integral part of my morn-
me into the throne-
ing, and has empowered my inti-
room; why, then,
macy with God in a delightful way.
should I neglect
such an awesome
I’ve latched onto something—the
privilege?
wisdom of daily sprinkling—and I
want to sell the world on it.
When I really understood what
the sprinkling of Christ’s blood provides for me, that’s when
I decided I wanted to get sprinkled every day. Through His
blood I enter into the Holiest, draw up into the bosom of
the Father, and blaze with holy passions in the presence
of His glory. Jesus killed Himself—as it were—to bring me
into the throneroom; why, then, should I neglect the great-
est privilege a human can enjoy?
God forbid that I should lightly esteem the very reason
for which Jesus hung on the cross. My heart is steadfast; I
will get sprinkled with blood every day and draw near to
God with boldness. This is my glorious privilege, to live
every day of my life in the bosom of the Father. This is
where I can live; and by His grace, this is where I will die.
Chapter 5
SEATED BETWEEN FATHER and SON
I
I get sprinkled with blood every morning. And when I do,
I see myself instantly in the throneroom, standing before
God with full acceptance, confident in His love, and enjoy-
ing intimate fellowship with Him.
And now I want to explain what I see happening
next.
Getting My Bearings At The Throne
Look with me at the last verse of Psalm 109—“For

He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him
from those who condemn him” (Psalm 109:31). Since I
am among “the poor” in spirit, this verse indicates that
Jesus is standing at my right hand.
Let’s compare that truth with the next verse in your
Bible—a comparison that doesn’t happen readily because
of the chapter break. The next verse goes on to say, “The
Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, till I make
Your enemies Your footstool’” (Psalm 110:1).
Thus, the first verse of Psalm 110 has Jesus at the right
hand of the Father.
Now, look at it again:

D The last verse of Psalm 109 has Jesus at my right
hand.
D The first verse of Psalm 110 has Jesus at the Father’s
right hand.
So Jesus is at the right hand of both the Father and me.
Hmm. How does this work?
As I was contemplating the throneroom geography de-
scribed by these verses, the most reasonable conclusion
that began to emerge was this: The Father must be on my
left hand.
Here’s what I then began to visualize (with the eye of
faith). I saw Jesus on my right hand, and the Father on
my left. This arrangement seemed
On my left is the consistent to me with Psalm 110,
Father. On my because it still places Jesus at the Fa-
right is Jesus. And ther’s right hand.
in the middle On my left is the Father. On my
is—me. right is Jesus. And in the middle is—
me. Or in your case—you.
A Childhood Illustration
When I was a kid, I remember my parents would

sometimes embrace in the kitchen, expressing their ten-
derness for each other. Whenever I saw that affection hap-
pening, I would always rush over and immediately wiggle
my way between them until I was smack in the middle.
I, too, wanted in on the love-exchange. I figured, if we’re
going to be doing the lovey-dovey thing right now, I want
in on the action!
The only problem was, I kept growing. The bigger I got,
the less enthusiastic my parents became with this arrange-
ment. Having 110 pounds jammed like a wad of wiggling
Seated Between Father And Son 43
blubber between them during a tender body embrace did

not seem to meet, for some reason, their standards of “ro-
mantic.” Eventually, my dad took me aside and said, “You
know, Bobby, sometimes I want to embrace your mother
without you getting in the middle between us.” His pro-
test fell on deaf ears. Because as far as I was concerned, if
there’s affection happening, then sign me up.
Between Father And Son

I’m 50 years old now and nothing’s changed. I get
sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, barge with boldness
into the throneroom—“It’s me again!”—and gaze upon
Holiness. And when I look at the throne, I see affection!
For there, seated together on the throne, are the Father
and Son in an everlasting love-lock of abandoned affection
and fiery loyalty.
When I see this kind of affection, I want in. So I just
worm my way between the Father and Son (bold with
confidence because of the blood) until I’m smack dab in
the middle. Then, I turn around and sit down with Christ
in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). The Father on my left.
Jesus on my right. Me in the middle.
And that’s where I like to spend my day: In the bo-
som of the Father (John 1:18) and leaning on the breast
of Jesus (John 13:23). I envision myself snuggled in the
middle of the Father/Son love-embrace and lapping up all
the affection.
Come there with me. See yourself approaching God with
confidence because of the sprinkled blood. Now, interject
yourself between the Father and Son, and be seated with
Christ in heavenly places. Turn to the Father on your left
and express your love. Turn to the Son on your right and
worship Him. Enjoy this place of being nestled between
the Father and the Son. This is the nearness Jesus destined
for you when He offered His blood on your behalf.

Now that I’m here, right between God and Jesus, here’s
how I like to see the thing: If the Father wants to say anything
to the Son, He’s going to have to go through me. And if
the Son wants to say anything to the Father, He’s going to
have to go through me. In my noblest imaginations, I envi-
sion the Father and Son of necessity including me in their
intimate dialogue because I have been joined to them—
one in heart, purpose, and affection.
A Hypothetical Father/Son Conversation
And here’s how I imagine the conversation sounding.

Father (speaking to the Son, through me):
“Son, You are the greatest delight of My heart because
You laid Your life down for me.” (And as that word passes
through my spirit, my heart responds, “Yes, Abba, I lay my
life down for You.”)
Son (speaking to the Father, through me):
“Yes, Abba. Of course I laid My life down for You. You
asked Me to.”
Father (to the Son, again through me):
“But Son, I gave you such a bitter cup to drink. And
You drank it to the very dregs. You loved Me in the place
of ultimate suffering. You have moved My heart at the
deepest level. How can I adequately express the fierceness
of My loyalty to You?”
Son (replying to the Father, through me):
“Abba, if You gave Me another cup, I’d drink it again.
Because I adore You and I’m absolutely loyal to You. I’ll do
anything for You.” (As that word moves through me, my
heart resonates with it, “Yes, Abba, I also will do anything
for You, I am Yours.”)
Father:
“Son, do You realize how deeply Your fidelity moves
My heart? I offered a bitter cup to Lucifer as well, but he

looked at the cup, became offended, accused Me of being
a tyrant, and turned a third of heaven’s angels against Me.
My intention was to bring him to greater honor, but He
couldn’t see it. He said My leadership style was oppres-
sive, that I was a tyrannical Father—he called it cosmic
child abuse—and he got a third of heaven to agree with
him. But You didn’t partner with Lucifer’s accusation.
When I gave You a bitter cup, You drank it to the bottom.
Son, Your loyalty to Me in the most difficult of times was
unwavering, and I’ll never forget it. My love is Yours—
forever.”
Son:
“But Abba, when I was in the lowest place, when I had
descended to My lowest hell, when the caverns of Hades
echoed with shrieks of triumph at
If the Father
My descension, when the sorrows
wants to say any-
of Sheol were wrapped around My thing to the Son,
brain like seaweed, You reached He’s going to have
down into My darkness and lifted to go through me.
Me out of My pit”—(and as these
words pass through my spirit on
their way to the Father my heart resounds, “Yes, Abba,
You will lift me out of my pit, too”)—“and You have ex-
alted Me to the highest place and have seated Me with
Yourself, again, on Your throne. O Abba, I love You with
everything within Me!”
Father:
“Son, if You think I have finished exalting You, You can
think again. Because I haven’t hardly even begun Your ex-
altation. Right now, the world over, Your name is mocked,
profaned, and blasphemed. You are viewed by many across
the earth as boring and irrelevant. Some think you’re a
myth—they don’t even believe You exist. But it’s not going
to end like that. Just sit here at My right hand, Son, and
watch while I finish Your story. By the time I’m finished
with this planet, every knee will bow (of those in heaven,
and of those on the earth, and of those under the earth)
and every tongue will confess that You are Lord.”
Jesus Is Still Waiting
Jesus’ exaltation is not yet complete, but the Day is

just around the corner when the Father will fulfill all His
promises to His Son. In the meantime, He waits.
How about you? Are you waiting on God? Has God
made promises to you which have not yet been realized in
your life? If so, you’re not the only one. Jesus Christ is also
living with unfulfilled promises. The Father has promised
the earth and its fullness to Him, but it has not all yet been
brought into subjection to Him.
But be assured of this: Not one word of all God’s good
promise to His Son will fail. Every promise shall be ful-
filled! Jesus shall reign over planet Earth, and the hearts
of His people shall be fully His pos-
If you’re waiting session. It will happen. Nothing can
on God, you’re in
stop it, for the Father is determined
good company;
to fulfill His word to His Son.
Jesus is also
In the same way, you can be as-
waiting on God.
sured of this: Every promise God
has given you shall be fulfilled. He is
good to His word; what He promises He performs.
If you’re waiting on God, you’re in good company;
Jesus is also waiting on God.
The Holy Spirit
I was telling how I get sprinkled with blood, then see

myself seated with Christ in heavenly places. Let’s come
back to that. Sandwiched between Father and Son, I find
myself the exhilarated recipient of the affections that flow

between them. The Father and Son express their love for
each other in a way that tells me I am loved with the same
fiery passions.
Here’s the next thing I visualize.
From my position on the throne where I’m seated
with Christ in heavenly places, I look out upon the heav-
enly panorama before me, and the first thing I see is the
Holy Spirit. He stands before me in the same way John
saw Him in Revelation 4:5. I see seven lamps of fire, which
are the seven Spirits of God that burn before the throne.
Now that I’m seated on the throne, the seven-fold Spirit of
God is directly facing me.
I pray a simple prayer, “Holy Spirit, come into me.” I
invite Him, with all seven of His fiery Spirits (whatever
that means!), to enter my belly and ignite my body, soul,
mind, heart—my entire being—with every living flame
that ignites His heart.
I receive His very fire into my bosom. Scripture asks,
“Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not
be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27). I sure hope not! My hope is
that as I absorb the living fires of the Holy Spirit into my
bosom, all the filthy garments of my old manner of life are
burned away and everything is made new.
So here we rest. On our left we’re in the bosom of the
Father, feasting on His affections; to our right we’re lean-
ing on the breast of Jesus, drawing upon His grace. And
straight before us, the Holy Spirit is entering and igniting
us with the fellowship of His eternal fires. We’re envel-
oped in the affections of the Godhead—all because of the
blood of Jesus. Tell me: If this is where we reside, how can
we lose? How can we possibly fail? No matter what con-
flict or trial we may encounter, we are on an inexorable
path to overcoming victory. When we live in the shadow
of the Almighty, we’re unstoppable.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans
8:31).
Chapter 6
DRAWING NEAR to GOD
T
The kind of intimacy we’ve been talking about is the very
thing that God has always wanted with His people. God
is extremely relational, and He created us in His image so
that we might long for Him in the way He longs for us.
From the very beginning, God has always wanted com-
muning friendship with man. We see that in the way He
came every day to visit with Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden (Genesis 3:8).
The Bible launches with a God who is seeking fellow-
ship with man, and it ends with the same motif. The book
of Revelation details how God has determined this present
age will end. We might have thought that God was prepar-
ing us for heaven, but in an unexpected twist, the saga
of redemptive history ends with God leaving heaven and
coming to earth to be with man.
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for
the first heaven and the first earth had passed
away. Also there was no more sea. Then I,
John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying,
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and He will dwell with them, and they shall

be His people. God Himself will be with them
and be their God” (Revelation 21:1-3).
First, John sees the bride of Christ—the New Jerusa-
lem—leaving God in heaven and descending to earth in
order to be married to the Bridegroom here on the earth.
Then, in the next verse, John hears a declaration of what
is to follow: God Himself will leave heaven and descend to
earth! It’s almost too stunning to comprehend.
The Father has not designed a way to move man from
earth to heaven; rather, He has designed a way for Him to
move from heaven to earth. The story ends with heaven
on earth. God’s longing to be near mankind is so acute
that He is planning to pick up and relocate His entire
home base—all for the purpose of being close to us!
Right now, we are laboring with
The Father has the Holy Spirit to prepare our planet
not designed a way
for the coming of Christ. Once He
to move man from
comes, we will then labor with Him
earth to heaven;
during “the millennium” to prepare
rather, He has
the planet for the coming of the Fa-
designed a way for
ther. That’s one reason why that pe-
Him to move from
heaven to earth.
riod will be 1,000 years in duration
(see Revelation 20)—it will take that
long to get the planet ready for the
Father’s coming. Why is He coming? He wants to be near
us.
Attempts At Intimacy
The Old Testament is the winding saga of God’s attempts

to get close to His people. First, He had to produce in them
a desire to call upon Him. He did that by putting them
in Egypt and placing them in slavery. Their oppressors
made them so miserable that they cried out to God for
Drawing Near To God 51
intervention. In response to Israel’s cries, God visited

them in Egypt, released them from slavery, and set up
camp in their midst. He drew near to them because He
wanted relationship.
But there was a problem. There was a fundamental
mismatch between God’s holiness and the people’s sins.
Because of His holiness, God could not tolerate the peo-
ple’s sinfulness. As a result, people died. The wilderness
became strewn with a long trail of corpses. God’s chosen
people were dying because God had entered the camp.
Eventually the people complained to Moses, “‘Whoever
even comes near the tabernacle of the Lord must die. Shall
we all utterly die?’” (Numbers 17:13). God acknowledged
this problem when He said, “‘I will not go up in your
midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-
necked people’” (Exodus 33:3).
It was a massive quandary. Out of His longing for inti-
macy God had come near the people, but as a result thou-
sands were dying. A solution had to be found.
God’s solution was this: the sprinkling of blood. Blood
would have to be shed and sprinkled. If blood were shed
properly, it would atone for (cover) the people’s sins, and
God would be able to reside in their midst without killing
them. This is what God meant when He said, “‘And you
shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties
of the altar, that there may be no more wrath on the chil-
dren of Israel’” (Numbers 18:5).
The entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament was
designed to pacify God’s wrath as He came to dwell among
His people.
God was basically saying, “I am coming to dwell with
you. But if I become angry with you because of your sin-
fulness, it will bode ill for you. I am providing, therefore,
a way for you to allay My wrath. If you will honor My
three feasts and My sacrificial system, My wrath will be

satisfied and you will be blessed by My proximity. If you
neglect these sacrifices, however, My nearness will actu-
ally be to your detriment.”
For God and man to live together, it was essential
that animal sacrifices be established. But they could not
happen in Egypt because the Egyptians would not allow
them. The Egyptians despised the Israelites’ animal sacri-
fices and categorically forbad them (Exodus 8:26). In or-
der to inaugurate the sprinkling of blood, God had to get
the Israelites out of Egypt.
Blood was not shed so that God could come down and
draw near to His people; God had already come down and
visited His people. Blood was shed so that the people could
survive His presence.
The whole sacrificial system was actually for God, not
man. It enabled God to do what was in His heart—to draw
near to His people—without having to judge (hurt) them.
God’s desire has always been that we be enriched from inti-
macy with Him, not punished (judged) because of it. That’s
why God instituted the shedding of innocent blood. The an-
imal sacrifices provided a way for God to come to earth and
be close to man. If God was to dwell with man, sin would
have to be judged. Instead of people having to die, innocent
animals died in their place. In this way, the animal sacrifices
pointed to the ultimate sacrifice, the innocent Lamb of God,
who would die for the sins of the whole world.
So again, the shedding of blood was for the purpose of
intimacy.
Sprinkling With Blood In The Old Testament
The New Testament blessing of sprinkling with blood

derives from its Old Testament precedent. Here’s the Old
Testament background.
The animal sacrifices provided for intimacy with God,

but at four levels of significance. The people could draw
near at one level, the Levites at a closer level, the priests
drew closer still, and the high priest came near at the great-
est level of intimacy.
(a) The people.
The shed blood of the animal sacrifices made atone-
ment for the sins of the people so that they could “come
near the sanctuary” (Numbers 8:19). The closest the peo-
ple could get, in that old dispensation, was to stand out-
side the sanctuary.
(b) The Levites.
The blood enabled the Levites (sons of Levi, one of the
Israelite tribes) to draw closer to God than those of the
other tribes of Israel. They were able to enter the sanctu-
ary itself. They could stand in the outer court of the temple
where they served the priests and
ministered to the Lord (Deuteron- Blood was not shed
omy 10:8). Thus, God brought the so that God could
Levites “‘near to Himself, to do come down and draw
the work of the tabernacle of the near to His people;
blood was shed so
Lord, and to stand before the con-
that the people
gregation to serve them’” (Num-
could survive His
bers 16:9). They served the needs presence.
of the priests and of the tabernacle
(Numbers 18:3). If they performed
their ministry properly, there would be “‘no plague among
the children of Israel when the children of Israel come
near the sanctuary’” (Numbers 8:19).
(c) The priests.
The blood enabled the priests (the descendants of
Aaron) to draw even closer to God than the Levites. They
commonly entered the Holy Place and were able to han-
dle all the articles of the sanctuary (Numbers 18:3). They
were also able to offer incense on the golden altar of in-

cense (1 Chronicles 6:49). There was one priest, however,
who could draw even nearer to God. He was called the
high priest.
(d) The high priest.
The blood enabled the high priest to draw closer to God
than any of the other priests. This special privilege took
place just one day each year, on the Day of Atonement,
when the high priest was commanded to enter the Holy of
Holies. (The Holy of Holies was the innermost chamber
of the sanctuary which contained the ark of the covenant
and the mercy seat.) It was on this day that the sprinkling
of blood found its most meaningful expression.
On that very high and holy day, the high priest would
first of all enter the Holy of Holies with a censer of hot
coals and hands loaded with incense. Once inside, he
would place the incense on the hot coals and then set the
censer down so that the smoke would cover the mercy seat.
He then went out, took some of the blood of the bull that
had been sacrificed, re-entered the Holy of Holies (that
was now filled with smoke) and sprinkled the blood of the
bull to atone for his own sins. One-two-three-four-five-
six-seven-eight. Eight times the blood was sprinkled upon
and before the mercy seat. Then he went out, offered the
goat as an offering, and brought the blood of the goat into
the Holy of Holies to expiate for the sins of the entire na-
tion. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Eight times
the blood of the goat was sprinkled upon the mercy seat
in the same manner as the bull’s blood. He alone could
minister this close to God, right there at the ark of the
covenant, in the very place where God dwelled. Then he
took the censer in hand and exited the Holy of Holies, not
to return for another year.
Thus, the sprinkling of blood made it possible for God
to dwell among and fellowship with His people. Every

time we get sprinkled with blood and draw near to God,
we are essentially re-enacting what the high priest did on
the Day of Atonement, for once again we enter the Holy
of Holies to minister to the Lord.
Our Covenant Is So Much Greater!
Under the Old Covenant, only one man (the high

priest) could draw near to the very presence of God, and
even so, he could do so only once a year (Hebrews 9:7).
Furthermore, when he drew near to God on that one spe-
cial day, he did it quickly. He hastened to perform his re-
quired service of incense and sprinkling, and then he got
out of the Holy of Holies as fast as he could.
If I had the chance, I would have said to Aaron (the
high priest), “Aaron! You have the greatest privilege in the
entire nation! You get to enter the inner chamber where
God Himself resides. You alone have the privilege of gazing
upon the glory of God who dwells between the cherubim.1
Aaron, take your time. Enjoy the moment. Relish your
unique privilege. Slow down, and gaze with long, loving
fascination at the wonder of God’s glory. Inhale, breathe it
in. Go slow. Enjoy!”
I imagine Aaron’s retort, “Are you kidding? When I’m
1 The Holy of Holies had no window nor source of light in it; it was
shrouded in complete darkness. So when the high priest entered on
the Day of Atonement, he would have stepped into a black room.
There are some who believe, however, that God manifested Himself
on the Day of Atonement in the form of a light between the wings of
the cherubim. This would have given the high priest enough light to
perform his service, and it would have also allowed him to peer into
the glory of God. This theory is based largely upon Jonathan’s Targum
rendering of Leviticus 16:2, which reads, “‘for in my cloud the glory
of my Shechinah, or divine Majesty, shall be revealed upon the mercy
seat.’” The NKJV renders it, “‘For I will appear in the cloud above the
mercy seat.’”
standing before the ark of the covenant, I’m scared out of

my wits. One wrong move and I’m dead!2 Go slow? Not
me. I’m getting out of there as fast as I can!”
It was one man, once a year, fast.
Thank God for the blood of Jesus! Because of Christ’s
shed blood, now it’s not only one man who can draw near
to the very presence of God; now, all of us can draw near!
And it’s not limited to one day a year; we can draw near to
God 24/7/365 (any time of day, any day of the year). And
we don’t have to hurry; we can enter into the immediate
presence of God through the sprinkled blood of Christ and
stay there!
How Near Is Near?
While the sprinkled blood on the mercy seat allowed

the people to draw somewhat near to God, nonetheless
they were tentative about their approach. We see this same
uncertainty when, just after their exodus from Egypt, the
Israelites came to Mt. Sinai and prepared to draw close to
God.
God was going to come down onto
Because of Christ’s Mt. Sinai and manifest Himself to the
shed blood, now entire nation of Israel. He was getting
it’s not only one
ready to speak to them audibly with
man who can draw
a thunderous, terrifying voice. Once
near to the very
God would descend on the moun-
presence of God;
tain, that would make the mountain
now, all of us can
draw near!
holy. The encounter carried inherent
dangers, because if someone made a
wrong move they could be killed for
2 In Leviticus 16:13, God said in so many words, “Aaron needs to offer
the incense properly when he enters the Holiest on the Day of Atone-
ment, or he’s dead.” High priests always performed their ministry on
the Day of Atonement under fear of death.
it. God came to Moses, therefore, with some very specific in-
structions. He wanted His people to survive the encounter.
Here’s an excerpt from God’s instructions.
“And let them be ready for the third day. For
on the third day the Lord will come down
upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
You shall set bounds for the people all around,
saying, ‘Take heed to yourselves that you do not
go up to the mountain or touch its base. Whoever
touches the mountain shall surely be put to
death. Not a hand shall touch him, but he
shall surely be stoned or shot with an arrow;
whether man or beast, he shall not live.’ When
the trumpet sounds long, they shall come near
the mountain” (Exodus 19:11-13).
God’s warning was very clear: Take heed; don’t come
too close, or you’ll be put to death.
But that ominous warning was then followed by this
mysterious command: “They shall come near the moun-
tain.” After being warned about getting too close, they are
then commanded to draw near.
“How near is near?” I can imagine some sincere soul
inquiring.
It was quite the predicament. Hang back too far and
you’re in rebellion; get too close and you’re dead. Little
wonder the people drew near timidly and tentatively!
They had to draw near without getting too near.
“How near is near?”
Thank God for the blood of Jesus Christ! Because of
Christ’s shed blood, we can now enter with boldness into
the very throneroom of heaven. No more timidity. No more
hesitation. The blood has given us confidence. We know
we’re accepted into the eager embrace of our affectionate
heavenly Father.
Gone forever is any line of demarcation that says, “You

can go so far but no further.” All the
Gone forever is any
limitations have been rescinded, and
line of demarcation
we’re playing by a totally new set of
that says, “You can
rules. Now the compelling question
go so far but no
further.”
is, “How close can you get?”
The old question: “How do I
know when I’ve come too close?”
The new question: “How near are you willing to
draw?”
Draw Near To God!
To endure the cross, Jesus had to understand what His

work would accomplish. He had to understand purpose.
He had to have ownership of the intended end. What was
that purpose?
Jesus, what did You see when You hung on
the cross? During Your suffering, when You
pictured us in the bosom of the Father, what
implications scrolled before Your eyes? What
was so powerful about this intimacy that it
kept you on the cross until Your last dying
breath? Surely You wouldn’t die for anything
less than the absolute transformation of our
world. Will You help us see what You saw?
Would you reveal the implications of an
intimacy so revolutionizing that You were
willing to endure the Father’s wrath in order
to procure it for us?
Here’s how Jesus chose to change human history. He
purposed within Himself, “I’ll die on Calvary; then I’ll
sprinkle them with My blood; that will bring them into
intimacy with the Father; if they’ll draw near to God, they
will change their world.” Jesus died, beloved, to get you
into the Father’s bosom. It’s that important.

Oh, that I were more skillful at crafting words to ad-
equately express the desirability of drawing near to God!
Christ’s sacrifice means that the thing that once pro-
duced death in us (proximity to God) now gives us life.
And that which once nourished us (sin) is now poison-
ous to us. His sacrifice has produced within us a complete
transformation of our genetic code.
Now I run into that from which I once fled (intimacy
with God). And I flee from that into which I once rushed
(sin). My compatibility system has been radically invert-
ed. O glorious transformation! I’m a new man in Christ—
because of the blood of His cross.
“Draw near to God,” James beckons, “and He will
draw near to you” (4:8). Take a step toward God, and He
takes a step toward you. Take another, and so does He.
For every movement you make into the heart of God, He
reciprocates by moving closer into your heart.
James 4:8 leads logically to
this conclusion: You can draw still Christ’s sacrifice
means that the thing
closer to God. In other words, you
that once produced
have not yet reached the fullness
death in us (proxim-
of the intimacy Jesus died to pro- ity to God) now gives
vide. There’s more. There’s more. us life.
There’s more. Pursue it! Draw
closer still!
If you’re in a swirl of spiritual warfare right now, and
not quite sure how to take on your enemy or how to move
forward, let me tell you what to do. Get sprinkled with
Christ’s blood, come into the throneroom, and stay there.
The most militant thing you can do is draw near to God.
When you’re near to God, the Bible says you can call
upon Him for “whatever reason” (Deuteronomy 4:7). In
other words, you can ask Him for anything you want. This
is the privilege of intimacy. Jesus Himself affirmed you can

ask for anything when He said, “‘If you abide in Me, and
My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and
it shall be done for you’” (John 15:7). Jesus further added,
“‘And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son’” (John 14:13).
Ask Him for the world. He already promised it to you.
The world is yours, it’s part of your Abrahamic covenant
(Romans 4:13-16). “Abba, now that I’m joined to Your
heart because of Christ’s sprinkled blood, I want to ask
You for the innermost desire of my heart. I’m asking that
You give the world to Your Son. Give Him the affections
of every human being on this planet. Turn the hearts of
every nation toward Your beloved Son, until every knee
bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord. Give
Him the world. Give us the world. Make it ours!”
You Can’t Go Wrong By Drawing Near
If you’re ever unsure about your status with God—that

is, if you’ve been in a season of compromise and you’re
not sure what He’s thinking about the choices you’ve
been making—the smartest thing you can do is draw near.
You’ll get along better with God by drawing near than by
hanging back.
Several Bible stories illustrate this truth. I’ll mention
just two. On one occasion, Judah was wanting to make a
special appeal to the stern Egyptian master who was before
him. Judah didn’t know the Egyptian master was actually
Joseph, his brother; all he knew was that the man had total
authority over his life and he had to be placated. So what
did Judah do?
Then Judah came near to him and said: “O my
lord, please let your servant speak a word in
my lord’s hearing, and do not let your anger
burn against your servant; for you are even

like Pharaoh” (Genesis 44:18).
By drawing near to Joseph, Judah was demonstrating
honor, respect, fear, a regard for protocol, and a recogni-
tion of the superior office of the Egyptian master. When
he drew near and made his appeal in humility, Judah won
the heart of his brother.
The same thing happens in our relationship with God.
When we draw near to Him in humility, He turns His
favor toward us. To reinforce this point, let me mention
one more story.
The book of Esther contains the story of two queens
who broke the law. While both Vashti and Esther broke
the law of Persia, the way they did it made all the differ-
ence in their respective destinies. Vashti broke the law by
spurning the king’s summons when he had requested her
presence (Esther 1:12); Esther broke the law by drawing
near to the king at a time when her presence was unsolic-
ited (Esther 4:11; 5:1-2).
Vashti broke the law by staying away; Esther broke the
law by drawing near.
The king became furious with
Vashti! It wasn’t simply that she
When we draw near
broke the law; it was that she to Him in humility,
broke the law by withholding her- He turns His favor
self. When Esther broke the law, toward us.
the king’s response was totally dif-
ferent. He lifted his scepter and
welcomed her into his throneroom. Why? Because even
though she was breaking the law, she was doing it by
drawing near.
“But I can’t draw near to God in my present condi-
tion,” someone might object. “If I were to draw near to
God right now, I think He’d fry me.”
That’s what the accuser wants you to believer—be-

cause he wants to keep you separated from God. But the
truth is exactly the opposite. If you draw near to God with a
sincere heart, you will never incur His wrath. You incur His
wrath by staying away. Draw near in sincerity and truth
and you will invoke His favor. The Father yearns for this
kind of nearness with you.
“But isn’t it fearful to get this close to God?” someone
else might counter. “I’m afraid of getting close to God in
my current condition.” The truth is, the fear of the Lord
catapults us into the face of Christ. If what you’re feel-
ing is causing you to draw back, it’s not the true fear of
the Lord. The fear of the Lord, properly taught, always
presses us toward God because we realize that near is the
only safe place to be.
Even Satan Understands the Power of Intimacy
The accuser will do his utmost to keep you distant

from God, a reality that is illustrated in the life of Joshua,
the high priest during Zechariah’s day.
The book of Zechariah was written at a time when
Israel was experiencing a spiritual revival. The temple
in Jerusalem was being restored, along with all the Old
Testament feasts. Israel had been without a high priest
for many years, but now a man named Joshua was being
properly installed and ordained to this ministry.
At his installation, however, Sa-
You incur His tan himself stood up to oppose this
wrath by staying
appointment (Zechariah 3:1). Satan
away.
didn’t want Joshua ministering as a
priest before God. Why would Satan
stand up to resist a man as weak as Joshua? (When you
look at his life, you realize that Joshua was a spiritually
weak man.) The reason seems to be that Satan knew if
Joshua were fully ordained as high priest, it would mean

that once again a man would approach the immediate
presence of God in the Holiest. Satan understood the
power of intimacy and realized his kingdom was at risk
if Joshua were to become high priest. He tried to portray
Joshua as disqualified from drawing near to God. Thank-
fully, Satan’s attempt to disqualify Joshua from serving as
high priest was unsuccessful.
Now, a man (Joshua) would be stepping into the very
throneroom of God once a year. And from that intimacy
grace would flow to the entire community of God’s re-
deemed people.
Little wonder Satan tried to stop Joshua’s ordination.
When Joshua came into intimacy with God, it provided a
platform with powerful potential for kingdom blessing.
When God is in intimacy with man, and God and man are
moving forward together, the world can be turned upside-down.
We Don’t Naturally Tend To Draw Near
Drawing near to God, although it’s the wisest thing a

human can do, is not the normal tendency of human na-
ture. Some of us need help to “stumble onto” this wisdom.
Left to ourselves, we will not pursue intimacy with radical
Kingdom violence. So sometimes God will hijack our tra-
jectory. What initially appears to be a disruption is even-
tually seen to be an invitation to draw near. Sometimes
God is kind enough to not leave us to ourselves.
David was a man accosted of God, so he was able to
say with understanding, “Blessed is the man You choose,
and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your
courts” (Psalm 65:4). God has many ways of “causing”
us to approach Him. Often God ends up having to use
painful circumstances to motivate us toward Him. Do not
despise the means God uses to bring you into intimacy.
Perhaps He is loving you enough to save you from the per-

verseness of your own ways.
In a single verse, Zephaniah gave four reasons why
God would allow uncomfortable restriction in the life of
His beloved: to cultivate obedience to His voice; to trigger
profound character transformation; to produce mountain-
moving faith; and to foster a lifestyle of intimacy with
God (see Zephaniah 3:2). Drawing near to God may not
be our natural proclivity, but God will chasten us in order
to bring us into the intimacy for which we long.
When we pull away from God, we’re actually acting
like a beast. That’s what we see in Psalm 32:9, “Do not be
like the horse or like the mule, which have no understand-
ing, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else
they will not come near you” (Psalm 32:9). It’s not in the
nature of beasts to draw near. There’s something beastly
in the heart of man that causes him
Do not despise the to wander away from his source of
means God uses
life. Can you hear the Lord implor-
to bring you into
ing us to be wise and understanding
intimacy.
instead of mulish? We’re interested
in conquering the next mountain;
but God’s interested in intimacy. When will we learn to
draw near?
Drawing Near For Judgment
I want to close this chapter by pointing to one of the

more fascinating and mysterious principles in the Bible
related to nearness with God. I’m using the word “mys-
terious” in its biblical sense. A mystery, in the Bible, is
a spiritual truth that has more depth to it than is readily
evident at first glance. It invites deeper study. A biblical
mystery whispers, “There’s gold to be found in this truth,
but you’ll have to go digging to find it.”
Here’s the verse I want us to consider.

“Keep silence before Me, O coastlands, and
let the people renew their strength! Let them
come near, then let them speak; let us come
near together for judgment” (Isaiah 41:1).
I invite you to pause for a moment, pick up your Bible,
and peruse the last five verses of Isaiah 40. Those verses
provide the context for the verse above. God’s people were
complaining, “God has overlooked us. We have stood on
His word, claimed His promises, and prayed to Him un-
ceasingly; but He is not noticing or responding.”
In the face of that accusation, God’s first response is,
“‘Keep silence before Me, O coastlands’” (Isaiah 41:1a).
In other words, He is saying to the
ends of the earth, “Be quiet! I’ve
We draw near to
heard enough of your accusations. make joint decisions
The world over, men are accusing that determine
Me of being unresponsive to their the destiny of our
prayers. But the smartest thing planet.
you could do right now would be
to stop accusing Me, and just shut
your mouth! I happen to be working with far more infor-
mation and understanding than you could ever process or
appreciate. So be silent!”
God’s second piece of advice: “‘Let the people renew
their strength!’” (Isaiah 41:1b). Or, to use the language
of Isaiah 40:31, “Get off your pinwheel, calm yourself,
and wait on Me. Your own efforts have wearied you. If
you would wait on Me instead of running in circles, you
would regain your strength and rise up on the wings of
renewed perspective.”
God’s third piece of counsel: “‘Let them come
near, then let them speak’” (Isaiah 41:1c). In other
words, “You’re assailing Me with your many words,
and you’re doing it from a distance. When you grill Me

with your questions from afar, they hit Me like accusa-
tions. Accusations never unlock My blessings. Why
don’t you change your approach? Start by shutting up.
Then draw near to Me. Enter into fiery communion
with My generous heart. Once intimacy has been firmly
established between us, then you could speak whatever
is on your mind and it would come to Me as a lovesick
prayer rather than a hurled accusation.”
Look now, at God’s fourth—and most fascinating—
invitation: “‘Let us come near together for judgment’”
(Isaiah 41:1d). Intimacy with God culminates in a part-
nership in which we actually enter into the processes of
judgment with Him. The invitation infers, “If you would
draw near to Me, we would begin to enter into the dia-
logue of intimacy. I would hear your heart; you would
hear My heart; and we would arrive at the right judgment
(decision) together.”
God is saying the purpose of intimacy is that we might
participate with Him in making joint decisions that deter-
mine the destiny of our planet.
Selah
Chapter 7
HOLINESS: PROXIMITY to the THRONE
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When speaking of the blood of Christ, we must also speak
of holiness, for Scripture brings the two together. The
leading text for this book conjoins the two when it de-
clares that the blood of Christ qualifies us to enter with
boldness into “the Holiest.” The Holiest is the very Holy
of Holies in heaven where God dwells. Think of it—there
is no holier place in all of heaven than where we live!
the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new
and living way which He consecrated for us,
evil conscience and our bodies washed with
pure water (Hebrews 10:19-22).
The term “the Holiest” assumes that there are degrees
of holiness. Degrees of holiness vary according to proxim-
ity to the throne. Holier places are those places nearer to
the throne. The Holiest is the very bosom of God Him-
self. Since we have access to the Holiest, it’s impossible
to find a place in God’s highest heaven that is holier than
the place where we now reside. Hebrews 10 says we get

sprinkled with blood that we might enter into holiness.
A couple chapters later, Hebrews goes on to say it’s God’s
intention that we be “partakers of His holiness” (Hebrews
12:10). To share in God’s holiness is the ultimate honor
any human could enjoy, and the sprinkled blood of Christ
upon our lives makes it possible.
Holiness is a place. We have sometimes conceived of
holiness as a behavioral code of dos and don’ts, but holi-
ness is not as much something we do as it is a place we en-
ter. “The Holiest” is a place. It’s a spiritual place in heav-
enly realms that we enter by faith through the sprinkled
blood of Christ. It’s the innermost chamber of the temple
in heaven, the place where God Himself resides. Christ’s
blood is our “All Access Pass” to the
most private living room of the An-
Holiness is a place.
cient of Days. This blood authorizes
us to step into the command center
of the universe, to tremble with af-
fection in the presence of His glorious power, and stay
there.
When you are here, in the inner chambers of the King,
you are a partaker of His holiness. Why? Because holiness
is a place. Let me substantiate that even further.
Holy Ground
When Moses saw the bush that burned but wasn’t con-
sumed, he approached it to get a better look. As he drew
near, he stepped unwittingly onto holy ground. Why was
the ground holy? Because God was present in that place,
and God’s presence made that place holy.
If you were to find that same plot of ground on Mt. Si-
nai, it would not be holy today. God would not command
you to take your shoes off, like He commanded Moses,
Holiness: Proximity To The Throne 69
because that ground is no longer holy. It was holy only

while God was present in that place; once God left, that
place ceased to be holy.
When Moses approached the bush, he stepped into ho-
liness. Then, when he departed from that place, he stepped
out of holiness. Maybe you feel the same way sometimes.
You step into holiness; then you step out of holiness; then
you step back into holiness; then you step back out of ho-
liness; then you step into holiness again; then back out
again. Sound familiar? Or am I the only conflicted person
in the body of Christ?
Far too often, the reality of our Christian experience
tends to be a Jekyll-and-Hyde kind of dichotomy in which
we spend time in holiness, but then step away and spend
whole chunks of time outside holiness. In holiness; out of
holiness; in holiness; out of holiness. It’s a cycle that frus-
trates and leaves us with the nagging premonition that
we weren’t made to live part-time between two different
worlds. Jesus didn’t die so that we would just visit Him on
weekends. He has made provision for us to enter into holi-
ness, to burn with His holy fire of intimate affections, and
to stay there. But living 24/7 in holiness sometimes seems
more theoretical than practical.
How can we break this cyclical pattern of repeatedly
losing our standing in holiness? The answer is found in
the blood.
Perfecting Holiness
The blood of Christ has provided for our weakness, even

in this struggle to live in the holy place. The blood of Christ
covers us while we are on a learning curve to become more
and more holy. Paul pointed to this learning curve when he
wrote, “…perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corin-
thians 7:1). Holiness is something we learn to perfect.
I have not yet perfected holiness. But I’m pursuing this

perfection, and here’s what I’m finding: I’m spending less
and less time away from holiness, and more and more time
in the place of holiness. That’s what perfecting holiness
is all about. It’s learning to get sprinkled with blood, en-
ter into the Holiest, and stay, stay, stay there. Spend more
time there. Longer chunks of time there. And what about
those times we step away from holiness? We perfect holi-
ness by learning how to make those
When I saw that times shorter and shorter. That’s
holiness is a place,
done by repenting faster, getting
the idea of per- sprinkled with blood, and returning
fecting holiness to holiness. We’re learning to spend
suddenly became more time in the holy place and less
attainable. time outside the holy place—and the
whole growing process is covered by
the blood.
When I saw that holiness is a place, the idea of perfect-
ing holiness suddenly became attainable.
If being holy meant adhering perfectly to a list of things
that I must not do, I wasn’t sure that I would ever be holy.
But if holiness is a place, maybe I can get myself in that place.
And maybe I can spend more and more time in that place,
and less and less time away from it.
If holiness is a place, it’s within reach. I can get there.
You can get there. The blood of Christ has guaranteed its
attainability. This much I can do: I can get in the presence
of God!
Highway Of Holiness
I think this is why Isaiah spoke of the walk of holiness

as a highway.
A highway shall be there, and a road, and it
shall be called the Highway of Holiness. The
unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be

for others. Whoever walks the road, although
a fool, shall not go astray (Isaiah 35:8).
Holiness is a place—and it’s also a journey. In other
words, holiness is not a final destination to which we will
finally aspire when we die; rather, it’s something we can
attain even while we’re in the process of the journey. It’s
a path we walk—a very narrow highway—that leads to
the holy city, to Zion. The key to holiness is simply this:
Stay on the highway. As long as you stay walking on the
highway, you’re in holiness.
The problem comes when we trip up, lose our focus,
and end up in the ditch. It’s when we’re in the ditch that
we must learn what it means to perfect holiness in the
fear of the Lord. In a nutshell, it means, “Repent—and get
back on the highway.”
We learn to perfect holiness by becoming faster repen-
ters. We must learn to decrease the duration of our ditch
times. If you land in the ditch (that is, you’ve stepped out
of holiness because of sin), learn the grace of repenting
quickly and scrambling back up onto the highway.
By “repenting quickly,” I do not mean “repenting su-
perficially.” I’m talking about full-blown, heart-wrenching
repentance. Just don’t stall. Repent hard, repent deeply,
repent tearfully—and repent fast.
If you spend less and less time in We learn to perfect
the ditch, and more and more time holiness by becoming
on the highway, it means you’re faster repenters.
perfecting holiness in the fear of
the Lord.
Yes, even you can be holy! Why? Because holiness is not
a standard of ethical values you must measure up to; rath-
er, it’s a place you must enter. It’s a highway to stay on, and
which will advance you forward into every spiritual blessing.
Proximity To The Throne
Here’s a definition of holiness that I submit for your

thoughtful consideration. Holiness is: Proximity to the
throne.
At the throne of God are myriads of creatures. Some
have wings, other’s don’t. Some have two eyes while oth-
ers have eyes all over their bodies and even under their
wings. Some look like men; others look like animals, such
as a lion or a calf; still others look like birds, such as an
eagle. Some have been with God
Holiness is proxim- longer than others. Those with the
ity to the throne. greatest honor seem to be those who
live closest to God, living inside and
around the throne itself. These be-
ings are given various names in Scripture such as angels,
cherubim, seraphim, and living creatures. When referring
to all of them at once, the Bible uses an interesting phrase.
It calls them the “holy ones” (see Daniel 4:17; Job 5:1).
I want to suggest they’re not holy because of who they
are; they’re holy because of where they are. They reside in
the Holy Place, the place where God dwells, and they are
made holy because of their proximity to God.
They’re not holy because of who they are; they’re holy
because of who God is. They’re not holy because of some-
thing inherent to them, but because of something inherent
to God. God alone has holiness as an inherent attribute.
He alone is “The Holy One.” All others who surround His
throne are holy as a derived quality. They derive their ho-
liness from their proximity to The Holy One. Everything
close to God is holy. Why? Because God radiates holiness,
and everything close to Him becomes holy by virtue of its
nearness to Him. In other words, He brings them into that
quality or state which enables them to live in His immedi-
ate presence without being destroyed.
If you get close enough to God, you too will become

holy. Not because of who you are, but because of where
you are. You have received the sprinkling with blood, you
have entered with boldness into the throneroom, you have
drawn near to God; and now the holiness that defines
God’s personhood permeates every atom of your being
and makes you holy, too. You’re holy because you’re in
the presence of The Holy One.
When you understand this principle, you have no hes-
itation in saying, “I am a holy man of God,” or “I am a
holy woman of God.” Being “a holy man of God” loses
its mystique, its sense of elitist superiority, or the con-
notation of “exceptional spiritual maturity.” I don’t call
myself holy because I’m impressed with myself. Quite the
opposite—I’m profoundly aware of my current struggles.
But I’m learning to spend more
and more time in the throneroom, If you get close
and less and less time away from enough to God, you
the throneroom. So I’m willing to too will become holy.
say in an unabashed, matter-of- Not because of who
fact way, “I’m a holy man of God.” you are, but because
Why? Simply because the blood of where you are.
of Christ has brought me into the
throneroom of heaven.
Holiness Is A Fire
Some people define as holy the person who has

achieved complete victory over the world, the flesh, and
the devil. Such a definition makes holiness a formidable
mountain that appears almost impossible to climb. If I de-
fine holiness as complete spiritual victory, I’ll probably see
myself as never able to attain it in this life. Holiness, in
that distorted model, becomes mostly a list of things that
one must not do. “I don’t do this, this, this, this, this, this,
or this; so therefore, I must be holy.” Sorry, Charlie, but

your list of all the things you don’t do isn’t able to make
you holy.
I’m suggesting that holiness is not so much what I
don’t do, as it is what I do do. I get sprinkled with blood,
step into the throneroom, and stay there. That’s what I do
do, and that’s what makes me holy.
Holiness is more than simply an absence of defilement.
You can focus on cleaning up your act, removing all that
defiles, and still not find holiness. Why? Because holiness is
not merely the absence of sin; it’s the presence of fire.
To illustrate, suppose I want to build a bonfire. I gather
branches and sticks from the woods and place them in a
heap. But the sticks I’ve collected are muddy and wet. So I
take time to clean off the mud and allow the wood to dry
out. Eventually I have a pile of wood that is clean and dry.
But just because I’ve gotten rid of everything that could
quench the fire does not mean I have a bonfire. Getting
rid of the fire-retardants does not give me a bonfire. I don’t
have a bonfire until there’s—fire!
Holiness is a bonfire. (Because our God is a consuming
fire.) You can get rid of everything that might extinguish
your spiritual flame, but just getting rid of the negative
does not mean you’re ablaze with holiness. You’re not a
living bonfire of holiness until you step into the Holiest,
get kindled with the living flame upon the altar of God,
and burn with a holy fire in the presence of His glorious
holiness.
Come with me now as we look at the power of stand-
ing in holiness.
Chapter 8
STANDING in HOLINESS
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“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may
stand in His holy place?” (Psalm 24:3). Holiness, for the
most part, just stands. Why? Because when you finally
attain to the holy place and gaze upon the glorious throne
that has fascinated God’s holy ones for untold millennia,
you are so overwhelmed at the glorious majesty before
you that all you care to do is stand and stare.
That’s all that the living creatures do: stand and stare.
And cry, “Holy, holy, holy!” These amazing creatures
whose entire bodies are covered with eyes—eyes represent
strength of intelligence, or capacity to comprehend and
absorb—can’t take their eyes off the throne. The smart-
est creatures in the universe are utterly consumed with
gaping at the boundless wonder of God’s matchless works
and peerless personhood.
The most pleasurable exhilaration is experienced by
the holy ones who stand in the holy place and gaze upon
God. Once you attain to this holiness, this will become your
chief occupation as well. You will simply want to be found
standing and “burning before the throne” (Revelation 4:5).
Once you see what they see, you’ll stare like they stare.
Jesus revealed that the angels mostly just stand before
God. “‘Take heed that you do not despise one of these little
ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always

see the face of My Father who is in heaven’” (Matthew
18:10). The angels “always” stand and behold the face of
the Father; if the slightest hint of displeasure crosses His
face, His angels will be dispatched with vengeance against
those who despise His little ones.
Gabriel the archangel, when he appeared to Zacharias,
described his occupation in this manner: “‘I am Gabriel,
who stands in the presence of God’” (Luke 1:19).
“So what do you do, Gabriel?”
“I stand in the presence of God.”
“Yes, I understand that, but I’m wondering what you
do.”
“I stand in the presence of God.”
“Yes, I get that, but I mean, you’re an angel; so
what exactly does an angel do?”
“I’m not sure you’re hearing me,” I can imagine an
exasperated Gabriel retorting. “That’s what I do. I stand
in the presence of God, gape with wonder at His glory,
and burn with fiery desire before the throne. If He sends
me somewhere, I go; if He doesn’t send me, I just stand
there.”
Gabriel appeared three times in Scripture. He first ap-
peared to Daniel; then roughly 600 years later he appeared
to Zacharias; and then six months later he came to Mary.
That was the busy season. What was Gabriel doing during
all those “silent” centuries? Standing in holiness.
The goal of my life is to be found standing in holiness.
The hosts of heaven stand before “the Lord of hosts.” I con-
sider myself just one member of heaven’s hosts (armies).
It’s my privilege, as part of heaven’s hosts, to stand before
God in holiness, and then one day to be found in His tri-
umphal train as He rides forth with heaven’s armies to
reclaim this planet as His own (Revelation 19:14).
Standing In Holiness 77
To Be Found Standing
On one occasion, the great Persian king Ahasuerus

had a sudden urge to expedite a certain matter in his king-
dom. It was an unpremeditated, spontaneous decision.
When the urge hit him, he immediately realized he need-
ed a servant to expedite the matter on his behalf. So he
quickly asked his servants who attended him, “‘Who is in
the court?’” (see Esther 6:1-4).
The king had an outer court in which people would
stand and wait when they wanted an audience with
him. If the king was willing to
see them, he would call for them. The one who is found
Until called for, these supplicants standing in holiness
would just wait in the court, hop- when the King wants
ing for a hearing. So the king was something done will
asking, “Is there anyone standing get the assignment.
in the court, waiting for me to call
on them?”
The servants replied, “Yes, there’s one man standing
in the court, waiting on you.” His name was Haman, and
he was an evil man. Since he was the one standing in the
court when the king had a sudden brainchild, he was the
one who was commissioned with the king’s task. I’m not
defending Haman here, he was an evil man. The point I’m
making is, he got the job because he was found standing in
the court when the king wanted something done.
When the King of the universe wants to do something,
He asks the question, “Who is in the court?” What He is
asking is, “Who is in My court, standing in holiness, wait-
ing on Me, available to Me for any Kingdom purpose?”
The one who is found standing in holiness when the King
wants something done will get the assignment.
I see this truth illustrated in the life of Saul of Tarsus. God
had tackled Saul while he was on a road trip to Damascus,
arrested him, and now needed a servant to go to Saul and

prophesy to him his calling as an apostle of the Lamb.
Which servant could He send to Saul? Bear with my imag-
ination as I paint a scenario of how it could have possibly
come down.
God turns to an angel and asks, “Who is in the court?
Send someone to check out Damascus. Is there anyone in
Damascus who is standing in the court? Find someone
who is standing in holiness, ministering to Me, and avail-
able for service.”
A posse of angels is immediately dispatched to scope
out Damascus. Soon, the angel at God’s side is reporting
their findings. “Your Majesty, we have scouted out Da-
mascus, and I hate to say this, but there is no one standing
in the court in Damascus. In fact, everything in Damas-
cus is disrupted right now. You see, when the believers
heard that Saul of Tarsus was coming to town with legal
authority to imprison anyone confessing the Lord Jesus,
things got real chaotic. About half the believers left town.
Some of them renounced their faith. Some went into hid-
ing. Others are trembling in the corners of their houses.
But as far as finding anyone who has not been moved,
anyone who is simply standing in Your courts and minis-
tering to—um, excuse me, Your Honor. Wait a moment, I
have an incoming call.”
The angel cocks his head to listen more closely to his
earpiece. He’s getting an update from the ground troops in
Damascus. “What’s that? You say you’ve found someone
in the court? There’s a man standing in the court? Well,
what’s his name?”
Turning to the throne, the angel reports, “Your Honor,
as it turns out, there’s still one man standing in the court.
They tell me his name is Ananias. Have You ever heard of
him?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of him.”

“Well, Ananias is the only one in all of Damascus who
is still standing in the holy place. Would You like to send
him to Saul?”
“Yes, send Ananias. He’ll do.”
Obviously the above conversation is fictitious, but my
point is this: Ananias got the privilege of commissioning
Paul to his apostolic ministry because he was found stand-
ing in the court when the King needed a servant. During
his lifetime of service, Ananias was going to have one shot
at greatness. If he would be found standing in holiness at the
right moment, he would be commissioned with the defining
task of his life.
This is why sprinkling with blood is so important to
me. I get sprinkled with blood every day so that I might
stand in holiness in the courts of the King and be available
to Him for anything He might need that day. Perhaps my
entire life existence, like that of Ananias’s, will be defined by
one moment in time when I was found standing in holiness.
The Authority Of Holiness
Holiness makes us available in service to God. Those

who stand before God in this manner carry with them an
unmistakable bearing of spiritual authority.
Holy men and women of God, while appearing quite
ordinary on the outside, have an inner reality in God that
gives them authority with men, with hell, and also with
heaven. There are many church leaders who desire to
have authority when they stand before people; but who
will seek to have authority when they stand in the pres-
ence of God?
The only way to gain authority with God is to get sprin-
kled with blood and then stand before Him in holiness. This is
what gives angels their authority. They stand and behold
the face of the Father (Matthew 18:10), which places them

in a position to be sent on any mission at a moment’s no-
tice. Thus, standing in holiness gives them great authority
in heaven.
Holy people also have authority with men. Speaking
of John the Baptist, Mark 6:20 says, “Herod feared John,
knowing that he was a just and holy man.” King Herod
didn’t fear John merely because he was just (righteous).
There are blameless people out there, but they don’t nec-
essarily carry any unusual authority about them. John
had an authority that caused the king to fear, not so much
because he was a just man, but because he was a holy man.
John was a man who stood in the courts of the King and
burned with a holy fire. Herod probably didn’t have accu-
rate language for it, but he perceived there was something
different about John, and it made him tremble. John had
authority with the king because he stood in holiness.
Holy men and women have authority with heaven and
authority with men; and they also have authority with
hell. For example, when the demons recognized Christ’s
authority over them, they cried out, “‘Let us alone! What
have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come
to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!’”
(Mark 1:24). The demons perceived Jesus’ holiness and
knew He had authority over them.
Standing in holiness has the potential to grant you au-
thority in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth. This
is why your enemy targets your holiness so relentlessly.
The scheme of darkness against every single saint, when
all the trappings are removed, is focused strategically on
one specific pinpoint: “Get him out of holiness!” “Get her
out of holiness!”
Your enemy knows that if he can get you to compro-
mise your holiness, you will sacrifice your authority with
men, with heaven, and with hell. The battle of the ages,
therefore, is for the high ground of holiness.
There is no one more dangerous to the designs of
darkness than the man or woman who has learned to get
sprinkled with blood and stand in the holy place before
the Lord of the universe. These are the saints who rewrite
human history.
Noah became a historymaker by standing in holiness
while staring down the taunting sneers of a reviling, un-
believing generation.
Job became a historymaker by standing in holiness
while enduring the most horrific nightmare Satan could
concoct in his hellish laboratory.
Abraham became a historymaker by standing in holi-
ness even when every natural indicator told him it was
impossible for God’s promise to be fulfilled in his life.
Joseph became a historymaker by standing in holiness
in the face of Potiphar’s wife’s seductions, and in the suf-
focating clutch of an old-world, lice-infested, Egyptian
prison.
Naomi became a historymaker by standing in holiness
through the grinding grief of losing her husband and then
both her sons.
Hannah became a historymaker by standing in holi-
ness even though her rival incessantly provoked her with
malicious reminders of her barrenness.
David became a historymaker by standing in holiness
even while he fled from Saul for his life, living every day
with “‘but a step between [him] and death’” (1 Samuel
20:3).
Jeremiah became a historymaker by standing in holi-
ness despite tortures from venomous leaders who viewed
him as an unpatriotic Babylon-lover.
Zacharias became a historymaker by standing in
holiness regardless of the fact that God had seemingly

denied his life-dominating prayer for a son. Decades of
heartsickness over unanswered prayer had so encrusted
his spirit that even when he received a personal visitation
by the radiating archangel Gabriel, he was unable to tran-
sition over into faith. The ten months of muteness was
God’s way to put Zacharias on the fast track into faith.
After the crucible of affliction, Zacharias emerged with
a stunning prophetic anointing that empowered him to
raise his epoch-shifting son, John the Baptist.
The thing that qualified Zacharias for historymaking
was not his faith—he failed on that score. It was his (and
Elizabeth’s) holiness (Luke 1:6). We’re looking at a dy-
namic here that warrants us revisiting a verse mentioned
in the previous chapter.
A highway shall be there, and a road, and it
shall be called the Highway of Holiness. The
unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be
for others. Whoever walks the road, although
a fool, shall not go astray (Isaiah 35:8).
Isaiah mentions “a fool” in this verse. I want to draw
a connection between “a fool” and “an unbeliever.” The
primary essence of foolishness is unbelief. (See Psalm 14:1
and Luke 24:25.) There is nothing more foolish than to
disbelieve any word that proceeds from the mouth of the
living God. Isaiah is saying it’s possible to be a fool (some-
one who is in unbelief) and still be walking “the Highway
of Holiness.”
I hear Isaiah saying, “Even if you’re struggling with
the foolishness of unbelief, stay on the Highway of Ho-
liness. If you will just stay in holiness, you will not go
astray and miss your destiny. Whatever you do, hold to
your holiness! Because if you do, even if you are assailed
by the winds of doubt and perplexity, the Highway of
Holiness will lead you forward into the sunshine of God’s

intended destiny for your life.”
Although a fool (because he succumbed to unbelief),
Zacharias stayed on the Highway of Holiness and eventu-
ally emerged into his ultimate destiny.
Jesus Christ became a Historymaker by standing in
holiness through the darkest ordeal any man has ever en-
dured. The greatest war ever won was fought by a Man
who just stood on the nail and burned with holy love.
Today’s historymakers are forged the same way. The
greatness of your trial becomes an invitation to change
history. Draw your line in the sand.
If you will resolve to stand in holi- Nothing can deter
you from attaining
ness before your God with the love-
your destination on
sick gaze of mesmerized affection,
this Highway of
nothing can deter you from attain- Holiness.
ing your destination on this High-
way of Holiness. The proclamation
uttered over Daniel is yours to claim as well, “‘Your God,
whom you serve continually, He will deliver you’” (Dan-
iel 6:16).
I Shall Not Be Moved
Let’s go back and consider the stunning testimony of

Psalm 15.
Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle?
Who may dwell in Your holy hill? He who
walks uprightly, and works righteousness,
and speaks the truth in his heart…He who
does these things shall never be moved
(Psalm 15:1-2,5),
This Psalm declares that the one who lives in the pres-
ence of God and dwells in the holy place “shall never be
moved.” Stand in holiness and nothing can move you. Ever.
In Psalm 86:1-2, David used three adjec-

tives to describe his condition: “poor,” “needy,”
and “holy.” Being poor and needy did not dis-
qualify him from being holy. Quite the contrary.
It was because he was poor and needy that he clung to his
holiness. Poverty and neediness didn’t dislodge him from
holiness; they strengthened his resolve to stay in holiness.
Nothing was permitted to move him!
Not everyone reading these words is aware of my per-
sonal trial. In 1992, my world suddenly collapsed when
I was struck by a vocal injury. It came upon me like a
snare upon an unsuspecting bird. I underwent surgery for
a problem in the area of my larynx, but the surgery went
bad. My vocal strength declined with usage until I was
left with perhaps 5%of my vocal ability. I have significant
pain levels whenever I attempt to use the little voice that
I have. Above all, I am clinging fervently to God’s many
promises related to my healing.
During the wait, my life has become a string of resig-
nations. I am a lot of “former” things: a former pastor; a
former worship leader; a former president, etc. I struggled
for years to remain faithful to my ministry callings, but as
my voice grew steadily weaker, I was slowly squeezed out
of the ministries I loved. Eventually, I was forced to resign
our pastorate in upstate New York. In the spring of 1999,
we moved 1,100 miles across the plains of America to Kan-
sas City, Missouri, where we now enjoy our partnership
with the International House Of Prayer (ihop.org). As I
write this, 16 years after the initial injury, I am able to
maintain a light speaking load, traveling most weekends
to minister to the body of Christ. But my primary focus
is on living a life of prayer and praise, burning in holiness
before the throne of God, and waiting on Him in faith to
send from heaven and save me (Psalm 57:3).
That quick snapshot on my infirmity will help you un-

derstand my next point. When I was in Psalm 15, and saw
that the one who dwells in God’s holy hill shall never be
moved, I began to have a quiet argument with the Lord.
I said in my heart, “Lord, I don’t get this verse. It says
that your holy one shall never be moved. I’ve held tena-
ciously to holiness, but I’ve been moved during these past
16 years from just about everything I ever knew. I’ve been
moved from the titles I held, from the offices I filled, from
the ministries in which I served, and from most of the re-
lationships I once enjoyed. And besides all that, I’ve been
moved 1,100 miles from beautiful upstate New York to
Missouri of all places! How can You say, ‘He shall not be
moved’? I’ve been moved from just about everything!”
Softly, the question came back, “Have you been moved
from before My throne?”
Instantly, that question answered everything for me.
“O Abba,” I replied, “As long as You help me, I shall
never be moved from before Your throne! I am resolved
now, more than ever, to stand before You in holiness. Hav-
ing done all to stand, I will continue to stand before You.
This is the most important thing in my life. By Your grace,
nothing shall move me.”
Now that I’m standing here, in the holy place, you
can’t trip me, or stop me, or frighten, entice, tempt, in-
terrupt, hinder, distract, detour, derail, deter, disorient, or
dissuade me. I am immovable in holiness.
You can take away my titles, you can take away my
ministry, you can remove me from the platform, you can
take away my song, you can take away my friends, and
you can take away my voice. But there’s one thing you
can’t take from me. You can’t take away my holiness. As
long as I live, I am resolved to stand before my Beloved,
give Him the deepest affections of my heart, and burn
before Him with the holy fires of lovesickness and heart-

sickness. I shall not be moved!
Holiness Will Rise Again
You can bury a holy man or woman of God under a

mountain of grief and heartache, but when that man or
woman clings to holiness, he or she cannot be held captive
by “so great a death” (2 Corinthians 1:10), but will surely
rise up in the salvation of the Lord.
Go ahead, Satan, and bury Job under a mountain of
grief. The only problem is, you’ve buried a holy man of
God who refuses to be moved from before the throne. You
cannot keep this holy man buried forever; eventually, he
will rise and do great damage to your kingdom because of
the testimony of an overcoming life.
Go ahead, Satan, and bury Joseph in a stale, stinky,
Egyptian prison. But you’ve made a strategic error be-
cause you’ve buried one of God’s holy ones. This coffin
cannot hold a holy man of God. You can’t keep holiness
buried forever. The longer you try to hold him down, the
higher he’ll rise. Keep Joseph in slavery and imprisonment
for ten years, and he will rise to the throne of the land.
Go ahead, Satan, and bury Elizabeth under a moun-
tain of sorrow and reproach (because of childlessness).
But you’ve made another strategic error—you’ve buried
a holy woman of God. Elizabeth has kept herself “blame-
less” in holiness (Luke 1:6), and holiness cannot remain
shackled forever in this prison of barrenness. When God
resurrects her, it will not simply be into motherhood, but
He will make her the mother of the greatest prophet ever
(John the Baptist).
Romans 1:4 says that the Lord Jesus was “declared
to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit
of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” In other
words, it was Christ’s holiness that precipitated His resur-

rection. This truth was prophesied in David, “For You will
not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy
One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10). That verse applies
initially to David, who was buried under a heap of heart-
ache and distress while he ran from Saul for his life. David
was resurrected from his ghastly wilderness because of his
holiness. But Psalm 16:10 is actually speaking of Christ Je-
sus, who did not see corruption. Jesus’ body experienced
rigor mortis, but it never experienced corruption because
He rose before decay set in.
Go ahead, Satan, and bury Jesus Christ in a tomb. Now,
that’s a major strategic error! You’ve just buried Holiness
Himself! The grave could not contain Holiness. On the
third day, Jesus rose from the grave and was raised by the
Father to the highest place.
Therefore God also has highly exalted Him
and given Him the name which is above
every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of
those on earth, and of those under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father (Philippians 2:9-11).
It was true of David and of Christ, and it’s also true
of you! The adversary can’t keep holiness buried forever.
Even if you feel dead and buried
under the weight of God’s disci- The adversary can’t
plining hand, devote yourself to keep holiness buried
His holy presence. Regardless of forever.
your shattered dreams and de-
ferred hopes, get sprinkled with the blood every day and
live in the bosom of the Father. As you love Him from
your grave, you are robbing Satan of his agenda for your
life, and releasing God’s agenda for your life.

Remain in holiness and Psalm 91 becomes the pro-
phetic declaration of Jesus Christ over your life:
“Because he has set his love upon Me,
therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on
high, because he has known My name. He
shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I
will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him
and honor him. With long life I will satisfy
him, and show him My salvation” (Psalm
91:14-16).
If you feel you’ve been consigned to a hell all your
own, let me offer some advice based on Romans 1:4: Bring
holiness into your hell. It’s inevitable—holiness will rise
again!
Never Rule Out Holiness
You might see a saint who appears to be knocked out

of the race, but if that saint is living in holiness, don’t rule
him out too hastily. Because if he resolves to stay in holi-
ness, his story’s not finished. That’s what Micah was af-
firming when he confessed, “Therefore I will look to the
Lord; I will wait for the God of my
Bring holiness salvation; my God will hear me.
into your hell. Do not rejoice over me, my enemy;
when I fall, I will arise; when I sit in
darkness, the Lord will be a light to
me” (Micah 7:7-8). As long as you’re standing here, sprin-
kled with the blood of the Lamb, accepted by the Father, and
burning in holiness, your story’s not over. It’s never too late
for holiness to be exonerated.
If you’ve fallen into a Joseph-like pit, one reason may
be because God is wanting to write a story with your life.
God always writes the best stories with His holy ones.
Could it be that it was because of your holiness that Satan

targeted you? Could it be that it’s because of your holi-
ness that God will reverse and redeem all that the enemy
intended for evil, and turn it into good?
God: Storyteller Par Excellence
Let me tell you a bit more about my story. I’m a PK

(preacher’s kid), raised by godly parents who modeled au-
thenticity and integrity. Family altar was as standard to
our morning as breakfast (Sunday being the only excep-
tion because we went to Sunday
School and church). I was taught God doesn’t write
to pray from the moment I could short stories.
repeat the simplest words. During
my childhood I responded to so
many altar calls that I don’t know when I was actually
saved. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love Jesus.
Never, even in my teen years, did I rebel or turn away
from my Lord. When asked to give my testimony, I would
hesitate and begin to mumble. “Well, I was raised in a
Christian home…um…I was baptized in the Holy Spirit
at age nine…uh…I’ve loved the Lord all my life…” In two
minutes my story was done.
“My testimony is boring,” I told the Lord.
It’s as though He shot back, “We can change that.”
Since 1992, I’ve been profoundly aware that God is writ-
ing a story with my life.
God’s a great Author, and He loves to write stories
with the lives of His holy ones. Not skinny, thin little
booklets; He doesn’t write short stories. He likes to write
fat books that testify to the greatness of His salvation and
the grandeur of His name.
I’ve discovered something about God: He’s got a flair
for the dramatic. If it’s a choice between black-and-white
and color, He goes with the colorful version. God doesn’t

stay in the center lane; He flirts with precipices. His sym-
phonies start out with violinic serenity, but before they’re
done He’s churning an armada of timpani into a thunder-
ous crescendo.
Look at Peter, for example. Peter was in Herod’s prison
for a number of days, but when did God decide to liber-
ate Peter from prison? The very morning that Herod was
intending to execute him. God could have delivered him
days earlier, but He waited till the last moment.
Why is He sometimes a last-minute God? Why does
he stall on intervention until the tension becomes gar-
gantuan? Why does He wait to help His people until “the
break of dawn”? (Psalm 46:5). I mean, look at how He
wrote the symphony of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Talk
about sensational! He just kept intensifying the pressure
on Pharaoh and all of Egypt and Israel until it seemed ev-
erybody would explode. Finally, Pharaoh let God’s people
go—only to change his mind and chase them into the sea.
The whole ordeal is so very dramatic. And what a fantas-
tic climax! Pharaoh and his army end up as bloated corps-
es on the beach. There’s no getting around it, God likes to
make big, dramatic splashes that culminate in magnificent
demonstrations of His mighty salvation.
Little wonder Solomon wrote, “Blessed be the Lord
God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things!”
(Psalm 72:18). That’s all God ever does—wondrous things.
If it’s not wondrous, He didn’t do it. And if He did it, it’ll
leave you marveling in gaping admiration.
Psalm 92:7 tells us that God purposely exalts the wick-
ed so that the calamity of their fall will be all the greater.
But He does the exact opposite with His holy ones. He or-
chestrates the extremity of their humiliation so that the glory
of their exaltation shines all the brighter.
When I finally realized the Author of faith was setting

me up to obtain a good testimony, I began to complain,
“Lord, if You’re writing a story with my life, then can we
get on with it? Hurry up! This is taking forever!”
God’s answer was, “I call fast boring.” Turns out He
likes a good plot. He’s not interested in making your life a
flash-in-the-pan, BOOM-it’s-over kind of explosion that’s
over as fast as it came. No, He intends to savor every phase
of your journey. He says, “I’m going to write some sus-
pense into your story. A little bit of intrigue. A little bit of
mystery. A good dose of romance.” (Because by the time
you’re done, you’re going to come out of the thing totally
enthralled with the beauty of the Lord Jesus.) “I’ll take
you through the valley of the shadow of death. You’ll en-
gage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. You’ll smell
demons’ breath. At times you’ll feel like you’re careen-
ing past the cliffs of Hades. But if you’ll stay in the secret
place of the Most High, I’ll bring you through to rich ful-
fillment.”
In the end, you will stand in the “great cloud of wit-
nesses” (Hebrews 12:1), raise your hands to the One you
love, and testify through tears of gratitude, “He was faith-
ful to finish what He started in my life. His grace was suf-
ficient for me. He who is mighty has done great things for
me, and I am glad! Holy is His name!”
When we are gathered around
the throne with the saints of all I don’t want Joseph
the ages, and we begin to share our to be the only one
stories about the goodness of God, with a great story.
every one of us will want to have
a story to tell. We’ll rejoice in oth-
ers’ testimonies, but just listening to others won’t satisfy
us. It won’t be good enough that Joseph has a great story
to tell. When we get to the other side, we’ll want a story of
our own! We’ll want to be able to say, “Sit down and listen
for a while, and let me tell you about the time…”
Therefore, we shall not be moved. We will get sprin-
kled with blood every day, take our stand at the throne
of God, burn with holiness in the courts of the King, and
wait on Him until He proves Himself the Finisher of our
faith.
“‘He who is holy, let him be holy still’” (Revelation

22:11).
Amen.
Chapter 9
THE WAR to REMAIN in HOLINESS
T
The primary battleground in every believer’s life is the
fight to remain in holiness. Satan will do everything in
his power to move us from holiness, so in this chapter I
want to deal with how he goes about it. It’s essential that
we understand our enemy’s schemes because, when we
understand the nature of the war, we are empowered to
withstand more effectively.
God Brought David Into Holiness
David was a man who stepped into holiness in a way

that was very uncommon for his dispensation. He lived
during a time when the way into the Holiest was cordoned
off by a heavy, curtain-like veil. Only the high priest was
to enter behind the veil into the Holiest, and that just once
a year. The veil signified this message: “The way into the
Holiest of All has not yet been made manifest. When that
way is manifest, the veil will be torn, indicating that all
can now have access to the Holiest through the blood of
the Lamb.” (See Hebrews 9:7-8.)
Throughout his upbringing, David’s only paradigm for
approaching God was Moses’ tabernacle. Ordinary people
couldn’t gaze upon Holiness (the ark) because it was
intentionally hidden by God behind a veil. Since Moses’

law mandated that the ark remain behind the veil, David
must have been startled when the Holy Spirit revealed to
him, perhaps through Samuel or Nathan, that God was
inviting him to approach Him under an entirely new para-
digm.
However He communicated it to David, God basically
said, “David, I’m inviting you into a unique dimension of
intimacy with Me, and here’s how I want you to come into
it. I want you to find the ark of the covenant and bring it
to Zion. But instead of placing it behind a veil or curtain, I
want you to build a tabernacle for it, and then position the
ark in open view. Then, I want you to come and sit before
the ark, draw near to Me, gaze on My glory, cultivate a
fiery spirit of love, and burn before
The primary battle-
Me in holiness.”
ground in every
What an invitation! God was giv-
believer’s life is the
ing David an entirely new paradigm
fight to remain in
holiness.
of what it meant to approach Him
and worship Him in the beauties of
holiness. He didn’t realize it but, by
placing himself before the ark in this manner, he became a
prophetic symbol of the kind of approach God was prepar-
ing for His people. The time would come when men would
be able to approach God, not through a veil of cloth, but
through the veil of Christ’s flesh (Hebrews 10:20), made
acceptable to God by the sprinkling of Christ’s blood.
How Did David Do It?
David would start by grabbing his guitar (well, okay,

it was a harp—but his harp was the equivalent of today’s
guitar). He would bring the guitar into the tabernacle, seat
himself in front of the ark, and gaze into the glory of God
that dwelt upon the ark. Then, as he strummed the guitar,
The War To Remain In Holiness 95
he would start stepping out into prophetic song, singing

praises spontaneously to the One he loved. As he sang,
the river of love would begin to flow in his spirit, and he
would begin to soar in the psalmist anointing. It was here
that some of his best psalms were composed.
I can’t prove this, but I’m convinced David would also
bring portions of the Law (the Torah, the books of Moses),
open them up before him, and sing from the Scriptures as
he meditated in the Law of God. I have yet another per-
sonal theory about David: I think his favorite book was
Deuteronomy. “Why Deuteronomy?” you might ask. Be-
cause when you see some of the words that are used in
Deuteronomy, and then come over to the Psalms, you find
the vocabulary of Deuteronomy all through the Psalms.
In Deuteronomy, for example, you find one place where
God is called King; then, when you flip over to Psalms,
you see it everywhere: King, King, King, King.
In Deuteronomy, God is called the Rock; in Psalms,
David calls Him “my rock” over and over.
In Deuteronomy, there’s one verse that refers to God
as our shield. David peered into that truth about God as he
played before the ark, and as a result he wrote many songs
that talked about God as our shield.
In Deuteronomy, you find just one verse that calls God
our refuge. Check out the Psalms and it’s everywhere—
refuge, refuge, refuge. Why? Because David would medi-
tate in the truths of the Law, allow them to expand in his
understanding as he worshiped before the ark, and then
he would write down the inspired songs the Holy Spirit
gave him.
This was David’s way of digging deep into the rich
deposits of God’s word. He would follow a lode of revela-
tion, mining from a verse everything he could uncover,
and then he would expound in song his insight into that
Scripture. As he used the word to empower his worship

and intercession, his heart would overflow with fiery love,
and he would stand before God and burn in the place of
holiness. Guitar…Torah…ark…gazing…intimacy…fire…
holiness…lovesickness…psalm-writing…weeping… This
was the one thing David came to live for (Psalm 27:4).
The Assault Upon David
When David found this holy place, he became danger-

ous to the kingdom of darkness. So Satan pulled out his
best strategies to try to move David from holiness.
Satan has three primary strategies to move the saint
of God from the place of holiness: distraction, discour-
agement, and temptation. These three battlefronts are as
common to man today as they were thousands of years
ago. They summarize the primary battle in the life of ev-
ery person reading these words.
Distraction, discouragement, and temptation—those
are the three biggies. After studying the vulnerabilities of
the human frame for centuries, Satan has fine-tuned how
he assaults God’s people and nar-
Satan has three rowed it down to three basic strate-
primary strategies gies. One of those three is probably
to move the saint your major battleground right now.
of God from the Mind you, if you stay with us long
place of holiness: enough, you’ll experience all three.
distraction, dis- (a) Distraction.
couragement, and
Satan sought to move Da-
temptation.
vid from holiness by distract-
ing him with overwhelming
demands. Satan doesn’t mind if David receives a pro-
motion to the throne because, even though it means
he will have a larger sphere of influence among people,
it also means that he will likely be bombarded with all
kinds of new demands upon his time and attention. The

new and pressing responsibilities have the result, in most
cases, of distracting God’s servant from his primary com-
mitment to abiding in the place of holiness. Thus dis-
tracted, the effectiveness of God’s servant is significantly
compromised. This strategy is effective in the majority of
cases, so Satan is willing to gamble that David will be just
like the other guys. His plan is that David will be swept up
in the time demands of busywork and sacrifice his com-
mitment to spend time burning in holiness. Your enemy
knows that holiness, above all, requires time. You can’t
live in holiness on the run.
What was David’s response? I can imagine David say-
ing to the nation’s leaders, “You’re telling me you want me
to be your king. But are you sure? I need to tell you who
I am, so that if you get me as king you understand what
you’re getting. I’m a guy who lives for only one thing.
There’s one thing I’ve asked of the Lord, and this is what
I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of my life. My primary life vision is to gaze upon the
beauty of the Lord and to ask Him questions while I’m
in His presence, waiting on Him to hear His voice. So if
you’re willing for that kind of package to be your king,
then I’m willing to serve. But if you want someone who
will become servant to all the demands that vie for the at-
tention of a nation’s leader, then I’m not your guy.”
The people chose to install David as king, and Satan did
his utmost to distract David and weaken his spirit. David,
however, refused to allow distraction to move him from ho-
liness.
(b) Discouragement.
Wow, discouragement can be almost overwhelming at
times. Demonic powers seem to have studied the art of as-
saulting God’s servants with discouragement, oppression,
and depression. If there’s anything Satan is experienced

at, it’s introducing lies and doubt and unbelief into the
thought life of believers. He seeks to convince us that God
is not going to work on our behalf this time around, and
that this thing is going from bad to worse. Satan tries to
make us feel trapped, helpless, hopeless, alone, discarded
by God, and without recourse. His croaky voice whispers,
“Nothing is going to change. Except for the worse.”
The enemy used discouragement against David more
than once. When David was hiding out in forests and wil-
dernesses and caves, running for his life from Saul, he
battled discouragement on virtually a daily basis. He was
constantly fighting to encourage himself in the Lord.
David chose the right response to discouragement: he
devoted himself to prayer and holiness. David chose the
response that Jesus Himself modeled for us because when
Jesus was hit with discouragement He went to the place of
prayer. The more He hurt, the more He prayed. And when
He really hurt, He prayed even harder (Luke 22:44).
This is the path the ancients walked. When they were
assaulted with discouragement, they prayed. I’m talking
about prayer that is aided and lubricated by fasting and
meditation in the word. David got on that ancient path
and prayed his way through to victory. And he did it over
and over. That’s why his psalms carry such power for
us still today. Many of them were birthed through his
struggles with discouragement and depression. Now, as
we pray and sing our way through David’s psalms, we gain
strength and grace to resist the stench of the dragon’s breath.
Not only do we overcome in the battle, we’re made stron-
ger for it. The things we learned in our struggle are now
being used to empower other believers in their battles
with discouragement. We’re not only conquerors over
the enemy’s onslaught, we’re “more than conquerors”
(Romans 8:37)—we’ve emerged from the battle even

more dangerous to the kingdom of darkness than when
we went in.
Satan did his utmost to discourage David, but David re-
fused to allow his struggles with discouragement to move
him from the place of holiness. He persevered in holiness
in the face of both distraction and discouragement.
Now we come to Satan’s third tactic: Temptation.
(c) Temptation.
Here’s where David’s story took a most unfortunate
turn. Distraction and discouragement didn’t sideline Da-
vid, but temptation proved to be his nemesis.
David’s Battle With Temptation
Without question, David was in Satan’s cross hairs.

As long as David lived in the place of holiness, he was a
threat to the ambitions of darkness. Satan was doubtless
waiting, therefore, for the perfect opportunity to exploit
the sinfulness of David’s flesh. Finally, the right moment
presented itself.
David just happened to look out from his palace one
day and saw Bathsheba bathing. Lust conceived in his
heart and gave birth to sin (James 1:15). David ended up
committing adultery with her. Then, when he learned
that she had become pregnant from their tryst, he devised
a plan to cover up their adultery. His plan seemed to work.
He murdered Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, married her,
and thus became the “legitimate” father of the child she
was carrying. Nobody knew otherwise.
Nobody, that is, except God. And Satan. And David.
Satan’s scheme had been successful. David had been
sidelined, knocked out of the place of holiness. David
knew it. And so did God.
That’s why God, in His mercy, sent Nathan to David
to confront him with his sin. God wanted to restore David

to holiness. When Nathan confronted David, David con-
fessed his sin openly and repented passionately before
God.
I have a personal theory about this story. I think David
was over-ripe to repent. When Nathan finally confronted
him, I think David was intensely relieved to stop the cha-
rade, repent, and be restored to his Father’s arms. Why do
I think that? Because when you’ve
Once you’ve known known the exhilaration of burning
the thrill of holi-
in holiness, and then lose it, you are
ness, you make a
absolutely miserable. Once you’ve
wretched sinner.
known the thrill of holiness, you’re
ruined for ever. What I mean is,
you’re never again able to enjoy sin. You make a wretched
sinner. You’ve known the wonder of gazing upon His holi-
ness, and now the bankrupt counterfeits of sin are never
again able to satisfy.
The Terror Of A Quenched Spirit
Before he repented, I can imagine David trying to re-

turn to holiness by his own efforts. He picks up his gui-
tar, enters the tabernacle, sits before the ark, and shakes
himself. “Wow, that was a bad month! Whew! I need to
shake that off. That was nothing short of a nightmare. I’m
going to put that behind me and press forward. It’s time to
hit the delete button. Aarghh. Okay. Just forget about the
whole thing. I’m picking up and moving on. I just need to
sing and worship and get back to where I was.”
So he hits a chord on his guitar, peers forward at the ark
of the covenant, and tries to sing. Paste. It feels like paste
in his mouth. His tongue won’t work right. “Man, this is
tough!” He strums a few more chords. Nothing is moving.
“Tomorrow. I need to come back tomorrow,” David
thinks to himself. “I need a little more time.”

He comes back the next day. He sits down, gazes at the
ark, hits a chord on his guitar, and tries to worship. “I love
You, Lord! I love You with all my heart. Lord, You know I
love You!” This time he stays with it longer. He’s trying to
fan the flame. He’s desperate to have the old fire back in
his spirit. He sings through one of his favorite psalms, the
one that always set his heart on fire in the past.
Nothing.
“Tomorrow! I think if I just relax a bit and come back
tomorrow, it will be a new day.”
He returns the next day to once again sit before the
ark. Strum, strum, strum. Nothing. This time his heart
starts to pound in his chest and he begins to panic. “Oh
no! I’ve lost it! I’ve lost the fire! What am I going to do?”
You see, David had known the exhilaration of wor-
shiping in holiness. He had known the joy of having a
river of holy love course through his being, igniting new
songs within his spirit, and expanding his knowledge of
his beloved Lord. Now, the fire was gone! He was success-
ful in hiding his sin from the public, but he couldn’t pre-
tend with God. He had lost the most precious thing in his
life, and I’m persuaded he was desperate to get it back.
That’s why I believe that when Nathan confront-
ed him, David’s response was probably something like,
“Thank you, thank you, thank you! O how I’ve needed to
repent! I needed your help, Nathan. Thank you for being
faithful and delivering the word of the Lord. I’ve missed
the glory of God’s holy fire in my spirit, and I am so ready
to confess my sin and return to Him.”
Restoration To Holiness
When David repented of his sin, he wrote one of the
most moving psalms in your Bible. I’m referring to Psalm 51,
the psalm he wrote at the time he repented of his adultery

and murder. Here’s a brief excerpt.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew
a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me
away from Your presence, and do not take
Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the
joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your
generous Spirit (Psalm 51:10-12).
In Psalm 51, David coined a term that appears for
the very first time in Scripture. When a word or phrase
appears for the first time in the Bible, it is deserving of
special attention because it constitutes the cornerstone
occurrence of that truth. Every other occurrence of that
truth in Scripture builds upon the precedent established
by that initial mention.
Up until Psalm 51, every designation of the Third Per-
son of the Godhead was expressed as “the Spirit,” or “the
Spirit of God,” or “the Spirit of the Lord.” But now, for the
first time ever, David cries out, “Do not take Your Holy
Spirit from me.” David was the first one to call the Spirit of
God the Holy Spirit. Here’s how I imagine David explain-
ing his revelation into this appellation for God’s Spirit.
“When I stepped away from holiness by falling to temp-
tation, I lost the fire in my heart and the Spirit departed
from me. When the Spirit left, I knew it was because I had
compromised my holiness. That’s when I realized that He
is, above and beyond all else, a Holy Spirit.”
Little wonder David went on to pray, “Oh God, please
do not ever again remove Your Holy Spirit from my life!
The reason I live is to worship in Your presence with Your
holy fire. Without Your Holy Spirit ablaze in my spirit, life
is not worth living. So whatever You do—however You
decide to discipline me for my sin—please don’t take Your
Holy Spirit away from me!”
God Wants To Restore You!
If David could counsel us from heaven today, I think

he would say something like, “There’s nothing worth losing
your fire! Take it from me, a guy who had it and then lost
it. I paid an agonizing price for the wisdom that I am now
sharing with you. The passing pleasures of sin were not
worth what I lost. We’re made to
burn before God with a holy fire, We’re made to burn
and there’s nothing worth losing before God with a
holy fire, and there’s
that.”
nothing worth losing
The first observation to be
that.
made regarding David’s failure
is this: There were consequences
for his sin. He paid dearly for it, especially in his family.
Nathan told David of the unfortunate consequences that
would follow, even though his sin was forgiven.
“‘Now therefore, the sword shall never depart
from your house, because you have despised
Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the
Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the Lord:
‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you
from your own house; and I will take your
wives before your eyes and give them to your
neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in
the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly,
but I will do this thing before all Israel, before
the sun.’” So David said to Nathan, “I have
sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said
to David, “The Lord also has put away your
sin; you shall not die. However, because by
this deed you have given great occasion to the
enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child
also who is born to you shall surely die” (2
Samuel 12:10-14).
We see, then, that sinful failure is no small thing, and

we should tremble in godly fear of even coming close to
crossing the line.
The second observation to be made about David’s fail-
ure is this: David’s sin and subsequent restoration are a
compelling testimony to the grace and mercy of God. Da-
vid’s life tells us that even when we fail, we never fall so
low that God cannot pick us up and restore us. David had
become a murderer and adulterer, and yet God restored
him to holiness. David’s story encourages our hearts as
we grapple with our own deficiencies and tendencies
to wander. His testimony gives us hope, reassuring our
hearts that when we have stepped away from holiness we
can repent, get sprinkled again with blood, crawl back up on
the highway, and be restored to communion with our beloved
Savior.
To remain in holiness is a war. We know the war is
real, and we’re sober about it because the stakes are so
high. Our guard is up, and we’re determined to stand! If
we should ever fall, however, to distraction or discourage-
ment or temptation, we know from David’s example that
we serve a God who loves to restore. Therefore, we will
not be disillusioned. We will not turn away. We shall rise
again. We may have lost a battle but we will win this war!
His grace and blood are sufficient to renew us to His lov-
ing embrace.
Here’s what we’re going to do: Repent quickly, get
sprinkled, get back in His arms, and stay there.
Chapter 10
RIGHTEOUSNESS: PEARL of GREAT PRICE
W
We have talked about drawing near to the Holiest, but I
have not yet identified, in a clear and precise way, exactly
what qualifies us to approach God. So let’s back up a bit
and examine our basis for access to the presence of a holy
God. It all comes down to one fundamentally necessary
commodity.
There is one commodity in the universe that is to be
coveted above and beyond all else, and it is this: Righteous-
ness. Righteousness is the quality of being just before God,
without sin or any defilement. More than anything else,
when you stand before God you want to be viewed as righ-
teous in His sight.
Why? Because entrance into God’s presence and king-
dom is granted only to those who are completely righteous
before Him. If you do not meet the full requirements of
God’s righteousness, He cannot receive you into heaven.
His kingdom and presence are too glorious to be sullied by
anything that defiles. Any kind of defilement, be it ever so
minuscule, disqualifies us from entrance into the eternal
city. To gain the high ground of heaven, we must fully
meet God’s standards of righteousness.
The Bible uses the phrase, “‘the wisdom of the just’”
(Luke 1:17). Said another way, righteousness is smart. You
will never do anything wiser than pursue biblical righ-

teousness.
Paul was emphatic in declaring how important this
righteousness was to him. It was so important to him that
it became the primary pursuit of his life:
But what things were gain to me, these I
have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I
also count all things loss for the excellence
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,
for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and count them as rubbish, that I
may gain Christ and be found in Him, not
having my own righteousness, which is from
the law, but that which is through faith in
Christ, the righteousness which is from God by
faith; that I may know Him and the power of
His resurrection, and the fellowship of His
sufferings, being conformed to His death, if,
by any means, I may attain to the resurrection
from the dead (Philippians 3:7-11).
Paul wanted, above all, to attain to the resurrection
from the dead. And he knew it could happen only by being
found in the righteousness of Christ. The best attempts of
a human at perfection—even those of an eminent apostle
like Paul—were woefully inadequate to satisfy God’s righ-
teous requirements.
When Paul spoke above of a
Righteousness is righteousness based on “the law,”
smart. he meant a righteousness rooted in
“performance,” because in order to
attain the righteousness of the law
one had to perform its every edict, down to the last letter.
When you see the word “law,” therefore, substitute the
word “performance” for a clearer meaning. So we could
Righteousness: Pearl Of Great Price 107
paraphrase Paul to say, “Not having my own righteous-

ness, which is from performance.” Human righteousness is
based upon performance. The only way we can attain righ-
teousness in our own human strength is by meeting every
demand of God’s law without the slightest shortfall. One
tiny mishap and we’re consigned to separation from God.
“Disqualified!” “Unsatisfactory!” “Imperfect!”
Paul knew that if his admittance into the kingdom was
based on his personal performance record, his case was
hopeless. He could never perform, in his own strength,
to make the cut. His only hope was to appear before God in
the righteousness of Christ. This is what the gospel has glo-
riously provided for us. It has made a way for us to ap-
pear before God in the very righteousness of Jesus Christ
by faith. When I stand before God in the righteousness
of Christ, I not only meet God’s minimal requirements
for admittance into heaven; I also become the recipi-
ent of the Father’s lavish affections and bountiful riches.
Paul was saying, “I do everything I do because I am after just
one thing: the righteousness which is from God by faith.”
Righteousness is not an end in itself; it is a means to
an end. The end is holiness; the means is righteousness.
Paul wanted to be in the embrace of the Father, burning
in His immediate presence with holiness and light. But to
get there required righteousness. Paul was willing to do
“whatever it takes” to attain to this righteousness.
Little wonder Paul wrote to Timothy, “Pursue righ-
teousness” (1 Timothy 6:11). This was Paul’s top prior-
ity and he wanted his spiritual son, Timothy, to catch his
values. Jesus admonished His disciples likewise when He
told them, “‘But seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness’” (Matthew 6:33).
Seek righteousness! Nothing could be more valuable
to your eternal destiny.
Paul Attained His Goal
At the end of his life, when he wrote his final epistle,

Paul testified that he had attained to this righteousness.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished
the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there
is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give
to me on that Day, and not to me only but
also to all who have loved His appearing (2
Timothy 4:7-8).
Paul was saying, “I’ve made it! I’ve labored all my life
to be found in Christ and to stand in the righteousness
that comes from faith. Now, at the end of my life, I testify
that I have finished this race. The
The righteousness crown of righteousness is mine. I
of God is attained
will be dying in a short time, and my
by faith, and by Savior is waiting to crown me with
faith alone. the gift of righteousness. It’s every-
thing I’ve ever lived for, and now I
know it’s mine.”
What a glorious, triumphant testimonial to a race well
run!
How Is Righteousness Attained?
Someone might ask, “Paul, how did you do it? You were
willing to do whatever it took, if, by any means, you might
attain to this righteousness. What was your secret?”
Paul’s answer was very clear: Faith. “…the righteous-
ness which is from God by faith” (Philippians 3:9).
The righteousness of God is attained by faith, and by
faith alone. No man can perform his way (through behav-
ior modification) into this righteousness. The only way to
attain the righteousness of Christ is to believe—to believe
in His cross, in what His shed blood accomplished, and in

His resurrection from the dead. His shed blood purchased
the provisions of redemption; His resurrection released
those provisions to our planet. When we believe, God ac-
counts it to us as righteousness.
Faith! Faith in the blood! It’s the only way to righ-
teousness.
The priest in the Old Covenant never inspected the of-
ferer; he only inspected the lamb. When the lamb was ac-
cepted, the person was accepted. Similarly, under the New
Covenant, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God was accepted
by God. Now, when you place your faith in His blood, you
are accepted (righteous) to God.
sprinkling righteousness
Faith in the blood brings us into righteousness. Righ-

teousness qualifies us to step into holiness. And holiness
is the final end toward which every human heart yearns.
Holiness is that place where we burn with fiery affections
in the immediate presence of the eternally holy God. It’s
the ultimate privilege for a human being to experience,
and it is granted only to those who stand before God in the
righteousness of Christ, by faith.
Faith Produces Righteousness
Faith moves the heart of God in a fascinating way. Said

another way, God has a thing for faith. We don’t fully un-
derstand why He likes it so much; but we do know that it
delights and moves His heart in a singularly uncommon
way.
Faith is the catalyst for one of the most fascinating
transactions in all of Scripture. The transaction is simply
this: If you demonstrate faith toward God, God credits you
with righteousness. I can’t altogether tell you why God

gives you His righteousness in exchange for your faith; all
I know is, that’s how God does the math. When you exer-
cise faith in who He is, what He has said, and what He has
done, His heart is so moved that He responds by declaring
you righteous in His sight.
Hebrews 11 (affectionately known as “the faith
chapter”) repeatedly emphasizes that faith produces
righteousness.
By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent
sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained
witness that he was righteous, God testifying
of his gifts; and through it he being dead still
speaks (Hebrews 11:4).
If you were to pop a quiz on some folks and ask them
who was the first person in the Bible whose faith God
accounted as righteousness, most Christians would an-
swer, “Abraham.” But the right answer would be, “Abel.”
Hebrews 11:4 clearly declares that God saw Abel’s faith
when he offered his sacrifice and as a result declared Abel
to be righteous.
“Well, wasn’t Abraham number two on the list?”
Nope. The number two slot goes to Noah.
By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things
not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared
an ark for the saving of his household, by
which he condemned the world and became
heir of the righteousness which is according to
faith (Hebrews 11:7).
The verse couldn’t say it more clearly. Noah inherited
righteousness because of his faith.
“Well, was Abraham number three on the list?” Yes,
you got it right this time. Abraham was the third man in
the Bible to whom God ascribed righteousness because of
his faith. “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted

it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
What is the source of righteousness? I want you to be
real clear about the answer to that question. Do we be-
come righteous by living a blameless lifestyle? No—that’s
the righteousness of the law, and it’s unattainable. There
is only one source of true righteousness: Faith. When you
place your faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, righteous-
ness is immediately credited to you. It’s simply the way
God has chosen to post the transaction.
Sprinkling Makes You Righteous
We get sprinkled with blood for one fundamental

reason: Righteousness. The one who gets sprinkled with
blood is demonstrating his longing for righteousness. The
following Scriptures reveal how Christ’s blood makes us
righteous (just) in the sight of God.
In Him we have redemption through His
blood, the forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7).
Much more then, having now been justified
by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through Him (Romans 5:9).
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify
the people with His own blood, suffered
outside the gate (Hebrews 13:12).
And the blood of Jesus Christ His Son
cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
When you ask Jesus to sprinkle you with His blood, that
very request is a declaration of faith in what Christ’s blood
accomplished. When God sees that kind of faith, He im-
mediately answers it by sprinkling you with blood and
declaring you righteous in His sight. God accounts your
faith in the blood for righteousness.
Faith in the blood says to God:

D “I believe Jesus lived a sinless, perfect life. When He
died He shed innocent blood.”
D “I believe He died vicariously for me, that is, He took
my place in bearing the punishment for my sin.”
D “I believe that Christ’s blood sprinkled on my life
makes me righteous in the sight of God.”
sprinkling righteousness draw near
When you believe like that in the blood, the next logi-
cal step is a no-brainer: Draw near with boldness to the
throne of grace, and enjoy the access you have to the affec-
tions of God’s heart!
The Work Of The Cross
To get broken, twisted, sin-ridden human beings into

the arms of a holy God is a massive endeavor. Such an
endeavor demands enormous labor and Herculean effort.
It can happen through works alone, i.e., through very hard
work.
“Wait a minute!” I hear someone arguing. “You just
finished saying we approach God by faith. Now you’re
saying we approach Him through works?”
Yes. But the work required to get a sinner into the
presence of a holy God is so gargantuan that no human
effort can achieve it. That’s why we needed a Champion
to come along and do for us what we could not do for our-
selves. Only the ultimate Champion, Jesus Christ, could
accomplish the required work.
By dying vicariously on the cross, Jesus Christ accom-
plished what no one else could pull off. He took on the
task of making a way for us to draw near to God, and
He didn’t relent until it was finished. His blood is now

the principal symbol of the work He accomplished. When
the Father sees His blood upon our
lives, He renders a verdict on our To get broken, twist-
acceptability. “Paid in full! This is ed, sin-ridden human
the admittance fee into My pres- beings into the arms
ence. It was paid by My Son. You of a holy God is a
have believed in the work of My massive endeavor.
Son, so now I receive you into My
arms.”
You can get into Father’s arms only through works.
But there’s only one work that satisfies the heart of God:
the work of Calvary. Any other effort to get man into
God’s heart is rejected as woefully inadequate and utterly
unacceptable. In fact, any other work actually angers God
because it both rejects the work of God and presumes to sup-
pose that human effort can pull it off.
The only work God requires of man is this: to believe
in the work of His Son (John 6:29). When you place your
faith in Christ’s performance on the cross, all that He ac-
complished is credited to your account, and you are com-
pletely embraced by God.
Faith in Christ’s work is your only hope—your only
basis—for intimacy with God.
The person who believes in Christ is basically saying
to the Father, “I wanted to be near You. But none of my
efforts were successful. When I heard what Jesus did for
me, it was such good news! I believe without reservation
in what Jesus did to get me into Your arms. I have demon-
strated that faith by receiving the sprinkling of His blood
upon my life. And now here I am, Abba, standing in the
righteousness of Christ, and locked in Your embrace. I
love You!”
Righteousness Is Not The Same Thing As Holiness
It’s important that we understand the difference be-

tween righteousness and holiness.
Sprinkling with blood doesn’t give you holiness; it
gives you righteousness, by faith. Righteousness gives you
the right to approach God. Then, as you draw near to God,
you will enter into holiness.
Righteousness qualifies us for holiness. But to enter
into holiness, we must intentionally step forward into the
heart of God—and stay there.
Here’s how I would chart the distinction between righ-
teousness and holiness:
sprinkling righteousness draw near holiness
Sprinkling of blood makes us righteous; righteousness

qualifies us to draw near; drawing near brings us into holi-
ness.
“Righteous” refers to our legal status before God;
“holy” refers to our location in the heart of God. Jesus died
that we might be blameless in righteousness and burning in
holiness.
To visualize the difference between righteousness and
holiness, imagine a wood burning stove. See the walls of
the stove as representing righteousness, and the coals in-
side the stove depicting the flames
Righteousness gives of holiness. When the walls of righ-
you the right to teousness are secure, then it’s pos-
approach God. sible to light the fires of holiness.
Without the walls in place, you’ll not
be able to stoke a fire.
Keep that picture in mind as you read Jesus’ words,
“‘And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many
will grow cold’” (Matthew 24:12). When lawlessness
abounds, it means the walls of righteousness have been

removed. What is the result? The flame of love goes out
and the fire grows cold.
Sometimes the walls of righteousness can make us feel
hemmed in, but in this case it’s a constriction that is for
our good. The walls of a stove are designed to “hem in”
the burning coals. The closer the walls of righteousness
are drawn in, the hotter the furnace of holiness can burn.
While some things may seem “permissible” to the
saint, not all things are automatically “beneficial” (1 Cor-
inthians 10:23). Anything that widens or loosens our
walls of righteousness is not our friend, if it causes the
fires of holiness to cool.
The one who is seeking true holiness actually desires
for the lines of righteousness to be drawn in and become
even more confining, because the more hemmed in we are
by the walls of righteousness, the hotter the fires of holi-
ness can burn.
Changed Behavior
One of the main benefits of holiness is changed behav-

ior. As we abide in the holy place, God changes our very
DNA and conforms us to the image of Christ. The Bible
word for changed behavior is “sanctification.”
I said earlier that the end of the Christian life is holi-
ness. Because when we attain to holiness, we are abiding
in the procreative womb of divine life where anything and
everything becomes possible. It’s here, in the womb of holi-
ness, that God dramatically changes our behavior and atti-
tudes, until we shine with the very radiance of Christ.
The longing of the believer is to be so transformed
that we become godly and blameless in every facet of our
lifestyles. We will not attain those changes, however, by
focusing on our behavior; rather, we will be changed as
we draw near to God in holiness and focus on His counte-

nance. As we behold Him, He changes us.

sprinkling righteousness draw near
holiness changed behavior
Now our chart is complete. Sprinkling of blood makes

us righteous; righteousness qualifies us to draw near; draw-
ing near brings us into holiness; and holiness is the place
where our behavior is actually transformed by the power
of God and our willing cooperation with His grace.
Perhaps the best way I can explain how holiness leads
to sanctification (changed behavior) is by illustrating with
a story. The following story is from my assistant, Hollie,
which she shared with me just this morning.
After Hollie became a Christian, she was made righ-
teous by the blood of Christ, but she still continued to
cuss. She was active in church and Bible studies, but her
tongue still reflected her former life. Then, when some
of her friends decided to go on a 21-day fast, she joined
them. She drew close to God in a new way during that
fast. About 17 days into the fast she realized, she hadn’t
cussed in 17 days! Drawing near to God had produced a
change in her behavior that she wasn’t even expecting or
asking for.
Hollie was legally righteous the day she believed in
Christ and the cross. That righteousness qualified her to
step into holiness. When she stepped into holiness in an
intentional way during her 21-day fast, God’s holiness
changed her at an accelerated rate. The power of that
place of consecration brought her into a new level of vic-
tory in her practical everyday life. In other words, holiness
changed her behavior.
Here’s the secret of the Christian life: Get sprinkled
with blood, enter into the presence of God with boldness,

burn in holiness, and then watch Him change you!
Now let me tell you the heights to which changed
thoughts, attitudes, and behavior can take you.
Chapter 11
SPRINKLED in INNOCENCE
A
As a redeemed child of God, you have the glorious privi-
lege of being cleansed by the blood of Christ from every
defiling sin and standing with complete confidence before
Him. You can come to Him at any time, ask to be sprinkled
with blood, and be renewed in righteousness and holiness
before Him. Any time your conscience strikes you, you
have a way through the blood to be immediately renewed
and cleansed. It’s glorious!
But there’s something even more glorious.
It’s the glory of being sprinkled with blood when your
conscience isn’t striking you and when you’re aware of no
known sin.
It’s awesome to know you can receive the cleansing of
Christ’s blood when you feel the need to be washed. It’s
even more awesome, though, to receive the sprinkling of
blood when you have no awareness of sin or defilement.
In this instance, you’re getting sprinkled with blood—
not because of sin issues in your life, for your conscience
is clear. You’re getting sprinkled with blood—not because
you want to draw near to God, for you’re already in His
embrace. You’re getting sprinkled with blood—not because
you want to be made holy, for you’re already standing in
the holy place.
Why get sprinkled in blood, then, if you need none of

those provisions?
You’re getting sprinkled with blood—simply because
you cherish the sacrifice of Calvary, your heart is overflow-
ing in love for your Bridegroom, and you’re celebrating
with gratefulness the nobility of your high calling in God.
Washing In Innocence
Here’s how David talked about it:

I will wash my hands in innocence; so I will
go about Your altar, O Lord (Psalm 26:6).
David was saying, “Lord, I am walking in innocence
before You. I know of nothing that is against me. But even
though my conscience is clear, I still want to be washed
and cleansed by Your blood—because I know I don’t stand
before You on the merit of a clean conscience. I stand be-
fore You on the merit of Your cleansing power in my life.
As You are now washing me again, You are giving me bold-
ness to walk all around Your altar and minister to You.”
When you’re aware of defilement in your life, getting
sprinkled with blood grants you great boldness to draw
near to God without reservation. However, when you
are walking in innocence before God, and then you get
sprinkled, it grants an even greater confidence. It’s the
confidence that comes in knowing that God’s grace is pro-
ducing long-term change in you. You truly are learning to
perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord. You are no longer
hounded with pockets of cyclical failure and habitual sin.
Your righteousness is no longer merely a technical status
with God; even better, you’ve found the reality of living in
innocence.
Living in innocence and sprinkled with blood—
BOOM, you’re doubly dangerous! This is where you begin
Sprinkled In Innocence 121
to truly taste of the reality of Proverbs 28:1, “The righ-

teous are bold as a lion.” Getting sprinkled in innocence
gives you “confidence squared.”
Now you have the confidence to go all about the al-
tar of God, ministering to Him, serving Him, worshiping
Him, blessing Him. The courts of the King have now be-
come your habitual stomping grounds. You’re at home in
the midst of the fiery stones, serving at the altar of the
High Priest of Heaven. This kind of confidence makes you
bold with strength in your soul.
Getting Past Self-Awareness
One of the benefits of innocence is that we cease to

be hounded with thoughts of inadequacy and unworthi-
ness before God. And when you’re gazing on God, the last
thing you want is to be distracted with sheepish feelings
of unworthiness. All you want, in that moment, is to be
engulfed in His glory and consumed with fascination at
His beauty.
Perhaps I can make my meaning clearer by pointing to
some of the men in the Bible who had unusually power-
ful encounters with God. There’s a few Bible men whose
eyes were opened and they saw God. One of the common
elements in their encounters, however, was their sudden
awareness of their own depravity and vileness. This over-
whelming feeling of self-inadequacy, when standing be-
fore God, was articulated by:
D Job: Here are Job’s famous words when he finally saw

God. “‘I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself,
and repent in dust and ashes’” (Job 42:5-6).
D Isaiah: When Isaiah was caught up to the throne of

God, the first words out of his mouth were, “‘Woe is
me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean
lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts’” (Isaiah 6:5).
D Peter: When Peter saw the glory of Jesus in the way
He supernaturally provided for a huge catch of fish, he
exclaimed, “‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord!’” (Luke 5:8).
D John: When John saw Jesus among the lampstands,
here’s how it affected him. “And when I saw Him, I
fell at His feet as dead” (Revelation 1:17).
D Daniel: Daniel had a variety of reactions to the glory of
God. After one encounter he was sick for days (Daniel
8:27). On another occasion, he trembled on his hands
and knees (Daniel 10:10).
The point is: Common to their experience, when con-
fronted with the glory and holiness of the Lord, was this
sudden awareness of their personal sinfulness and spiri-
tual bankruptcy.
However, God is leading us on
God is leading us a path where we eventually lose the
on a path where we
painful awareness of our inadequa-
eventually lose the cies. In the end, we will stand face
painful awareness to face with Christ and have none of
of our inadequacies. the feelings of inferiority that come
from battling with sin issues. What
confidence and joy we will have in
that hour, when He has presented us to Himself faultless
and with great glory!
David pointed to this attainment of grace when he
wrote,
As for me, I will see Your face in righteous-

ness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in
Your likeness (Psalm 17:15).
O to see His face in righteousness! There is a day com-
ing when we will be so confident in our robes of righteous-
ness that we will gaze upon the face of Christ and not be
distracted by feelings of inadequacy. Instead, we will be
“satisfied” with the thrill of beholding His glory for we
will awaken in His likeness.
The goal is not to lose all self-awareness when stand-
ing before God; rather, the goal is to lose all awareness of
sinfulness.
There is a kind of self-awareness that actually enhanc-
es the worship experience. We see it illustrated in the wor-
ship of the living creatures around the throne.
The Living Creatures Are Properly Self-Aware
The four living creatures who serve before the throne

of God never cease to worship, for “they do not rest day or
night, saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who
was and is and is to come!’” (Revelation 4:8). When John
saw them, he described them as “full of eyes around and
within” (Revelation 4:8). The original word for “within”
means, “from inside,” or, “inwardly.” When they wor-
ship, the living creatures look “around” and also “with-
in.” Thus, worship in its fullness looks both around and
within.
They look around: The living creatures are preoccupied
with gazing upon God, and while worshiping Him they
are also looking around at others in the worship gather-
ing.
They look within: While worshiping, the living crea-
tures are also looking inside at their own emotions.
Worship that is fully formed, therefore, looks in three
directions: at God, at other worshipers, and within. Their

many eyes indicate that they look in all three directions
simultaneously.
Worship is first and foremost a preoccupation with
God—gazing, peering, listening, watching, absorbing,
searching, admiring, extolling, identifying, gaping, thrill-
ing. And while we never take our eyes off God, we broad-
en our perspective to enjoy the group dynamics of those
nearby. As we behold their exuber-
We enjoy each ance, abandonment, fervency, and
other while the glory that rests upon them, our
enjoying God. worship is further enhanced. Ezekiel
saw torches of fire being exchanged
between these creatures (Ezekiel
1:13), which reflected how they fueled each other’s wor-
ship. In a similar way, we ignite one another in corporate
worship. We enjoy each other while enjoying God.
But worship also looks within. I am not speaking of
a self-absorption that distracts us from God, or feelings
of inadequacy that deflate our ability to worship, but an
awareness that beholding God is delightful and pleasur-
able. Let me illustrate from the example of a young couple
that is courting.
When a young couple spends time together, they’re
evaluating their relationship based upon how much they
enjoy each other. After an evening together, the young
woman might turn to her escort and say, “Thanks for to-
night, I enjoyed myself.” She is conveying, “Being in your
presence is fun. Your company delights me. I like who I
am when I’m with you.” While her primary focus was on
him during the evening, her self-awareness made her eve-
ning complete.
In a similar way, the divine romance finds its fulfill-
ment when both parties enjoy themselves in the presence
of each other.
When we stand before God, our primary focus is upon

who He is—His glory, power, majesty, and beauty. Our
secondary focus is upon how we and others around us
are experiencing feelings of delight and wonder in the
presence of such majestic glory. It’s certainly not our first
thought—but it does occur to us, “I’m really enjoying be-
ing with You, Lord!”
While the fullness of this kind of delight and confi-
dence is reserved for the age to come, God’s grace has pro-
vided for us to experience significant levels of exhilaration
in our intimacy with God even now. We have an invita-
tion before us, to search out what dimensions of grace and
glory the Lord will release to the human spirit in this pres-
ent age.
Here’s what we’re after. We want to get sprinkled with
blood, be made confident in righteousness, and draw near
to holiness with no awareness of personal inadequacy. No
shame, no self-consciousness. Total confidence in love!
When we know we succumbed to temptation a few
hours back, it’s difficult to draw
near to God without any sense
The divine romance
of personal inadequacy. Nega- finds its fulfillment
tive feelings of self-awareness can when both parties
steal the joy of intimacy out of enjoy themselves in
our hearts. This is why we want the presence of each
God’s holiness to empower us to- other.
ward changed behavior. We’re in
pursuit of this attainment David
called “innocence.” When we are walking in innocence,
it means we are not aware of personal compromise. When
we get sprinkled in this place of innocence, all awareness
of inadequacy melts away, and we gain amazing confi-
dence to stand before God and go all about His altar.
Any inner conflict that causes us to feel shame or
unworthiness in the presence of God is to be targeted

as undesirable. The sprinkling of blood cleanses our guilty
conscience; then the passionate pursuit of innocence further
strengthens our boldness before God.
An Everlasting Witness
Before closing this chapter, I want to point out a fas-

cinating characteristic of the sprinkling of blood. There’s
something about it that goes beyond just our need to re-
ceive, in this life, cleansing from an evil conscience. There
is something about it that will be eternally relevant to us,
even in our glorified state. I hardly know how to speak of
it, but let me try.
When Cain killed his brother Abel, the blood of Abel
called out from the ground, “Vengeance! Get justice for
me because my life was taken from me in innocence.”
Jesus’ blood also cries out from the ground in Jerusa-
lem, where it was shed. But Jesus’ blood doesn’t cry for
retribution; rather, His blood calls out, “Forgive them! Re-
ceive them! Accept them, Abba, into Your arms!”
This is why the writer of Hebrews gave us this marvel-
ous passage:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to
the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of
angels, to the general assembly and church of
the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to
God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men
made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the
new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling
that speaks better things than that of Abel
(Hebrews 12:22-24).
I want you to notice something about this passage. Every
phrase in it describes eternal realities, i.e., characteristics
of Christ’s kingdom that will be true for all eternity.

D Mount Zion (the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem) will be our home forever.
D We will live in the company of angels forever.
D We will be part of the general assembly (the church of
the firstborn) forever.
D We will be in the presence of God the Judge forever.
D The spirits of just men will be made perfect forever.
D Jesus will be our Mediator of the new covenant for-
ever.
Since all those kingdom characteristics are eternal in
their relevance and scope, it follows that the last item in
the list (which I haven’t mentioned yet) is also an eternal
reality. Here it is:
D The blood of sprinkling will be upon our lives forever.
Think about it: We will get sprinkled with blood forev-
er. Even after sin and death have been destroyed, and we
are dwelling with God in sinless
perfection, we will still enjoy the Even after sin and
privilege of being sprinkled with death have been de-
stroyed, and we are
blood.
dwelling with God
We won’t get sprinkled with
in sinless perfection,
blood in order to be cleansed from
we will still enjoy
sin, for there will be no sin in the the privilege of being
eternal city. Why, then, will we get sprinkled with blood.
sprinkled with blood when we are
living in such glorious innocence?
Here’s why: We’ll gratefully bathe in His sprinkled blood
as an act of reverence and worship, to commemorate and
venerate the Lamb of God in whose riven breast we have
found our eternal repose.
This privilege the angels will never share. They are

never sprinkled with the blood of Christ. Christ’s blood is
for redeemed humans only.
Peter reminded us that the blood of Christ is not cor-
ruptible like gold or silver (1 Peter 1:18). It is eternal—
eternally available, eternally efficacious, and eternally
fresh.
For all eternity, we will revel in the rich salvation
Christ provided for us at Calvary. In the ages to come,
we will demonstrate our loyalty to the blood of Christ by
receiving His sprinkling upon our hearts. We will enjoy,
forever, the fellowship of saints who have been made per-
fect, and who will ever dignify the sacrifice of the cross by
receiving the sprinkling of blood upon their lives.
The blood of sprinkling is so important, and so holy, it
will be ours to enjoy forever.
Chapter 12
MY BASEBALL STORY
I
I’d like to tell a personal story that underscored for me
the privilege and power of choosing to live in the bosom
of the Father.
The summer of 1994 was one of the darkest seasons of
my entire life. I’ll explain.
As mentioned earlier, I suffered a vocal injury in 1992.
After a bad surgery, my voice became very weak and very
sore to use. Being a pastor and worship leader at the time,
I could read the handwriting on the wall. What does a
pastor do who can’t talk? What does a worship leader do
who can’t sing? Unless something changed, it was becom-
ing increasingly clear that I would not be able to continue
pastoring the church we loved.
I was in pain in almost every compartment of life.
D I was in professional pain—I was called, trained, and
ordained to minister the word of God and to lead God’s
people, but that appeared to be coming to an end.
D I was in physical pain—I would use my voice each day
until the pain took over and I simply had to stop be-
cause my throat was raw.
D I was in theological pain—I didn’t have a verse for what

had happened to me. Understanding in the Scriptures
was to come eventually, but in the first couple years
I was flailing frantically to stay afloat theologically.
“God, do You do this kind of stuff to Your friends?
And if You do…who are You, anyways?”
D I was in relational pain—relationships are maintained
through communication, and suddenly I found myself
physically incapable of nurturing the relationships I
valued. Many of my friendships slowly began to drift
into the distance while I watched, helpless to do any-
thing about it.
D I was in emotional/mental pain—for the first time in
my life I was wrestling with the hellish beast of depres-
sion. The disability was changing my personality in
ways I didn’t even like. Previous to the injury I always
had an optimistic, even-keeled, cheerful disposition.
Suddenly, my ability to envision future possibilities
was decimated. Every visionary idea that ever came to
mind required a voice to implement. A hopeful future
had suddenly turned into a hopeless prospect of inter-
minable pain.
When I lost my voice, trying to pastor a church became
exceedingly distressful to me. I can remember mixing with
my flock on Sunday mornings, carrying a notepad with
me, and writing out to people, “How are you doing?” Or
writing to a new family, “Thanks for coming, where are
you from?” For the record, it’s virtually impossible to pas-
tor people while writing to them on a notepad. My heart
ached to wrap my arms around them and express my af-
fection and care, but I was physically incapable of express-
ing myself.
The pain of trying to still pastor with no voice was
My Baseball Story 131
intense, but there were two areas that were even more
painful for me. The first related to my children. While the
limited ability to communicate with my wife, Marci, was
very painful for me, the struggle to connect verbally with
my children was even harder. One reason was because I
would give what little voice I might have on a particular
day to my wife first, and the kids would have to settle for
whatever was left (which was often nothing). Another
reason was because communicating on a notepad was pos-
sible with my wife, but really quite impractical in relating
to my kids. So the loss of vocal interaction with my kids
was especially tough for me.
It was my custom before the injury to coach my chil-
dren in Bible memorization while feeding them breakfast.
Between bites, we would see who could recite the verses
best. Then we’d stop for prayer. Then hugs. And finally,
they’d run off to the school bus.
At bedtime, I told them Bible stories, and often we
would act them out in our living room. Neighborhood
children would sometimes join us for these animated in-
teractions with the great stories of the Bible. We would
kneel together at the sofa and pray. After being tucked
into bed, they were never satisfied until we laid hands on
them and prayed one final blessing. This was altogether
my joy and delight.
When my voice took the hit, everything changed. My
wife was able to continue to train them spiritually, but for
myself, I was simply incapable of continuing with Bible
memorization, Bible stories, and family prayers. I could
still lay hands on them, but my prayers were mostly silent.
The priority of training up my children in the way they
should go was paramount to me, and now my inability to
fulfill this role in their lives in the way I desired was more
painful to me than words can express.
Almost equal to that, in terms of personal emotional

distress, was my inability to sing any longer. Singing was
my primary vehicle for expressing love and praise and
worship to God. It was my daily practice to sing from the
word in my personal times with God in the morning. I
would often sit down spontaneously at the piano when
I might have a couple spare moments, and such times al-
most always meant singing while I played. I sang when I
led worship from the keyboard. I was not a good singer—I
mean, I didn’t have a solo-quality voice—but I loved to
worship my Lord and singing was almost always a part
of that. Something happens within the soul when you fill
your lungs with air and let out a sound of praise to the
One you love. The release that attends singing is revital-
izing to the soul. But for me, suddenly, all that was gone.
It hurt too much to attempt to sing. When the song dried
up, so did my joy in playing the keyboard. For me, sing-
ing and playing went hand in hand; so when I could no
longer sing, I seemed to lose any reason to play the piano.
My song died. It was such an intrinsic part of my life, and
when it died, the grief that swept my soul—well, I don’t
know how to put it into words.
I share these things to give you a little peek into my
emotional chemistry in 1994. Not only had the losses in
these areas overwhelmed my soul, but there was no prog-
nosis for my vocal status to improve—until God should
step in supernaturally, perform His word, and heal me. Di-
vine healing became, and still is, the only hope of release
from this prison. But when would the healing come? If the
release of healing will come sometime in the future, then
how do I process my pain over my inability to share with
my children today?
Word Immersion
For the first time in my life, I was tasting of suffer-

ing. Entire sections of Scripture that had previously been
meaningless to me were suddenly incredibly relevant. I
identified with Job when he wrote,
“‘Therefore I am terrified at His
Rhema is what hap-
presence; when I consider this, I
pens when God speaks
am afraid of Him. For God made a word to me; logos
my heart weak, and the Almighty is what happens when
terrifies me; because I was not cut I tell that word to
off from the presence of darkness, you.
and He did not hide deep darkness
from my face’” (Job 23:15-17).
I never had a depressed day in my life until the vocal
injury. Now, I found myself in hand-to-hand combat with
depression on almost a constant basis. When oppressed
and depressed, I found but one thing to help me in the
fight to stay in faith: God’s word. The Bible is an astound-
ing book. It speaks life, light, and hope into the darkest of
circumstances. I began to fall in love with God’s word all
over again. Whenever the Lord would give me a rhema
word, it always broke a hole in the clouds of oppression
and lifted my spirit with renewed confidence in God’s
good plans for my life.
Let me explain my term, “rhema word.” There are two
Greek words in the original language of the New Testa-
ment manuscripts that are translated by the English word,
“word.” Those two Greek words are logos and rhema.
Here’s how I distinguish between them: Rhema is what
happens when God speaks a word to me; logos is what hap-
pens when I tell that word to you. A rhema is a word spo-
ken directly from God to a person’s heart. When you re-
peat to someone else a rhema that God gave you, it doesn’t
come to the other person as a rhema, it’s downgraded
to a logos. You can’t give a rhema to someone else; only

heaven can.
The Bible is rightly called the logos of God. When the
words of the Bible were initially conveyed to the Bible’s
authors, they came to them as a rhema word. But when
they wrote them down, those words become logos.
The power of God’s word is in the rhema word, be-
cause when you get a rhema, it’s a living word that pro-
ceeds from the mouth of God. Rhema is addressed directly
to your heart and life, and it explodes within your mind
and heart with divine revelation, insight, and potency.
The most common way you receive a rhema from God is
by immersing yourself in the logos (the written word of
God). As you spend hours of loving meditation in God’s
word, you are setting yourself up to receive a rhema. Stay
with it long enough and you’ll eventually receive one. It’s
guaranteed. The Bible has promised that if you sow to the
Spirit, you will reap of the Spirit (Galatians 6:8). So if you
will sow chunks of time into meditating in the logos, one
of these days you’ll get a rhema.
I live my life by this assurance. This is why I spend
time in God’s word. I’m desperate to receive a rhema—
a living word directly to my heart that feeds, nourishes,
strengthens, empowers, and renews my mind in the truth
of God’s ways.
Back to my story. When I lost my voice, I found my-
self fighting an incessant battle with discouragement and
depression. I knew only one thing to do in that fight, and
that was to spend as much time as possible in the word
(logos). Because the only thing that would break through
the oppression was a rhema word from God, and the only
way I knew to get a rhema was by word-immersion in the
logos.
The Summer Of 1994
As the spring of 1994 approached, I grew increasingly

desperate regarding my vocal situation. It was almost two
years since the initial injury, and my condition had pro-
gressively deteriorated. My volume levels had plummeted
while the pain levels had soared. I was still pastoring our
church, but I was doing the math and knew that unless
something changed I would eventually have to resign the
pastorate.
In the spring of 1994, I embarked on my most desper-
ate measure up to that point. I went on a 21-day water
fast, in solitude. When I went into it, I told my wife, “I’m
going to fast for 21 days, then I’m coming home to resign
the ministry. It’s over.”
As I immersed myself in the word during those 21
days, I focused my greatest energy on the Gospels. Sud-
denly, I found myself being hit with rhema after rhema.
It was perhaps the most life-changing experience I’d ever
had. The Lord fed me powerfully from His word and met
me in a strong way.
The feeding of that prayer retreat sustained me for a
couple months. But there was no change in my vocal sta-
tus, and I continued to be greatly distressed by the physi-
cal disability. In June I said to the church elders, “I can’t
go on. But neither can I resign. The Lord won’t let me
resign. I don’t know what to do. I can’t continue and I
can’t quit.”
The church elders prayerfully considered with me
what to do. The answer, it seemed, was for me to take a
sabbatical. They graciously released me to take a sabbati-
cal for a maximum of six months. The church paid my full
salary during that time, and I devoted myself entirely to
the word and prayer. So during the summer of 1994, I was
on a paid sabbatical.
“Wow!” you may be thinking, “How awesome is that!?

Six months on full salary, with nothing to do but enjoy the
summer.” Truth be told, it was agonizingly awful. I was
flailing like a drowning man, gasping for air, trying to stay
alive, and wondering how much longer I could possibly
survive. I had six months to get hold of God and figure
out what was happening with my life. I felt like a man on
death row.
The oppression over my soul during that summer was
so thick it seemed I could cut it with a knife. It was the
worst summer of my life. If I received an insight from the
word of God, it felt like a gulp of air to a drowning man. It
kept me alive, but death seemed imminent.
The worst part of my week was going to church. Since
I was the senior pastor, I felt it was right and necessary
to take my family to church each weekend, even though I
had zero responsibilities in the services. But dragging my-
self to church was painful beyond description. Our church
was in three weekend services at the time, and we would
go to the Saturday night service to get it over with. I can
still remember what it felt like to sit in the center section,
third row from the front, unable to sing, trying to appear
engaged during the praise service when everything inside
me wanted to run from the building. I longed to reach out
to the flock but was vocally strapped. I could feel the eyes
of everyone upon me as I stood in the front, writhing in
emotional pain and trying to conceal my struggle. The pre-
eminent question in everyone’s mind seemed to be, “What
about Bob? What is God doing with Bob?”
Black Sabbath
I remember this one weekend as being particularly

dark. It was Saturday, which meant going to church, and I
was dreading it. A cloud of oppression lay thick upon my
mind, and I was doing my utmost to shake it. I spent sever-

al hours that day in prayer and the word, but I couldn’t es-
cape the dread of the Saturday evening service that loomed
before me.
The thing that comforted me was the thought, “Okay,
I’ll go to church tonight; but then I’ll get up Sunday morn-
ing and I won’t have to go to church. (Thank God!) I’ll
get in my reading chair, I’ll open my Bible, and I’ll soak in
the word. Perhaps God will speak something to my heart
tomorrow from the word. If He does, I know the clouds
will break, a shaft of sunlight will penetrate through to my
soul, and I’ll be able to live for one more day.”
So we went to the Saturday service. I was relieved
when it was over. I came home and went straight to bed.
Then I got up Sunday morning, settled into my chair with
my Bible, and began to implore God for a rhema. “Please!
Please! Please!”
Nothing.
I tried praying.
Dry as dust.
That went on for two or three hours.
Finally, I literally threw my Bible on the ground, and
declared in my soul, “This is it! I’ve had it! Enough! I’m
sick of all this naval-gazing self-pity. Me, me, me. My, my,
my. My pain, my little world, my
depression. All this preoccupation “If I’m going to hurt
with my pain levels is nauseating. this much, my kids
If I’m going to hurt this much, my are going to have a
kids are going to have a good time good time today.”
today. I’m taking them to a base-
ball game!”
Now, I was raised in a good Christian home, and in our
tradition Christians didn’t go to baseball games on Sunday.
In fact, Christians rarely went to baseball games period.
So I had never been to a professional or semi-professional

baseball game. And I certainly had never been to a sports
event on a Sunday! But I was in too much pain to give a
hoot about all that. I had made my decision; my kids were
going to have fun. I’m taking them to a baseball game.
The Rochester “Americans” were the local triple-A
ball team and they were playing a home game that day, so
I found out what I needed to know to get to the game. I
threw my three kids into our minivan, collected a couple
neighborhood boys, and took off with the five kids for Sil-
ver Stadium in Rochester, New York.
I felt the same way a first-timer to church must feel.
“Where do you park?” “Where’s the entrance?” “How
much is it?” “Where are the restrooms?”
As it turned out, we had stumbled upon a special day
at the ballpark. They were giving out free baseball cards to
all the kids in attendance. What’s more, the players were
mingling with the fans and signing cards for the kids. My
kids went scurrying for autographs.
“Everybody gets popcorn!” I growled. “Everyone gets
a Coke. Everybody gets a hotdog!” I was in an ornery way,
and it was to my kids’ advantage.
We found our seats. It was an absolutely gorgeous day.
Picture perfect. Mid-summer, blue
The accusations
skies, 75 degrees, baseball in Amer-
were screaming in
ica. Does it get better than this? My
my ear, “God’s mad
at you. He has re-
kids had their hats on, with their
jected you. You’re a
baseball gloves in their laps, and
casualty. It’s over.” they were stuffing their faces. They
were having a blast.
Me? I was absolutely miserable.
The cloud over my soul hadn’t budged even a fraction of
an inch. I was glad my kids were happy, but I myself was
engulfed in depression.
Which Voice To Believe?

I began to talk to myself. “I wonder if God knows
where I’m at.” I didn’t mean, “I wonder if God knows
that I’m at a baseball game on a Sunday afternoon.” What
I meant was, “I wonder if God knows how I’m feeling
right now. I’m spending all of my time in the word and
prayer—I mean, they’re paying me to pray right now.
And even though I’m coming after God as hard as I know
to, I can’t shake this oppression over my mind. I have
no idea what else to do. Does God see me right now? Is
He even aware of my pursuit and my struggle? Does He
know about my battles with discouragement? Does He
see where I’m at?”
Then my self-talk took another turn. “What have I
done? Why is God so angry at me? I must have done some-
thing terribly wrong to incur such wrath. I’ve repented of
everything I can think of, but it’s probably not enough.
Maybe I’ve done something to anger Him without even
knowing it.”
The accusations were screaming in my ear, “God’s
mad at you. He has rejected you. You’re a casualty. It’s
over. You’ll never recover. You’re beyond repair. You’re
forsaken of God.” All the data at the physical level seemed
to corroborate the testimony of those accusations.
But at the same time, a very quiet, almost impercep-
tible voice was whispering in the other ear, “I am with you.
I have chosen you. I am for you. I have a purpose for your life.
This thing is going somewhere. It’s not over. I know the plans
I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to
give you a hope and a future.”
The volume of the loud voice was so overwhelming,
and the data at the natural level so dreadfully confirming,
that I couldn’t tell if the quiet voice was real or just my
imagination. “Could it be possible that God likes me, that
He is for me, and that instead of forsaking me He is actu-

ally choosing me?”
My self-talk took yet another turn. “I wonder if God is
with me. I wonder if He understands where I’m at. If He
does, I wonder if He’d give me a sign. A sign, to show that
He loves me.”
As soon as that thought entered my head, I immedi-
ately doused it. “Don’t go there, Bob! Don’t tempt God
by asking for a sign! Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy
God!”
There’s no way I was going to ask God if He would
let me catch a baseball as a sign. Nope. Nada. Nix. “Don’t
even think like that, Bob. You would be setting yourself up
for something really bad. Get the idea out of your head.
Do not ask God for a baseball!”
Then the thoughts morphed into this question, “I
wonder if God would let me catch a baseball, to show me
that He understands where I’m at, that He loves me, and
that He’s with me.” I wasn’t making a request of God; it
was just an inner query, “I wonder if God would.”
“This is bad thinking,” argued my reasonable side.
“This kind of thinking is a set-up for massive disappoint-
ment. You’re depressed enough already. Get it out of your
head.”
So I pushed it away. But even as I pushed it aside, the
question still kept popping up, “I wonder if God would
give me a sign.”
Doing The Math, Pr2
While the rational side of my brain kept sweeping

the question away, the analytical side of my brain started
making math calculations. I couldn’t stop my brain. Some-
thing inside wanted to know, “I wonder what my odds are
of catching a baseball.”
Being my first time at a professional-level baseball

game, I began to add up the factors that would help me
compute my chances. The first question was, “How many
balls are being caught by fans?” The answer was, “They’re
not catching baseballs.”
I tried to recall some of my tenth-grade geometry. Take
the circumference of the field; multiply that by Pr squared.
Divide that by the number of fans present. Divided by the
number of balls being caught. I’m doing the math. “Bob,
stop this, this is insane. You won’t be catching a baseball
in this game. Your chances are zero.”
Furthermore, we were in a section of bleachers that
was shaded by an overhang—there was another level of
bleachers over our heads—so a ball wouldn’t be able to get
all the way to us even if it tried. “Forget it, Bob, you’re not
going to be getting a baseball today.”
I did my best to dismiss the crazy notion.
Pop Fly
We were about three quarters of the way through the

game by now. One of the “Americans” was up to bat. He
hit a fly ball that headed for the stands. As it approached
the stands, with one motion hundreds of fans moved si-
multaneously to their feet. Gloves appeared out of no-
where. Hands reached to the heavens. And I was on my
feet with the rest of the fools.
The ball came up toward our section. It came under-
neath the overhang, hit one of the crossbeams that sup-
ported the flooring over our heads, careened off the cross-
beam at a bizarre angle, and came flying straight for me.
As I cupped my hands to try to stop the ball (it was com-
ing at me with frightening speed), it pushed through my
arms, bounced off my chest, and landed squarely in my
daughter, Katie’s, lap.
I sank into my seat next to her, stunned. “Daddy, I got

a baseball!” she said to me, squealing with delight. I didn’t
have the heart to say it to her, but I was thinking, “That’s
not your baseball, Sweetheart, that’s my baseball!”
I picked up the baseball and just stared at it. It was real.
I was holding a baseball. God had given me a baseball.
An elderly gentleman sitting in front of me said to me,
“I’ve been coming to baseball games here every week for
over thirty years, and I’ve never caught a baseball.” That
helped give me perspective on the uniqueness of what
had just happened.
Here’s my take on it. I under-
I’m resolved. I will stood God to be saying, “I am with
get sprinkled with you. I love you. I understand where
blood every day. you’re at. I love the way you’re pur-
suing Me. Abide in the word. Per-
severe in prayer. Keep coming after
Me with all your heart. I am for you. I have great plans for
your life. It’s not over. You have a hope and a future.”
I call that baseball my “kiss from God.” It was a sign
from God, in the face of my blackest darkness, of His af-
fection and good designs for my life.
So I’m resolved. I will get sprinkled with blood every
day, and come with boldness into the throneroom. I will
live in the bosom of the Father, leaning on Jesus’ breast.
I will abide in the place of holiness. Because I know if I
will just stay here, it’s impossible for my life to remain un-
changed. He finishes the stories of His holy ones. By His
grace, I shall not be moved. I will stay here, in His arms,
until He perfects that which concerns me. He is a good Fa-
ther, and He will complete the good work He has started.
Chapter 13
OUR PLEDGE to APPROACH GOD
T
The blood of Jesus is our way into an altogether glorious,
intimate, abiding relationship with Abba Father. Jesus
died to get us into Abba’s arms. His cross says, “I’m will-
ing to pay the ultimate price, if that’s what it takes to get
you into the Father’s bosom, because I know if I can just
get you there, everything will work out fine from there.”
I see His blood, I see the extravagance of the price He
paid, and I see the thrilling intimacy He has made avail-
able to me. Therefore, God forbid that I should ever ne-
glect this glorious privilege of approaching Him!
Approaching the throne of grace, however, is more than
just an awesome privilege. It’s a holy responsibility. We have
been entrusted with a stewardship: to sit with Christ in heav-
enly places and, from that place of ruling, bring the Kingdom
of God from heaven to earth. We will give account one day
for how we stewarded the access to God which Christ’s cross
granted us.
There is a generation—and I believe it’s today’s gen-
eration—that is willing to come into covenantal loyalty
related to the sprinkling of Christ’s blood. The blood of
Jesus will be so important to them that they will make an
inner vow to get sprinkled with Christ’s blood daily, and
spend every day of their lives in the bosom of the Father.
Making A Pledge
“I make a pledge before heaven to get sprinkled with

blood every day, approach God with confidence, and live
out the rest of my days in the Holiest.”
The Lord has gently nudged me into this pledge. I
didn’t come into it all in one day. It began by being awak-
ened to the blessing of enjoying instant intimacy with God
through the sprinkling of God. The
Approaching the more I did it, the more I realized,
throne of grace is a “This really works! I’m really there!
holy responsibility. Even though I can’t see it with my
physical eyes, I am actually living ev-
ery day in the embrace of God.” My
resolve began to grow. “I’m going to do this every day!”
As I received the sprinkling of blood every day, a confi-
dence grew in my heart that I could really make this my prac-
tice all my days. Then, just when I thought my resolve was
at its height, the Lord led me to upgrade it to an even greater
intensity. He invited me to make a personal pledge before
Him. What had been my resolve had now become my vow.
Such a vow is actually scriptural.
“‘Then I will cause him to draw near, and
he shall approach Me; for who is this who
pledged his heart to approach Me?’ says the
Lord” (Jeremiah 30:21).
When I saw this verse, I became awestruck. “There’s
actually a verse for making this kind of a vow!” I reflected
to myself.
This verse speaks of the man who will pledge his heart
to approach God every day. In its context, it’s referring to
the governor of Jerusalem in the Millennial Kingdom who
will make a personal vow to come to Jesus every day to de-
brief and receive fresh directives. (Jesus will be physically
Our Pledge To Approach God 145
enthroned in Jerusalem at that time, so the proximity will

make that vow feasible.) But the verse also applies to us
in a spiritual way. There is a generation today who is un-
willing to relegate this kind of consecration only to the
Millennium. There are young men and women today who
are ready to pledge their hearts to the blood of Christ and
promise before God to approach him every day of their
lives, step into holiness, and stay there.
When we consider what Christ’s blood has provided
for us, why should we ever again want to spend a solitary
day away from the throneroom of heaven? Burning in the
presence of the King has become our portion, our inheri-
tance, and our delight. Our soul refuses to ever again live
a day outside His courts.
“Never again a day outside
Your embrace, Abba!” There are young men
Somebody might wonder, “But and women today
how about down time? Aren’t we who are ready to
ever allowed to have times of re- pledge their hearts
laxation when we don’t have to be to the blood of
Christ and promise
‘on’ spiritually?”
before God to ap-
Moments of leisure or respite
proach him every day
spent outside God’s presence
of their lives, step
aren’t down time, they’re “down- into holiness, and
er” time. We all need times of rec- stay there.
reation and refreshment; however,
why should we step out of holiness
and use our down time to become defiled and depleted?
Rather, let’s take advantage of our down time by getting
rejuvenated in the wisdom of holiness. Time spent outside
the embrace of Abba Father isn’t relaxing and therapeu-
tic, it’s oppressive and stressful. Authentic rejuvenation
happens when recreational activities are pursued while
the heart is engaged in communion with God.
Approaching God is exhilarating. It’s completely ful-

filling. It’s our identity. It’s our lifeline, our survival, our
sanity. It’s the joy of our heart and the light of our eyes.
Now that we’ve adopted the habit of getting sprinkled
with blood every morning, we’re hooked!
It starts by getting a vision for living in the Holiest.
Then we make it a habit. The habit turns into resolve.
And ultimately, resolve can be upgraded to a pledge.
I’ve written this book to articulate a vision for living in
the Holiest. My prayer is that approaching God every day
through the blood of Christ will be your desire, and then
your habit, and then your resolve, and then your pledge.
Are you ready, yet, to make that vow?
“Abba Father, I pledge my heart to get
sprinkled with Christ’s blood every day, and
then approach You with boldness. I ask You
to remind me to do this every day. My heart is
loyal to the Lamb, and I pledge to demonstrate
my loyalty to His blood by approaching You
every day, for the remainder of my days.”
Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord posed it as a
question. “Who? Who is this? Who is this who pledged his
heart to approach Me? Who is the one who is so loyal to
the Lamb that he pledged his heart to approach Me every
day for the rest of his life?”
“Us!” our hearts readily cry out. “We’re the ones, Lord,
who have pledged our hearts to abide in holiness.”
May His grace empower your walk until you have con-
fidence to make this pledge; and may His grace empower
you to ever fulfill it. May this be the generation! May this
be the generation that rewrites our planet’s destiny be-
cause they have abandoned themselves to living life in the
bosom of the Father.
Our Pledge To Approach God 147
Let’s Get Sprinkled

Before closing this book, let’s get sprinkled with
Christ’s blood right now. It doesn’t matter where you
are. You might be on a commuter train or doing laun-
dry, it doesn’t matter. Now is the right time to get sprin-
kled.
You may use the following steps as a guide. Let’s go
ahead and do this together right now.
Step One: Visualize The Throneroom
See yourself standing before the throne of God. God is

seated on His throne, facing you, and Jesus is seated at His
right hand, also facing you.
This is not an exercise in vain imaginations. It’s ac-
tually very real. You truly are standing at the throne of
God—it’s just that you can’t see it with your natural eyes.
For now, you can see it only in the Spirit with the eyes of
faith. Close your eyes if it helps you, and be reminded that
you really are there, at the throne.
Step Two: Ask To Be Sprinkled
Simply say, “Lord Jesus, sprinkle me now with Your

blood.” And believe that He immediately does it. Receive
His blood upon your mind, your conscience, your body,
and your soul.
Lift your eyes in the confidence that comes with know-
ing you are perfectly righteous and accepted in the sight
of God.
Step Three: Draw Near With Confidence
Now that you know you’re being beckoned forward by

God, draw near to Him in your heart. Wrap the arms of
your heart around Him and cling to Him in love.
Say something personal to Him, such as, “Abba, I’m

never letting go.”
Step Four: Nestle Between Father And Son
The Father and Son are seated together in heavenly

places, where the Son lives in the bosom of the Father.
Make your way into the middle of their love-embrace.
Once you’re there, turn around, and sit down with
Christ in heavenly places. Visualize the Father now on
your left, and Jesus now on your right. Snuggle into the
bosom of the Father; then see yourself leaning on Jesus’
breast. Enjoy this amazing union with the heart of God.
Listen to the love exchange between the Father and
the Son, and let their affections resonate directly through
your spirit. Ask to be included in their strategic dialogue,
and also to participate in the execution of those exploits
(Song of Solomon 8:6).
Step Five: Receive The Holy Spirit’s Fire
As you look forth from your heavenly seat, you will

see the Holy Spirit before you, burning with seven fires
which are the seven Spirits of God (Revelation 4:5). Re-
ceive Him now into your spirit.
Allow Him to ignite you with the seven flames of God.
Let the fire burn until you are aware that you fully one
spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17).
Pledge your heart, by grace, to stay here—awakened
in love, burning in holiness, alert to His voice. You have
found the place for which you were created. Let nothing
move you.
Other Resources from Bob Sorge
D LOYALTY is a fuller treatment of a subject that is

touched only briefly in this book (Chapter 2, Loyalty
To The Blood). Loyalty is a topic not receiving enough
airtime in the body of Christ. This is truly an impor-
tant book for this hour.
D SECRETS OF THE SECRET PLACE has become
Bob’s most popular title. Be enticed into the exhilara-
tion of a personal, intimate relationship with the Sav-
ior. Practical insights will empower you to make the
secret place a lifetime essential. Be sure to check out
the Companion Study Guide.
D UNRELENTING PRAYER fuels our confidence that
God will answer our prayer, which empowers us to
pray without ceasing. Take a tender look at the issues
of depression, reproach, and why God sometimes
waits so long to answer our prayers. When justice
comes speedily, you’ll receive not only restoration but
also seven-fold restitution.
D PAIN, PERPLEXITY & PROMOTION looks at the
book of Job from a fresh, prophetic vantage. Job’s life
shows how God promotes His chosen vessels to higher
heights than they would have conceived possible. Job’s
example is a template for God’s end-time servants.
D THE FIRE OF DELAYED ANSWERS explores how
God sometimes delays the answers to our prayers in
order to produce godly character in us. This book is
spiritual food for those in crisis or distress.
D IN HIS FACE propels the reader passionately toward
a more personal and intimate relationship with Jesus
Christ. This is blunt, straight-shooting devotional
reading.
D EXPLORING WORSHIP is a 300-page textbook that
covers a full range of subjects related to praise and
worship. Translated into several languages, this best-
selling book is being used internationally as a text by
many Bible colleges, Bible study groups, and worship
leading teams. Also available is an accompanying
WORKBOOK/DISCUSSION GUIDE.
D DEALING WITH THE REJECTION AND PRAISE
OF MAN is a booklet that shows how to hold your
heart before God in a way that pleases Him in the
midst of both rejection and praise from people.
D FOLLOWING THE RIVER provides powerful in-
sights into how to follow the Spirit in corporate wor-
ship. This is essential reading for psalmists.
D See our site for a description on all of Bob’s books. You
can also order DVDs, CDs, eBooks (electronic books
in .pdf format), and download free teachings. Visit us
at www.oasishouse.net.
Order Form
Books by Bob Sorge

Qty. Price Total
BOOKS:
POWER OF THE BLOOD ______ $12.00 ______
UNRELENTING PRAYER ______ $12.00 ______
LOYALTY: The Reach of the Noble Heart ______ $13.00 ______
SECRETS OF THE SECRET PLACE ______ $14.00 ______
Secrets of the Secret Place
Companion Study Guide ______ $10.00 ______
ENVY: The Enemy Within ______ $12.00 ______
FOLLOWING THE RIVER: A Vision for
Corporate Worship ______ $ 9.00 ______
GLORY: When Heaven Invades Earth ______ $ 9.00 ______
PAIN, PERPLEXITY & PROMOTION ______ $13.00 ______
THE FIRE OF GOD’S LOVE ______ $12.00 ______
THE FIRE OF DELAYED ANSWERS ______ $13.00 ______
IN HIS FACE: A Prophetic Call to
Renewed Focus ______ $12.00 ______
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What books has Bob Sorge written?

What books has Bob Sorge written?

What is the main focus of this book?

What is the main focus of this book?

Other books by Bob Sorge:

POWER OF THE BLOOD: Approaching God With Confidence

Edited by Edie Veach.

All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be

Printed in the United States of America

You caught our baseball, Katie, which symbolizes the

D Your heart will burn at the glorious possibilities that

His feet, blood on His cross, blood on the ground. It was a

Jesus’ Abandonment Left God Undone

“‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know

“‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken

“‘I thirst!’” (John 19:28).

(No, Jesus was not saying to His tormentors,

“‘Father, “into Your hands I commit My

It Seemed To Last Forever

1 Jesus is described in His present glorified state as “a Lamb as though it

He said to Himself, “I can’t do this anymore”?

Faith In The Blood Unlocks Heaven

The blood of Christ means as much to God right now as

because it reminds Him of His Son’s extreme devotion and

How Valuable Is The Blood Of Christ?

You know the value of something based upon what

can be replaced with $150,000, that sum becomes the

Christ’s blood cries, “Forgive them! Accept them! Exonerate

have…loved them as You have loved Me’” (John 17:23).

When we realize how Jesus not only said “yes” to the

Honoring The Cross

Suppose someone decided that he or she wanted to

The Glory Of The Cross

The cross gives significance to the pain of the world.

suffering. This is not a God who is impervious to my

Father to Eve. Essentially, his accusation to Eve was, “God

Loyal To The Cross

When someone is loyal to you, you never forget. You

and You are Mine.”

Washes Us From Our Sins

When we place our faith in Christ and confess Him as

Rather, sins were covered over by the blood of animals.

Cleanses Our Garments

The redeemed of the Lord are clothed in linen garments

Purchased Our Redemption

We were slaves to sin (Romans 6:20). Historically,

make us “slaves of God” (Romans 6:22). The blood of

Provides For Our Healing

In looking forward to Calvary, Isaiah prophesied,

If I was healed then, I’m healed now. The blood of Je-

Silences The Accusations Of The Evil One

The devil is constantly accusing God’s people, point-

Cleanses Us From A Guilty Conscience

The blood silences the accusations of our enemy. But

our conscience is still jabbering away, trying to convince

Cleanses Us From The Defilement Of Recently

This cleansing happens through what the Bible calls

reality, and it is to this sublime truth that we now direct

Why Get Sprinkled With Blood?