We have a reset button with God.
"Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool." - Isaiah 1:18 ESV
Maybe we see this in relation to this passage...
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9 ESV
But I think it is more. When we reason with God who we really are gets revealed. Our calling gets restored when it was obscured by another color.
"Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." - 2 Timothy 4:2-4 NKJV
Do you see the triad there? If we stop hearing sound doctrine from someone else, who has been given as a gift to give us sound doctrine, we heap to ourselves teachers who never challenge us with the cross and our ears itch, then we turn our ears away but find that we get turned by some other power towards fables.
King David didn't have itching ears...
"And he threw stones at David and at all the servants of King David, and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on his left. And Shimei said as he cursed, 'Get out, get out, you man of blood, you worthless man! The LORD has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned, and the LORD has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, your evil is on you, for you are a man of blood.' Then Abishai the son of Zeruiah said to the king, 'Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head.' But the king said, 'What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing because the LORD has said to him, 'Curse David,' who then shall say, 'Why have you done so?'' And David said to Abishai and to all his servants, 'Behold, my own son seeks my life; how much more now may this Benjaminite! Leave him alone, and let him curse, for the LORD has told him to. It may be that the LORD will look on the wrong done to me, and that the LORD will repay me with good for his cursing today.' So David and his men went on the road, while Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him and cursed as he went and threw stones at him and flung dust." - 2 Samuel 16:6-13 ESV
Wow. David was 'like wool' wasn't he? He was reasoning with God and looking to Him for what was to come next.
Sin can become a distraction from our identity but 'good things' can distract us from our calling.
You have a calling! It is high. It is Heavenly. It is holy!
Confessing what we do or don't do that is not full of faith is important but our actions are only surface things. Reasoning with God is more than that. We reason with Him and discuss what is real and what comes next. What happens next isn't based on the 'success' or 'failure' of past ventures. What comes next is a joint venture with Jesus that can't be evaluated in those terms.
"In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, And the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness." - Isaiah 29:18 NKJV
"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." - 1 Peter 2:9 ESV
Hit the reset button with God and return to your calling.
"To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." - John 10:3 ESV
The many fictions we entertained to keep us entertained get left in the dead end where they belong and we walk with the One who has made us white as snow.
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