Hey y'all, you're listening to the Join the podcast with your host, Emma Daughter.

To learn more about today's reading or to read along with us, check out jointhejourney.com.

Thanks for joining. Have you ever believed a lie that says you've got to clean yourself up before you can come to God?

As I was reflecting on today's chapter, Hebrew 7, that question

brought to mind a season in my early 20s when really that idea about cleaning yourself up before

you can come to God weighed down heavily on my heart. And the enemy began to feed me this really

twisted idea that I let fester. And the lie I was believing was essentially

that when it came to my sin as a believer, there was a certain amount of tolerance God had. And I believed

I was exceeding the tolerable amount of sin. And I'm doing air quotes with my hand. I genuinely

found myself in this place where I believed this lie. If my sin surpassed

a certain amount or a certain frequency, I'd need to go X amount of time without doing that

specific sin or having that specific sinful thought, in order for God to want to draw near to me

or to use me in ministry. That was the lie. I knew sin separates us from God.

I knew sin is damaging to our relationship with God and damages our relationships with people.

And I knew Jesus had paid the price for my sin. He wasn't holding it against me. But somehow,

the enemy just got me to believe this lie that when I really

boiled it down, I believed God wouldn't use me or I wouldn't ever feel close to God until he

cleaned up my act on my own strength nonetheless, which turns out is impossible. I was just stuck

in this really low season where I thought I couldn't be close to God or be used by

him until I went some arbitrary amount of time without sinning, which is crazy because we're

broken people who sin all the time. So life just felt impossible. But in that season, that's where

my heart and mind was, believing that my sin, which had separated me

...