Last week, I introduced you to Larry Crabb’s teaching on “The PAPA PRAYER” as a model for how we should approach God in prayer in order to develop a relationship. The four elements are:

P: Present yourself to God without pretense. 

A: Attend to how you’re thinking of God. 

P: Purge yourself of anything blocking your relationship with God. 

A: Approach God as the “first thing” in your life,

This week, I want to focus on the third element, that of purging ourselves of anything that blocks our relationship with God.

The word “purge” comes from the root of the word, “pure.”  So, purge is to make pure or clean. To understand how and what we need to purge, we must ask a preliminary question.

We have traditionally used terms to describe what it means to be saved that are frankly very confusing and I believe not at all helpful. For example, when you say to a person, and especially a child, “you need to let Jesus come into your heart,” what does that mean? Where exactly “in me” does Jesus live?

Look at these verses:

John 14:16–17 (ESV)

16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

John 14:23 (ESV)

23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

John 1:12 (ESV)

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

Paul speaks of the inner self and the outer self:

2 Corinthians 4:16 (ESV)

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 

Our outer self consists of any part of us that is dying. Not only what you see, but what you don’t see, including the brain.

The inner man is made up of two components: spirit and soul.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ

In Hebrews, we learn that they are extremely closely joined together:

Hebrews 4:12 (ESV)

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Within the spirit being of man lives our God consciences. Our soul is the drive of our spirit: our volition, our direction, our ambitions.

Where does Jesus, and the Father, in connection with the Holy Spirt live? He resides in very center of our spirit self. Larry Crabb calls it “the sanctuary of the center.” It is the holy place that is already in us 

where we can have communion with God.

Crabb says,

“In the center of your soul and mine, in the exact center, the Shekhinah glory resides – the literal, real, overwhelming presence of God. And when we live out of the center, all the self-seeking, self-serving energy that guides so much of what we think and feel and do, often without even knowing it, is miraculously displaced by love.”

If that is true, then we have no choice but to admit that we don’t usually live out of that center.

Something is in the way. Something is blocking our access to it. We will look at that tomorrow.

For now, ask yourself, “What does it mean for me to live out of the center of my being?”