Main Bible passage for this article, Isaiah 1:18-20
“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
20 but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
What does Polar bear hair; a snowflake; and wool have in common?
They… are… NOT… are not… white in color. (not exactly anyway)
They are translucent fibers and crystals… meaning, they allow a little sunlight through, bend it, and to our eye, they all have the look of being white… clean… and imply they are as pure, as the driven snow!
“Transparent, translucent, and opaque all describe how certain objects allow visible light to travel through them. While these adjectives seem synonymous to some, they are not.” https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/transparent-translucent-opaque
My question was simple. “Holy Spirit how can I get to know you better?”
And in a span of a couple of months He revealed himself to me in such a way, that it reminded me of when I added 5 pounds to my work out routine… every time you do that, you struggle all over again… until you have gained sufficient strength to manipulate the weight correctly and truly gain lasting benefits from the “new” weight used during the work out.
Our relationship with the Holy Spirit is exactly like that.
The first weight you struggle with is when the Father himself gets your attention and draws you in,
NKJV Jeremiah 31:3
“The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you.”
Then the next weight you struggle with is of the Son,
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
That’s heavy!
Then, after you have had association with the Father, and the Son, you become confident, maybe even a little arrogant in how well you think you know them, and how much you think you can bench press, so you go for a personal best and try to tackle multiple sets of…
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”
“Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”
So when I asked, “Holy Spirit, can I get to know you better?”, I didn’t realize how heavy the bar was going to be… because I was very confident in the fact that, “I know those guys, it shouldn’t be the same kind of heavy work as when you DON”T know them.”
Silly me.
If you have a friend, a true friend, who is also your lifting partner, his job is to keep pushing you forward, keep helping you to reach those personal best goals, to keep the pressure on you in the gym so that you can grow… so that you can get stronger… that’s his job!
It was revealed to me that the Holy Spirit has been “being” my lifting partner; my automotive repair partner; my book writing motivator; and my Bible study mentor and teacher.
My personal “unbelief”, that was revealed to me also, was the fact that I was struggling with the phrase, “He will be IN you.”
I have had many experiences, experiencing, the Holy Spirit on the OUTSIDE of me… but my mind would become ENTANGLED when I tried to understand Him on the inside of me.
My guts, and mental state would be, and were, all tangled up for those couple of months, after I had asked my question. “Can I get to know you better?”
It was frustrating to work out!
I was trying to keep up to Him as He revealed verse after verse of who He is and what His job is, I was trying to maintain my reps but the mental fatigue and confusion wouldn’t allow me to focus very well.
But I kept trying to “stay in step,” with Him.
Then… a verse came to mind… lightly, on a “down day.”
Our main verse Isaiah 1:18
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.“
From my bible studies I knew the only way to release a sin was through confession. A true, sincere, and honest confession. So…
I contacted my Pastor.
(I won’t go into those sordid details here but suffice it to say, “I was fearful exposing myself like that, even though I’ve known my pastor for twenty-plus years.”)
I confessed, and asked him to pray, to ask God for some advice for me, and he responded in love and kindness and honor.
He really is true to his word and character.
It was a few days before I heard back. His input was direct confirmation of what the Holy Spirit was showing me, when he was dragging me through all of the bible studies of the last few months.
My Pastor asked me, “Where are you hearing the prompting of the Lord?”
Me: In the stillness. In the stillness of thought, even when I’m at work. In the stillness of a bible study, as a verse is revealed to me. In the stillness of a struggle, as I’m talking to Him, and asking, “HEY! A little help!?!”
It’s in the quiet, that I hear Him, from… the inside!
He is… and has been… leading me into all truth.
So I asked Him another question, “If Jesus is on my left hand; and the Father is on my right hand; where are you?”
And again, He revealed our main verse to me…
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.“
It made me study the ancient origins of red dyes; wool; a little about polar bears; and a little about snowflakes.
The hairs, fibers and crystals of those three entities are translucent, that means they let a little light through them and our eye picks that light up and they all “appear” to be the color white.
Yet… they are not white.
Moving forward with the color scarlet; and the wool; I asked, “How does the color get into the wool in the first place?”
Same way we accumulate our personal sins, “To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.”
We are “steeped” in it from birth.
What is “steeped”? Think of a cup of tea… that uses a tea bag on a string… you place the tea bag into the tea cup and leave it to sit-n-soak awhile… “steeping” the tea in hot water to produce a cup of Earl Grey.
So… that’s how they work wool.
Except… it’s almost impossible to get wool wet, much less dyed, unless you put it through a process that will allow the fibers of the wool to “open up” so that they will accept the dye… that is “steeped”/soak number one… then when it’s ready they “steep”/soak it in the dye solution… once prepared wool accepts dye very readily… and then with one more step, one more ingredient, the wool and dye is made “color fast” which means you can wash it and wash it and the dye will not come out or fade away.
So my mind said, “Well, then, it’s impossible to make wool white again once it’s stained red.”
I said it out loud, “It’s impossible to make wool white again once it’s stained red.”
But remember, I know Jesus, I know the Father, those are facts. I’ve seen them do impossible things.
I asked the Holy Spirit again, “Where are you?”
He asked,
“Where did you have to look to see how that dye process works for wool?”
“Where did you have to look to discover a Polar Bear’s fur is translucent?”
“Where did you have to look to see the structure of a snowflakes ice crystal makeup?”
On the inside.
“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other,…”
The very nature of bear hair, ice crystals, and wool fibers is so intricate, so complicated, so multi- layered that to be free from ENTANGLEMENT you have to work to unravel them from the inside out.
The same with our sins.
The only way to untangle my personal knot was to confess… obedience was THE ONLY WAY FORWARD… it was the only way to make room in my heart so that I could BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit was indeed, living inside of me.
The Holy Spirit then… is right there… in the very middle of my life; with Jesus and His crimson blood on my left; and the Fathers brilliant white and Holy righteousness on my right… with the Holy Spirit leading me into the Biblical truths of how my personal sins are “covered” by the blood of Jesus Christ, yet are seen no more by the Father, with Him only seeing yet another son.
The Emerging Man writing to ENCOURAGE, EQUIP & ENGAGE!
And Offering Positivity with Work Gloves!
This spiritual blessing and cleansing has come along with a physical and mental check up I recently completed where I was given the “all clear” on my physical and mental health status.
I encourage you as an Emerging Man yourself (or Woman) to take a deeper look at all three aspects of your life… look deeply on the inside of things in order to gain a better understanding of your current condition.
It’s the only way we can truly move forward.
Research Resources
“The test that we are meant to pass is the steeling of our resolve, as well as growth in maturity and self-awareness, to recognize precisely what we are facing mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and how to overcome — not succumb — to the challenge of the moment.”
Quote from the radio, “Daniel was not spared the lions den… he was spared… in the lions den. Shadrach, Mishac, and Abendego, were not spared from the furnace, they were spared in the furnace.”
https://www.gotquestions.org/Holy-Spirit-will-guide-you-into-all-truth.htm
https://www.lwf.org/daily-devotions/what-god-sees-when-he-looks-at-you
tangle (v.)
mid-14c., nasalized variant of tagilen “to involve in a difficult situation, entangle,” from a Scandinavian source (compare dialectal Swedish taggla “to disorder,” Old Norse þongull “seaweed”), from Proto-Germanic *thangul- (source also of Frisian tung, Dutch tang, German Tang “seaweed”); thus the original sense of the root evidently was “seaweed” as something that entangles (itself, or oars, or fishes, or nets).
1610s, “a tangled condition, a snarl of threads,” from tangle (v.).
“to soak (something) in a liquid,” early 14c., stēpen, a word of uncertain origin and “difficult etymology” [OED]; originally in reference to barley or malt. It is probably cognate with Old Norse steypa “to pour out, throw,” from Proto-Germanic *staupijanan. Perhaps there was an unrecorded Old English verb (compare Old English steap, steop “stoup, drinking vessel”).
The intransitive sense of “soak, be bathed” is from late 14c. Figuratively, “imbue with a specified influence,” by c. 1600. Related: Steeped; steeping. As a noun, “process of steeping,” mid-15c.
“To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.”
“Washing raw fleece is a straightforward process, though many different methods exist. This is Henry’s wool scouring method that he has refined through years of tinkering, with the goal being to consistently produce a clean wool fleece while being as efficient as possible with his time and the amount of soap and water used. Starting with a greasy fleece, this method will result in a clean, dry fleece in as little as 36-48 hours, with just about an hour of actual working time. The process consists of skirting and bagging the fleece, three washes, two rinses, and drying.”
https://clemes.com/how-to-wash-wool/
“Dry wool is difficult to color.”
“Carefully place wool pieces in warm not hot distilled water, vinegar, and a drop of liquid Dawn, and 1/2 teaspoon salt if desired ( careful not to work the wool much) for 30 minutes.”
“You can tell when the wool has absorbed all the color when the water is clear or pale in color.”
“After the wool has cooled, gently rinse the wool in room temperature water to remove the soap residue and any left over dye that was not absorbed.”
https://www.instructables.com/SkirtingWashingPickingDyeing-and-Carding-Wool/
“Transparent, translucent, and opaque all describe how certain objects allow visible light to travel through them. While these adjectives seem synonymous to some, they are not.” https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/transparent-translucent-opaque
theemergingman.com 
I need to read this thru a couple more times, I am stuck on some of it.
Paul Michiels paulemployeebenefits@gmail.com 920.538.0000 Need Better Benefits? “Better Call Paul!”
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Which parts are sticky??
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For me this was a bit lengthy, especially the references toward the bottom. And i am not sure there is quite the differences you describe between God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit but hey I am no theological expert either
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It got a bit lengthy especially with the references at the bottom and I am not sure the differences you describe between the Father, Son and Spirit are altogether correct but hey that is a huge theological issue many have struggled with over the years so I can also be way off on that
Paul Michiels paulemployeebenefits@gmail.com 920.538.0000 Need Better Benefits? “Better Call Paul!”
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