Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, ‘Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the door-frame. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning. 23 When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the door-frame and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.

A friend loaned us a book by Joyce Huggett on ‘Listening to God’. In a chapter about ‘contemplative prayer’ she writes about a phase in the process where we open up our lives to God for spiritual diagnosis, as it were. Where is there something wrong that may need to change? What is God putting His finger on that requires repentance? She says at the heart of such prayer, as we become aware of the presence of God, we will often need to confess and receive forgiveness. She admits that as an introvert and an evangelical she does not find it easy to receive forgiveness.

Well, we see again in Exodus 12 that the blood of the Passover lamb had to be applied to “the top and on both sides of the door-frame.”

We must believe in the power of the blood of Jesus not in some theoretical way, but know its practical potency through repentance and confession:

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8,9) Verse 9 has been called ‘the Christian’s bar of soap’. I remember a sketch performed by a young man who came onto the stage looking dirty and unkempt, but he extolled the virtues of soap. He spoke about its cleansing properties and how wonderful it is. He went on and on at length. But it was obvious he never used it. Point made!