DAILY CLEANSING

How often do you take a shower, girlfriend?

Wait a minute. Did I actually hear somebody out there answer, "None of your business, nosy woman!"

Really? You're right, and I'm giggling about getting you riled up.

The reason I asked such a personal question is I want us to think for a minute about how refreshing a shower - our daily cleansing - can be. Nothing like a nice shower to wake you up in the morning, is there? But the "best" shower of all, to me, is when I come in from working in the yard and I'm all dirty, sweaty, and stinky and I can stand under that pure cascading water, lather up with some fragrant soap and get all fresh and clean again.

Joanna Weaver shared a story about cleansing that has been very meaningful to me as I've thought back on it several times. Hope you will find it applicable as well.

She spoke of how sin creeps into our lives in one form or another. She compared sin to dark, rotting garbage that, if not removed, leaves our heart looking and smelling like a sewer. Then she said:

"That's why I so desperately need a Savior. Because of His death on the cross, you and I can be truly clean, actually pure. Today, and then again, tomorrow. For as long as we live in this sin-riddled flesh. That realization came to me anew several years ago when my eyes were drawn to a hand-hewn cross that sits on the right side of our church stage. About nine feet tall, it is a constant reminder of all that Christ has done for us. But one night during our annual week of prayer, it became a living object lesson of the ongoing power of Christ's shed blood in my life.
I was struggling once again with my continued inadequacies. It had been a tough week, and my responses had been far from godly - angry words, sullen moods, knee-jerk reactions.

'Will I ever change?' I asked God. 'Will I ever be what You want me to be?'

There was no audible answer, but as I confessed my sins, I felt the gentle reassurance of His love settle around my heart. And then a word picture came to my mind. Not a vision, but a visual thought. As though I could see a shower head attached to the top of the cross and, in the middle, a sign marked with the word Repentance.

How often do you shower, Joanna? the God-thought came softly to my heart. Every day, my heart answered back. Or at least every other day.

Why is it, then, that you only find it necessary to come to the cross once in a while? Wow. That stopped me in my tracks. Did I really think that the moment I gave my heart to Christ as a small child was the only time I would need the cleansing power of His precious blood?

After all, I sensed the Spirit reason, in the natural you shower every day because your body produces toxins and because life involves contact with things that make you dirty.

The same is true in the spiritual realm. Your flesh is toxic by nature, and you will inevitably rub up against things in this fallen world that contaminate your heart.

Don't wait till sin builds up to a spiritual crisis, I sensed the Lord saying. Deal with it daily. Come clean so I can make you clean. The cross made you My child, and it is the cross that will also make you holy. Not because of your striving, but because you daily take advantage of My forgiveness and love." [Joanna Weaver, Having a Mary Spirit, chap. 9, pp. 133-134]

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