May 15, 2017

Completly Clean

Devotion for the Week...

I love my dishwasher. We use it constantly, running it pretty much once a day and it saves me tons of time in the kitchen. When Paul and I went away a few weeks ago, my in-laws came to stay with the boys and afterwards one of the boys said to me, "Nana didn't use the dishwasher the whole time she was here!" I think he was in awe, lol.

My mind makes odd connections sometimes, so last week at church when Pastor OJ was speaking, my mind immediately went to my dishwasher. He had just read, "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), and I thought, "Not like the dishwasher!" See, odd connections 😊

As I said, I love my dishwasher. It does a great job cleaning dishes so I don't have to. But there are always some dishes that don't come clean. You know what I mean, right? Those spoons that ended up nested together and there's spaghetti sauce trapped between them. Or the measuring cup that flipped over and now it's full of filthy water.

That doesn't happen when God cleanses us from all unrighteousness. That verse really means all unrighteousness. There are no sins that get missed, none that He doesn't see and cleanse when we confess them to Him.

Again, I love my dishwasher, but there are some dishes I never even bother to put in it because I know they won't come clean. For some reason any spatula or flipper used to cook eggs will not come clean in my dishwasher. The bits of egg just come out more baked on than they were when I put them in. And the gooey, cheesy mess that's left on the serving utensils after we eat lasagne? Not a chance! There's something about that cheesy stuff that just will not come off unless I wash it by hand (even though the pan I cooked the lasagne in comes perfectly clean. Go figure!).

Some of us think there are some sins so bad God can't ever forgive them. Or we think we've been dealing with some sin for so long, there's no way God can take it away. But that's not what this verse says. God isn't like a dishwasher that's capable of dealing with some messes, but not others. He can handle the worst of our sins and remove them from our lives completely.

It's not our job to clean up our lives. Did you see that in the verse? It doesn't say that when I get my act together I will be cleansed of all unrighteousness. And thank God for that! I don't have to make myself perfect. In fact, I can't make myself perfect. But if we are willing to go to God and acknowledge all the ways we have messed up, all the things we have done wrong, then He will take care of all of it. All of it.
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We emerge from that soul cleansing completely clean. There are no baked on sins stuck so tight to us that God couldn't remove them. There are no sins trapped in hard-to-reach places that God couldn't get to. And there are no sins that God just can't remove. Whatever sin we have been dealing with, afraid that God couldn't handle it, we can go to Him boldly and confess that sin, knowing that He can take it away completely.

Think about that the next time you're unloading the dishwasher and some of the dishes aren't quite clean.

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