Christian thoughts from everyday life in and around the three cities.
WASHED UP AND CLEAN.
I have often thought that if only I could find a profitable business for once-used metal soda bottle caps, I'd be a rich man. There are thousands of them lying discarded outside every burger shop, hundreds left on the ground after a wedding party, tens after church committees etc. I do notice that some churches creatively use a few to rattle rhythmically along with their praise songs.
Of course it is only the caps that are discarded. The bottles themselves are recycled. Collected into crates, the lorries return them to the drink factories, where they are sorted, checked for breakages, and thoroughly cleaned using heat and steam. Only after this can they be filled and used again.
A Christian who wants to be regularly used by God must expect to be put through a tough cleansing process. If hygiene is vital to a drinks company, spiritual cleanliness is even more essential to a Christian. God will not use people who keep on disobeying his commands. He will not choose people who 'say' they belong to him, but who 'live' as if they do not.
The death of Jesus Christ on a cross is God's method of cleansing human lives from everything unholy. Jesus took human sin on to himself and died as its consequence. You and I can receive the holiness of Jesus into our own lives, in direct proportion to our genuine repentance and willing obedience to God.
Many Christians should learn to throw the rubbish out of their lives. Why do we play around with the very things Jesus died to save us from? If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us and purify us through the blood of his son, Jesus.
Only when I learn to be a clean Christian do I share the full riches of God's mercy.