I don’t know anybody who puts in the time doing laundry just so they can see their clothes hanging in the closet or lying in a dresser drawer.
That would be crazy.
Instead, people do the boring task of washing and drying and folding/hanging clothes for something more purposeful than simple storage.
The clothes are washed so that they can be used to help us live more successfully than if we didn’t wash them.
Clothes that aren’t washed when soiled soon become liabilities rather than assets.
And even if the clothes are washed, they have to be used as intended in order to have any real value.
Hmmmm…..
In a spiritual sense, our consciences (some might say our “spirit”) are like clothes for the soul. Because we’re imperfect people living in a filthy, imperfect world, our consciences invariably become soiled from time to time because we rub shoulders with sinners in their corrupted world of gossip or bitterness or coarse language or coveting or physical lusting or flat-out laziness when our church needs our volunteer help.
When such happens — and we both know that it does in your life and mine — our consciences need a trip to the laundry. The holy laundry.
It’s not a laundry where you walk into a sanctuary and are handed a King James Bible-sounding script of words to chant while you painfully rub-a-dub-dub a coarse, bristle brush all over your exposed skin in a penance-like fashion.
Instead, God’s laundry is far simpler and far more powerful.
You repent. And when I need God’s holy laundry, I repent.
We ask God to forgive us.
If we really mean it after really repenting, God really does holy laundry.
I John 1:9 promises such.
He WILL forgive our sins and put us back on our spiritual feet on His spiritual path.
We will be back to doing what we were saved to do, according to Ephesians 2:10 — good works for God.
God can do this because of what Christ did on the cross.
We can have consciences pulled from the dirty conscience hamper, washed in the holy laundry and put back over our souls in the way that God designed and desires.
“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” Hebrews 9:14
You and I were created to worship God, serve God and love people. When we fall spiritually, even for a moment, we need to go to the holy laundry.
God doesn’t want to clean us just to put us in a drawer or on a hanger. Instead, He wants the cleansed consciences over our souls to seen by all as blood-washed, God-empowered, service-minded tools for the Kingdom.
How do your soul’s clothes look just now?
As always, I love you
Martin
