2011/ Day 9: Muddy Paws

This morning I was reminded of an event that took place when I was really young and we had a dog. One day, after my mother had put clean, starched, white sheets on the bed, the dog came into the house with muddy paws and jumped on that bed. Without discussing it with my father or the family, my mother sold the dog that very day! 

Be very careful before you judge my mother.  She’s my mother.  I would agree, as she does today, that it was an extreme decision and action.  But you do not have to wonder which was more important to my mother; it was the clean sheets!  Fortunately, I was too young to feel the loss.  As a family, we still give Mom a hard time every now and then about her quick and reactionary decision.

Do you ever feel like you’re walking around spiritually with muddy feet and wonder if God will react to you the same way?  Without a doubt, God wants our lives to be clean from the muck and mire of sin and worldliness, but what is His way of dealing with that? Certainly not by disowning us!

Our season of fasting, prayer and meditation allows us to see ourselves from a much different perspective.  My muddiness isn’t sinfulness or disobedience all the time, but could very well be the trials of life or situations God allows for the perfection of my faith.  Peter wrote; “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith---of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire---may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Living on this planet often feels like I’m walking in mud!  But these muddy trials will NOT cause Christ to disown me, because He uses them to refine me so that I will bring “praise, glory and honor” to Him.

Some verses to wash your mud off with…

“…To make her (the church) holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.  And to present her (the church) to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  Ephesians 5:26-27

“…Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.”  Psalms 51:7

“But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”  1 Cor. 6:11

I’ll meet you at the Throne,

Pastor George