Clean?
Janelle Hill
There are some jobs that rarely get done. We have a garage that leads straight into our house and it is rare that we use the front door. So it was with some horror that I had a really good look at the entrance to our house the other day. There were spider webs all over the brick work and light fitting, dirt and dust under the decorative rubber doormat, gravel and dead things on the tiles, and what appeared to be an entire anthropological layer of dust on the screen door. Not a welcoming place to stand! So (with the unique helping qualities that only a small child can bring) my son and I cleaned the front entrance to our house. To reduce the likelihood of spider webs returning to the threshold of our family home, I sprayed the whole area with outdoor spider spray. I smiled as I envisioned how welcomed my guests would now feel, waiting comfortably on our door step; they may even pause appreciatively to look around before pressing the door bell. The reality, however, was somewhat different. Opening the door two days later, I was aghast to find my visitor standing in a pile of dead cockroaches and bugs. The spider spray obviously kills all creepy-crawlies, and now, instead of peacefully walking away from my door, they were dying in droves, right on my clean doorstep.
I feel that my heart is a bit like my front door step sometimes. Most days I leap out of bed and zoom through the day, and there are only windows of opportunity to examine my heart. Sometimes it is with horror that I see my motivations and true thoughts. When the pressures of life come, the true nature of my heart is often easier to see. I may become short tempered, thoughtless of others, self-centred and rude, showing my heart to be dark and unloving. This nature is usually at odds with the person I would prefer everyone to see, and the person I actually want to be.
When Jesus was on earth, He spoke to the religious leaders and told them that they were like ‘whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful outside, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness’. Matt 23:27. What a vivid picture! For most of us, we try hard to do the right thing. We like to be nice to people, and care for our families. And yet, when we are honest with ourselves, we know that this is not enough. We can not be ‘good’ all the time. Trying to think ‘nice thoughts’ about those we dislike is not the same as truly loving them. Deep down, we know that we cannot change ourselves, and that all our trying just spruces up the outside, leaving the inside as dead and dark as before.
In the Bible, there is a very odd story about a valley full of dead bones. In a dream, God showed the prophet Ezekiel how He was able to put the bones back together, place flesh on the bones and breathe into the dead bodies to bring them to life. Ezekiel 37. Then later, in the New Testament it says ‘He has made you alive, who were once dead in trespasses and sins’. Eph 2:1. When we realise that we are unable to change ourselves deep within, we realise that we are dead. Like someone who is dead, we have no power – no power to change and no power to love. Thankfully, God is well able to raise the dead. We know that He raised His Son Jesus from the dead, and now He is able to raise us also. This ‘resurrection life’1 does not just refer to an afterlife. We can touch resurrection life now. However, resurrection life that brings deep change to our hearts and lives is not a matter of getting the right formula or information. God has a completely different way of bringing life-giving change to us.
In discussing change, the first thing we need to realise is that change is a miracle. When real change comes in our lives, something miraculous occurs which has nothing to do with our own hard work or goodness. The ability to truly love and give (to the point of death, without expecting anything in return) is not naturally found within us. Rom 3:1, 5:7. True love2 is only found in God because ‘God is love’. 1 John 4:8. In the same way that a seed grows up into a flower or fruit, when God plants His life in our hearts, something new grows up. When God plants His life in our hearts, we find that we are able to love just as God loves. The book of 1st John is a wonderful book to read in relation to this miracle. Chapter 4 says this. ‘Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God’. vs 7.
The second thing we need to know is that God’s life comes to us in relationship and fellowship with other believers. In one of the key parables spoken by Jesus, Jesus speaks of a farmer who sows seed on different ground – hard ground, stony ground, thorny ground and good ground. Jesus then goes on to explain that the seed is the word of God, and the ground is our heart. When we hear a word to us, and believe it with all our heart, the miracle takes place and God’s very life is planted in our hearts. Matt 13:23.
Another scripture says this; ‘It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe’. 1 Cor 1:21. We have God’s written word to us – the Bible – but God also provides us with people who love us who speak (or ‘preach’3) the words of God to us. In this way, God is able to help us to hear the truth about ourselves. We all know that we have ‘blind spots’ – where we don’t know (or don’t want to know!) the truth about ourselves. It may be easy to avoid home truths about ourselves if we simply read the Bible in isolation. However, we need to be ready to hear what God says to us, whether it is something we want to hear or something we don’t like! God wants us to hear and receive all that He has to say to us. He wants us freed from the attitudes, thoughts, and ways that trip us up and keep us from being the person He planned us to be. When we receive the difficult and painful message, God frees us and enables us to live in a way that we never thought possible.
So, how do we become clean through and through? God has given us a wonderful place where we can receive His life and be made clean on the inside and the outside. This place is a relationship amongst His people, the Church. He wants to connect us heart to heart with people who love Him. Then as we are connected together (just as parts of a human body are all connected together) the life of God is able to flow to us.4 We can speak to each other in love, and the miracle of change can come. When we hear and believe the word God speaks to us, then we are able to say that truly God is making us alive from the dead.
Footnotes:
1 Resurrection life simply means receiving life from the dead.
2 God’s true love is also known in the scripture as ‘first love’ (Rev 2:4).
3 In this context the word ‘preach’ simply means ‘speak’ rather than our traditional view of someone speaking from a pulpit.
4 This is the same as saying the ‘blood of Jesus Christ is cleansing us from all sin’, (1 Jn 1:7) because the blood of Christ is His life poured out.
Further study: John 15:4 – 7; 1 John 2:5, 8, 24
