Two bachelors were talking one day, and their conversation drifted from politics to sports to cooking.
One of them said, "I got a cookbook once, but I could never do anything with it."
The other one said, "Too much fancy work in it, huh?"
The first one said, "Yeah, it sure was. Every one of the recipes began the same way - 'Take a clean dish.'"
Our relationship with God is much the same. God says, "Take a clean life", and we go, "Wait a minute, that's a problem." Because "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23). Our lives are not clean. We're stained by sin.
Making the matter even more difficult is the fact that we do not have the ability to cleanse ourselves: "Who can say, 'I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin'?" (Proverbs 20:9). The answer is, "No one."
God offers cleansing through the blood of Jesus Christ. So our plea to God is that of David: "Wash me thoroughly from my sin, and cleanse me from my sin.....Create in me a clean heart, O God." (Psalm 51:2,10)
May our attitude be such that we are willing to do what God says in order to receive the cleansing he offers. And praise be to God for his willingness to make clean what we cannot!
-alan smith
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