Spilt Milk & Sweeping Leaves

To my readers,

I used to spend my summers working in camp ministry. 

It was one of the best and hardest jobs I’ve ever had.  One thing camp taught me was to work hard behind the scenes.  When students left, there would be a ton of cleaning that needed to be done. One of these jobs was to sweep the pavilion. This place had 400 some-odd kids in it every day, twice a day.  It was dirty.

Once while sweeping, we had someone on the roof cleaning out the gutters that had become stuffed with leaves.  Once we finished an area, he would drop leaves exactly where we had swept moments earlier.  We had to continually keep re-sweeping the same area.

At one point I turned to a friend helping me sweep and asked, “Do you think God ever feels this way with us? Where he finally helps us clean up an area of our lives and then we just dump another mess right on top of it?”

My friend smiled and said, “Maybe.  But we will eventually stop sweeping and he will continue.”

In the scriptures, a man named Paul wrote a letter to the church in Philippi.  In it he writes,

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” Philippians 1:6, NLT.

We make messes of our lives everyday.  In fact, we are quite good at making messes.  What I find funny is when we make a mess; we try to hide it.  We try to cover spilt milk with newspaper and make the situation much worst than it ever was. We find we need help.  We can’t fix this on our own.

We must turn to Jesus.  When we turn to Christ, he is there to help us clean it up.  This doesn’t mean we wont have a tough time sweating in the heat for our actions.  In fact, it means that God will be with us while we sweat.

It’s easy to think God gives up on us. But he doesn’t.  He even promises the opposite. He says that he is faithful even when we are unfaithful.  He won’t leave us nor forsake us. His love for us is greater than death.  There is nothing that can keep him from loving us and working in our lives-

except us

And he’s willing to gets his hands dirty in the mess of our lives. He’s willing to reach down into the dark places of our hearts and change us from the inside out until we look more like him.

The challenge is will we let him?  Will you let go of the broom handle and let him take over? 

Simply,

Tex G.M. Rule

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” Philippians 1:6, NLT.