Lessons from a Cleaning Rag

Yesterday I was listening to a Christian radio station and a song came on encouraging me to "listen to (my) heart."  The song promised I couldn't go wrong if I just listened to my heart.  Does anyone else see the problem with this?

How about this:  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  (Jer. 17:9)

For those of you with a math brain, here's the equation:  LISTEN + HEART = DECEITFUL, DESPERATE WICKEDNESS.

So...even while I'm listening to Christian radio I'm being brainwashed by false messages.  I get enough of that from every other source around me, thank you very much.  It just goes to show how well we need to be grounded in the Word.

God compares himself to living water often in scripture.  For some reason, as I was cleaning the other day (yes...I do clean once in a while), the image of Christ as clean, pure water came to me while rinsing out my dirty rag.  How do you get a dirty thing clean?  You run it under flowing water.

All day long, I pick up gunk:  radio songs, advertisements, articles, my own thoughts, TV shows, etc.  The ONLY way to get truth is to go straight to the source of all truth and get wet, wrung out, wet, wrung out, wet, wrung out...

And when I say "get wet, wrung out" I am not refering to soaking up and then spreading the good news of God's word all around us.  This is a good and worthy thing to do, but it won't make us clean.  No, getting wrung out means the trials and hardships God allows which hurt so deeply we are driven past the cliches and pat answers which satisfy only those who have never endured soul wrenching pain.  Have you been there?  Where you are driven beyond reason, beyond the desires of your heart, beyond the wisdom of the world to a place where only the authentic will satisfy.  That's being wrung out.  That's when the pure, living water of God can penetrate the blackness and wash it clean, force out the false and replace it with the truth.

I promise you, getting wrung out is going to happen.  The question is, will you go to pure water to replace what you've lost, or will you listen to your deceitful, desperately wicked heart and end up in a bigger mess than where you started?

Until next time,
Becca