{dirty} laundry.

March 12, 2013

Can any of you out there relate?

It seems like the laundry at my house NEVER ends!

You can imagine my dismay when I opened my dryer to find my clothes still damp.

Uh Oh!

So I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and sucked out the lint trap,

hoping praying this would fix the problem.

Nope.

So, I had my brave son go outside and dig around in the dryer exhaust to make sure the birds hadn't built another nest in there. 

{Quit judging me!}

Still, nothing.

I then realized that it was time to break out the big guns!

I had to go deeper, because from the outside all looked well.

The time had come to get dirty.

I pulled the dryer out and removed the silver exhaust tube thingy.

{Yes, that IS the technical name.}

I stuck my arm in and dug.

And dug.

And dug some more until I had halfway filled a Walmart bag with dryer lint!

Gross!

Then I vacuumed out the inside of the back of the dryer.

I was appalled at just how much junk was in there.

I thought, "No wonder it's not working like it should. There's so much trash and dirt inside that it can't do what it's made to do."

And then something happened that I didn't expect.

There I was, covered in dust.

Poking my hands and arms into crevices I'm sure they were never meant to be in.

God spoke to me.

He told me that I am just like that dryer.

There are times when I operate as I was designed to.

I do what is expected of me as a Christian- the work of Jesus.

But, then there are times, when the dirt and lint {of the world} start building up inside the hidden places of me.

Rendering me less effective.

The only way to reclaim efficiency is to clean out the junk.

I've got to go deep and search the bowels of myself.

Ridding my soul of everything that weakens my performance.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." Galatians 5:22-23

"You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." Romans 8:9