Wash Time

 When my sons were young, shower time became a battlefield. I don't know what it is about cleanliness that strikes terror in the hearts of young males, but there you have it. The idea of a thorough washing  became synonymous with child abuse. 

Especially my youngest, Micah. At about age 9 or 10, he did everything possible to avoid a real bath. He would emerge after 30 seconds in the bathroom with four or five damp hair tendrils and clean clothes. His face had never seen the water and I doubted the rest of him had either.

He wasted more time trying to pretend he was taking a shower than if he had just gotten it over with. Consequently, his adolescent B.O. was noticeable. It was not until he suddenly realized that girls did not have "cooties" that the psuedo-showering ended and became instead hour-long, hot-water-draining marathons.

There is a parallel here with what the Bible calls the "washing of water by the Word." (Ephesians 5:26) Washing implies thoroughness. If you wash the dishes, you spend time with them, examining them for food scraps, and scrubbing them until nothing foul remains. If you wash the dog, you suds him up until that doggy smell lessens. And what God intends for his children is that we wash our hearts and minds with his Word until we no longer stink like the sinful world we've been wading through.

Unfortunately, the attitude of many professing believers is like that of my 10-year-old shower-hater. They know they have to read the Bible, so they trudge reluctantly to some devotional book or spend a hurried five minutes staring at the Bible, and feel like they've done their duty. Their hearts are barely damp and they reek of spiritual B.O., but they are the only ones who don't realize it.

Our minds are polluted. Our hearts are wicked. Our thoughts, desires, and motives are questionable at best. We do not have the tools to fix ourselves. A simple sprinkling of good advice is not sufficient to cleanse us from the inside out. We must have the washing of the Word of God to constantly purify what our flesh and the world dirties.

Are you settling for an occasional sprinkling of the Word? God wants to wash you. You won't get clean without it. 

And like they say, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Go ahead and run the hot water tank dry. There is plenty more!

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