Down and Dirty

Have you ever walked into a model home and just thought, "Wow! I wish my house looked like this." I've done it, and I bet most of you have too. Those homes are perfectly done. Tidy and decorated just right. Nothing is out of place. Then, if you are like me, you will walk into your house, and say, "Whoa! What happened here? It looks like a tornado wreaked havic at the Hitchcock Home." Plates line the table where breakfast was once served as a family, little hairs cover the woodfloors from your dog coming to greet you at the door, and nice little piles of clothes and toys lay scattered across the room where your kids have laid them since the activity they were doing last. Thinking on it, it sure would be nice to walk into that nice model home, but the model home is missing something even more special...the existence of life.
"An empty stable stays clean, but no income comes from an empty stable." Proverbs 14:4.
Just as the empty home may stay clean, so can an empty life; anything empty is essentially clean, but emptiness lacks meaning, memories, and thought. We shouldn't let our lives become empty just because we have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. He emptied us of our sins so we could be filled with His Spirit. And when we are filled with His Spirit our life will be filled with life, a busy home, and work for the Lord.
When we try to exclude everything of the world we may be found clean, but we aren't doing what Jesus asked us to do. Jesus didn't come for the healthy and clean, but for the sick and dirty. He came so that they could be made clean. We need to go into the world with this attitude, not letting the world corrupt us, but working to heal the world. Jesus already gave us the great commission and told us that the harvest was plentiful, but we need to be ready to get a little dirty along the way.
We must be willing to open up our model homes, the ones Jesus washed clean, and use this for His Kingdom Work. We need to make memories and save lives, knowing that nothing is perfect. We need to allow our stables to be filled with animals realizing that God is working among them and has already planned how He will be using them in the process of harvesting more crops. God is at work around us, cleaning up the mess already made, and we need to join Him fully understanding that when He is done everything will be made clean again.
At one point in Jesus' journey He came along a crowd of righteous, clean, religious people who were planning on stoning an adulterous, dirty woman to death. Jesus was willing to get down in the dirt to save her life...."They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stone!" Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust." John 8:7-8. We have all been dirty with sin at some point in our life, BUT Jesus did an amazing thing and cleansed us of our sins. So, we must be willing to deal with the dirt of another soul, so Jesus can clean them too!
Next time you are feeling to clean, almost like that model home, don't waste the clean space, and invite others in.