When we were young, my mom often had the three of us bathe
together. It saved water and we had fun
together. I can’t remember at what age
we stopped but I’m pretty sure Matthew stopped once he could no longer fit in
with Andrew and I and then I stopped when Andrew and I could no longer fit
together. But I remember one thing that
Matthew imparted upon us, his siblings: how to cheat in taking a bath. What he told us, was that if we mixed some
water in with all the different soaps and shampoos in the bathtub in our little
water bucket and dumped it into the water with us, we would count as clean and
wouldn’t have to do anything else but play in the water. Even back then, a part of me knew it didn’t
work like that because I knew that my mom, if she knew, would make us wash
ourselves anyway but we did it anyway.
The only thing that my mom noticed that we touched was her Noxema so she
told us not to touch it (I would notice to if I saw little gouges in my previously
smooth facial cream). We were very
specific with how much of each item we put in the mixture so that we would
compile almost a magic cleaning solution (at least in our minds).
But how many of us do that in our spiritual life? We compile a bunch of items, activities,
songs, words, throw them in a bucket with a little dabble of the Scripture and
WESTO PRESTO!!!! We are suddenly
wonderfully spiritual people who are right on track with God. We don’t need to do anything else because we
have found the perfect, short and easy, way to be a Godly person with almost no
God needed. Neat huh? But despite our best “formulas” and “programs”
and “ministries”, we can be spiritual by ourselves. We can’t go to heaven by ourselves. We can’t even make it to the next day by
ourselves sometimes. We need God. There is no denying that no matter how much
we try.
And didn’t I say we were young when we had this brilliant idea? We were in no ways mature. We were little kids trying to get out of the
boring parts of baths while still playing around in the water. When you try to create a way to be godly
without God, it just shows you immaturity as Christians. You are still too new at being a Christian to
realize that it doesn’t work like that.
You may even be so new at being a Christian that it may even help you
become a bit godlier. But the formula
won’t work forever. Eventually without
putting God into your routines and depending on Him fully for your godliness,
you won’t mature. You won’t move past
the baby food that you first started being fed.
And when people try to give you bigger chunks of food since they thought
that you had matured enough, you won’t be able to digest them or even chew
them. You need to grow up. Maybe not get
rid of your “magic formulas” all together but build upon them. Make God the forefront of them more. Dig deeper when you were previously just
scraping the top. It will pay off.
Now, when I take a shower or a bath, by myself, there is no
magic mixture I make unless you count the shampoo/conditioner two in one
bottles. I take each different cleaning
solution I have and use it separate and in accordance with the directions on
the bottle. And when I leave the
bathroom, I am a whole lot cleaner than when I entered and I even feel better
than I did before since I am now clean.
It should be the same way with your devotions or whatever ways you use
to grow closer to our Lord. You should
leave your devotions feeling as if you’ve been cleansed from the dirtiness of
the lives that we live and you should feel better for having done so in the first
place. More than anything else though,
you should feel closer to God than you were before. Life doesn’t give us magical formulas. But we do have a loving God who will help us
more than any magical formula ever can.
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