Playin' in the Mud

What is it about boys and mud??  It attracts them like bees to a can of coke. 

If there was any mud to be found in our back yard my four boys would find it.  They would never carefully step around a mud puddle.  Oh no, they would stomp right into the middle of it. 

I can’t tell you how many times I would go out to the backyard and find them playing in a mud puddle or rubbing mud all over each other.  One time my husband was "watching" them and I came home to find the boys covered in mud from head to toe! 

The only way to get them clean was to spray them down with a hose and get them into the bathtub for a good soak.  They were good at getting themselves dirty but were powerless to clean themselves up – that was my job as their mother.

How true this is in our spiritual life as well.  We love the mud!  We don't skirt around it, we jump in feet first wallowing around in our pain and filth.  We know how to get dirty but are incapable of cleaning ourselves up, no matter how hard we try!   Because that is not our job it's God's!

Before we accepted Christ’s gift of salvation we were enemies of God.  Our sin separated us from any type of relationship with Him.  Scripture describes it as a veil between us and God, an impenetrable wall which we could do nothing to remove.  We were forever destined to live in the muck and grime of our own making, separated from God.

But God in His mercy was not satisfied with leaving us to wallow in our own sludge.  He desired for us to know Him and to have an intimate relationship with Him. He wanted the veil to be removed.  So he sent His one and only Son to take on human form and live a perfect life, so that He could be the perfect sacrifice for us.  Jesus took the punishment we deserved and bore our sin on the cross.  In doing so, He made it possible for us to have an intimate, personal relationship with the God of the Universe; the veil that separated us from God was removed!

2 Corinthians 3:16 (The Message) says, ^“Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone.

Do you see it?  God is a LIVING, PERSONAL presence.

He IS living and active, not dead and obsolete.  He is NOT like the song says, “. . . watching us from a distance . . . “   He IS intimately acquainted with all our ways.  He is NOT a statue that we carry around from place to place, a God we have made in our image.  He HAS come near . . .

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 continues, “And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.

There is nothing between God and us!  NOTHING! 

But don’t we often live like there is? 

When we give ourselves to Jesus Christ, His Spirit comes to dwell in us and He transforms us. He washes us clean of our dirt and grime and we become brighter and more beautiful than we’ve ever been before NOT because of who we are but because of who He is!  It is not us who does the work in our lives but His Spirit living and dwelling in us. 

 

Are you wallowing in the mud and dirt of your own making?  Have you tried to clean yourself up and then come to God?  It doesn't work that way!  God wants you just as you are. . . 

  

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1327191

As a follower of Jesus, have you given His Spirit full reign in your life?  Or are there muddy areas that you are clinging to, unwilling to let go of?  Our muddy, grimey place can feel so safe and comfortable and we often find ourselves justifying why we want to stay.  "Isn't mud good for you?  I mean people pay good money to get mud baths? . . . "



Come to Him, surrender your life to His work and allow Him to transform you from the inside out!