Monday, June 20, 2016
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Our girl was always a wonderful daughter and now she's become a wonderful mother. She's incredibly conscientious, attentive, loving - sounds like her father talking, huh? When our grandson was a baby she was pretty careful about what our he ate, about baby proofing everything, about always having him ride in his infant seat - oh, and about cleanliness. Oh yeah, hand sanitizer! That stuff that's called Purell - that antibacterial liquid that works without water. But it's not just Mom and baby who are required to use the sanitizer--oh, no-- any of us who was planning to hold him...especially in those early months when germs can do so much damage. It almost became a joke in our family...you reach for the baby and you will be intercepted by a bottle of Purell! Our daughter understood a very basic principle of staying healthy-if you want to avoid problems, keep your hands clean!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "When You're Careless About Clean."
We all need to be reminded to keep our hands clean - it's basic to staying healthy. And no one cares more about your being clean than your Father - your Heavenly Father. Listen to His strong words to us in our word for today from the Word of God, Isaiah 52:11, "...Touch no unclean thing! Come out from it and be pure, you who carry the vessels of the Lord"
God wants us to be as concerned about spiritual cleanliness as the mother of a young baby is about physical cleanliness. He says, "Don't handle holy things with dirty hands - or hearts or minds." Holy things like the work of God...like that position you have serving Him...like raising a child. In a way, all of us who belong to Jesus are among those who "carry the vessels of the Lord". We're all representing our holy Savior - who died so we could be clean people in a dirty world.
Which is why He's very hurt and very unhappy that you've gotten a little careless about being really clean. You may, in fact, be silently, imperceptibly infecting something holy with your uncleanness - like your marriage, your family, your ministry, your service for Christ, or your witness for Christ. God has said, "Touch no unclean thing", and maybe you know you have been touching something a child of God should never touch. God says, "Come out from it and be pure ", but you've been getting into something that Jesus calls out-of-bounds.
If you're going to handle holy things - and most of us believers do - then you have to stay unpolluted by what you watch, what you listen to, what you read, what you laugh at, who you're with, negative attitudes, self-serving motives. It could be that your Lord is actually trying to speak to you right now about some compromises that are slowly accumulating spiritual dirt, spiritual germs. He says in James 4:7-8, "...Resist the devil...come near to God... Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded" Now, if God's been seeming farther away lately, if your heart seems to be getting colder, and if your faith seems less powerful - could it be you've been trying to handle the holy with unholy hands?
Physically - and spiritually - when you get careless about cleanliness, you get sick. If you want to avoid problems, it's important to keep your hands clean. And today your Heavenly Father may be holding out His spiritual sanitizer and reaching your direction saying, "Please, get clean before you touch what I love."