Dirty Bathroom...

Have you ever noticed that the things that we get the most defensive about are the tings that we need the most help in?  So I will suck it up and admit it – when it comes to house cleaning, I am definitely lacking in that department.  I think that the majority of us (except for those who are neat freaks) have at least one room in their house that they don’t want people to see or know about.  We do things to make sure visitors, don’t go in those rooms.  We lock the doors from the inside, we close the doors and when they go to that area, we yell – “no  no no – don’t go in there”.  The rest of our house could be spotless but there is always that one room.  For me – it is actually a couple of rooms: my storage/ catch all room that is rarely ever organized, our bedroom because I think making the bed is pointless and the kid’s bathroom.  When you are potty training a 2 year old, there is a lot that goes on in that bathroom.  The other day, my friend came over and didn’t give me a lot of advanced notice, so I spruced the house up as much as I could and shut the doors to the rooms I didn’t want her and her kiddos going into.  Of course, those doors don’t ever get left shut- lo and behold, when they go here, my bedroom door had been opened and the bathroom was being used by my now 3 year old.  My friend needed to take her daughter potty, so they went to that bathroom.  Now the bathroom isn’t all that dirty – it just needs a wipe down – maybe some of the toys taken out of the tub, the toilet scrubbed- but it isn’t growing anything and it doesn’t smell THAT bad.  But there she went – right into that room and it got me thinking…WHY didn’t I clean that room – you know if I would just keep up with it – it wouldn’t be that bad.  If I would just wipe up the sink after we use it – then there wouldn’t be the scum building up there…

These rooms that we are trying to hide- we want people to look at our homes and our houses and think, they have it all together, their house is clean, they don’t have anything to hide.  I think that event he neat freaks would admit that there is at least one closet, or possibly just one drawer that they might be mortified if someone was to open it up and see it.  And even if no one ever opens it up, we know it is there and we know that it is dirty… 

You know – we all have places and parts of our lives that we want to hide away from the world.  And sometimes that is really easy to do, others areas it is not that easy.  We have secrets about us that we know people will look down on us for.  None of us are perfect, and I think that we all know that – but we still like to appear that we are perfect.  We don’t tell people about the arguments with our spouse (which should stay within the family) or about the time that we got so mad at our kids that we shouted so loud we made them cry.   We all make mistakes and none of us are perfect. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:10 “As it is written: ‘there is no one righteous, not even one’.”  And what is righteous other than to live as the Lord our God has told us to live.  (see the post about righteousness) 

If we look at our homes, and we equate that to our lives, what areas of your life are we hiding from God?  What areas are we not letting him in to see our true self, the inward slob some of us are.  We may be acting perfect on the outside.  We may be the best Christian people have seen in a long time.  We volunteer for church, we go to Sunday School, we read our Bibles and we can totally talk the talk and appear to be walking the walk.  But what area of our lives haven’t we let God into.  What is our “dirty bathroom”?

1 Samuel 16:17 “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him.  The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart’.” 

In your deepest heart of hearts- do you know of a place that you may be considering good, you may not be THAT dirty or THAT bad- you just need a good wipe down, to have certain things scrubbed and have certain areas made right so that God can enter into that area and you not be embarrassed? 

When you ask for forgiveness, it happens- Colossians 2:13-15 “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.  He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.  And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” 

2 Corinthians 5: 20-21 "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though god were making his appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

I know there are so many areas in my life I need to ask forgiveness for and I fail.  But now, when I walk into my bathroom and see the mess on the floor or the scum building up around the faucet, I am remembering that I need to ask for forgiveness all the time- it is a lot easier to clean a little bit at a time and maintain it then it is to have to clean the whole “bathroom” all in one swoop and I can become God's righteousness that He envisioned for me.