A Soul Bath

I sit here with an open page, drinking my coffee in the stillness of my living room listening to Chris Tomlin's version of Stand Amazed and How Marvelous. Ahhh, if only I could have more moments like this!

This song reminds me of how good it feels to be cleaned-soul cleaned. On Saturday my son, Foster kept trying to get me to go down the hallway. I couldn't understand why. Finally I figured out he wanted to go in the bathroom (which was locked so he couldn't get in!). He walked into the bathroom and started trying to climb into the tub with his clothes on. I realized-he wants to take a bath, in the middle of the afternoon! My husband-who is a bigger sucker than I am :-) undressed him and put him in the tub where he played gloriously for an hour and a half! Who knew!

Friday night we caught Randol doing something forbidden in our house-sucking her thumb (she's 8 and we have now invested $350 to her mouth to fix 8 years of sucking her thumb). Her punishment was to do yard work outside on a Saturday morning instead of watching cartoons and playing in her room. It took her 3 hours and she was COVERED in dirt-head to toe. I don't think she has EVER been that dirty in her whole 8 years!

As I helped her take a shower and wash all that dirt away, I was amazed at how different she looked when she was clean. It made me think of how different we look when we have a good long, forgiveness party. When we wash away all the sin that hinders us from being who the Lord wants us to be. How good that feels, how different we look to other people! How many times I have pictured the blood of the Lamb washing over me forgiving all the stupid things I have done in my life. How often I have wanted to climb up into the bathtub of forgiveness, throwing off all that drags me down to who I'm not supposed to be.

A friend of mine has been struggling with who she WAS before she was redeemed by the blood of Christ. How often Satan makes us look back, makes us feel guilt for years and years to come after we have been forgiven. Christ said our sins are scattered as far as the east is from the west. Do you know how far that is? If you got in your car and drove east, you would go all the way around the globe and NEVER meet west...EVER. Once forgiven our sins are GONE. That's not to say we don't have repercussions from the things we've done, but the sin itself is gone. It is covered in His great love....it is FORGOTTEN!!!

The next time you start thinking about the past or of some regret, remember, you are redeemed, you are clean, and you have been saved by grace and HE LOVES YOU!!!...even when we don't love ourselves.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding."
~Ephesians 1:7-8

(I love that word "lavished"! It really hits home how much He loves me. He lavished, smothered, poured out His love and grace on me. What an amazing God we serve!)