"Removing the RESIDUE!"

Psalms 51:7-10                     (1599 Geneva Bible)
"7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be WHITER THAN SNOW.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones, which thou hast broken, may rejoice.
9 Hide thy face from my sins, and put away all mine iniquities.
10 Create in me a CLEAN heart, O God, and RENEW a right spirit within me."



During the summer I usually mow the grass while my wife prepares dinner.  It gives me a chance to unwind from all of the cares of the day, while my wife is able to get me out of her hair.  Yesterday, I didn't quite feel up to mowing, so I swapped duties with my wife.  I was relegated to preparing dinner and washing dishes while she mowed.

Normally she does a better job at cleaning the dirty dishes, as she pays more attention to detail and has more patience than I.  But last night I used a steel wool pad to clean clean a pan.  The steel wool was cutting right through the grease build up that had become almost a part of the pan I was cleaning.  The pan looked almost NEW when I was through.  All of the RESIDUE that remained from previous cleanings was gone and the true metal was revealed.

GOD works in our lives with a lot of the same similarities.  We try to clean the imperfections out of our lives, but we always seem to leave RESIDUE in our lives that stains us.  Only JESUS can clean us in the manner that leaves us with no RESIDUE in our lives!  HE removes all of the stain and build-up of sin from our lives and leaves the true metal of our fiber to shine through.

Often our efforts to clean our lives of all of the RESIDUE from anger, bitterness, selfishness, guilt, and other imperfections, leaves us with a slimy film of sin that must removed.  We need to be cleansed and renewed by a Holy GOD to fellowship with HIM!  The only good I have to offer is the blood of JESUS to cleanse the RESIDUE of sin from my life!