God’s Thoughts to Me
Jeshua’s clothing was filthy as he stood there before the angel. So the angel said to the others standing there,”Take off his filthy clothes”. And turning to Jeshua he said,”See, I have taken away your sins, and now I am giving you these fine new clothes.” (Zecharaiah 3:3-4, NLT).
For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels (Isaiah 61:10, NIV).
A Royal Wedding Dress
I am the mother of two robust young men who have both spread their wings and flown off into the wild, wide world. Both are students at the Nelson Mandela Metropolotian University in Port Elizabeth.
My first-born, Simon, is doing his Masters Degree in Architecture, and my baby, Andreas, has just started mechanical engineering. They are their mother’s pride and joy.
Bringing them up, taught me the fine art of laundering and removing those strubborn stains that were part of just being normal mudplaying young boys.
If any stain survived my vigourous war against them, they were meant to be there, sort of adding an extra bit of chatacter and flavor.
I am a master of the bleach method, the blue laundry soap method, the liquid hairspray method, the insect repellent spray method, the elbow-grease method and so the list of my expertise goes on.
If clothes could talk, I am sure I would have received a lot of moaning, protest and back-chat from all the laundry that went through my holy laundry sanctification process.
We are so blessed to have a Pappa God who is the Master Launderer from eternity to eternity. His laundry detergent consists of nothing less than the blood of His Son, our beloved Lord Jesus.
We have an enemy who delights in pointing out all the stains and grime marring Pappa’s children, but our Heavenly King has no time for gossip and detests the slandering of His precious children.
Whenever Satan accuses us before our Pappa’s throne of grace, we have a High Priest in whom we stand who was accused as a criminal on our behalf.
Willingly, He has paid the price for our freedom and washes everyone who comes to Him from the guilt and condemnation of their sin and makes us part of His Royal Priesthood.
He takes away our filthy rags of sin, self-effort and independence and clothes us with His beautiful robe of forgiveness and mercy.
When we come to Him, exhausted of all our own useless spiritual laundry efforts, He clothes us with the squeaky clean garment of His salvation and dresses us in the most beautiful robe of His righteousness.
He prepares a royal wedding dress for the Bride of the Lamb, and clothes the Lady Ekklesia so tenderly with this breathtaking garment of love as He prepares her for the wedding feast of the Lamb.
He adorns us with the precious, costly jewels of our Lord Jesus; the pearl necklace of His suffering and the ruby ring of His spilled blood.
After He has adpoted us as children into His Kingdom of Light and Love, like any good parent, He starts cleaning our inmost hearts of all the ingrained filth, the stubborn spots and meticiously mends our broken hearts that have been ripped and torn apart through suffering, rejection and abuse, using a needle of tender love and the finest silk as cotton.
The world has left some stubborn stains on the garments of life. There are stains of shame, condemnation, guilt, all-over corruption, self-effort, religion, etc, etc, etc! But it poses no laundry blues to our Pappa! He is an expert in stain removal.
He uses trials, suffering and tribulations as He washes us clean from all the dirt and grime we have aquired from playing in the mud of the world.
The washboard He uses for His laundering at first seems to be very relentless, but we soon begin to realise how merciful He is by making sure that not a spot remains to mar the beauty of His Son’s bride.
We often wonder why He uses such a rough corrugated surface, instead of something more smooth and suitable to our delicate, feeble hearts!
Our moaning, groaning and protesting leave no doubt to our unwillingness to suffer the cleaning process and He seems so hard of hearing when it comes to paying attention to our feeble, cowardly cries.
We squirm and squeal, and like any normal child, try everything to get our Pappa to stop washing behind the ears and between the toes. But we soon find out that He loves us too much to leave us the way He has found us.
Mercifully, we aquire wisdom along the way that makes us realize that surrendering to our Launderer from Heaven, is the best way we can show love and respect towards ourselves.
The honesty and courage to dare to be seen in my brokenness and need, brings tremendous freedom to allow Pappa to paint a masterful piece of artwork on the dirty canvass of my heart.
Where the heavenly Photographer captures and reveals the hidden beauty only His master eyes can see, to create a picture of His mercy and grace, framed in the golden frame of His love.
When He is satisfied, He hangs us on a laundry line to dry in the sunshine of His smile which adds a delicious, sweet-smelling fragrance to the ordeal.
As we bask and soak up all the warmth and love of His Son, we realize why we had to be laundered so vigorously and why we need to be cleaned-up again and again.
In the cool of the evening after laundry day, we can go to our Pappa, spick-and-span, all dressed up in clean garments and crawl onto His lap, assured of His love, resting in His Loving Embrace.
Much love xx
Mia
I am linking-up with
His Loving Embrace 