Deep Clean

I am now back home after six days at Momentum.  And I am clean.  Properly, deeply, glowingly clean.  I have had the longest shower and have scrubbed and lathered and rinsed away all of the mud and dirt.   I have detoxed and I have deep-conditioned.

I am clean.

This morning, knowing that I would have a proper shower when I got back home, I made do with a liberal application of perfume.   Whilst it worked as a temporary fix, I didn't feel properly clean.  My fingernails were muddy from taking down the tent, my hair was  frizzy from the damp and my clothes were creased and crumpled.  The perfume made me feel cleaner, but not properly clean.  

It was a short term fix, but it wasn't a deep clean. 

Sometimes we do the same in life: we are more concerned with sorting out the superficial.  We spray perfume on the situation, rather than giving things a deep clean. 

Jesus spoke of something similar when He criticised the Pharisees for only caring about the appearance of things, for only focusing on the surface:

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees.  Hypocrites!  For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence!  You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too [...] you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.  Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness."

[Matthew 23:25-28 NLT]

 

It is always much easier and less time-consuming or costly to fix the outside of a problem, to give the appearance of having resolved it.  It is always easier to say the right things and pray the 'right' things, to spray perfume instead of washing the inside - cleaning our hearts.  We don't have to make ourselves vulnerable, we don't have to put in much effort and we don't have to face discomfort.

But we are not really clean.

And whilst other people might believe we have really resolved the problem, whilst we ourselves might believe it, God always looks at our hearts.

"The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 

[1 Samuel 16:7 NLT] 

 

It is more costly and time-consuming and uncomfortable, but cleaning the inside - resolving the heart of the matter - is always worth it. 

Old and New

One of the things that has made camping at Momentum much more bearable is the fact that I know someone with a shower.

A proper shower.

A warm shower, behind a door that locks, for which there is never a queue or a feeling of having to rush so the next person can use it. At Momentum, there is little more one could ask for in a shower.

And so every day I have managed to fit in a shower at some point and have been so grateful to scrub the mud from my body and to feel clean again.

However, after every shower, I have had to walk back to my own tent and, to do that, I have had to put my dirty clothes back on. They're not that dirty, but they're the clothes I had on before I had a shower.

Whilst I'm clean, it doesn't make sense to put old, unclean clothes on.

But how often do we do that as Christians? We have been made clean and have been offered new 'clothes', but we put on the 'clothes' of the old life again.

"You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it ... So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offence. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

[Colossians 3:9-14 MSG]

We have been washed and made clean by Jesus' blood, yet we often return to our old clothes: our old patterns of life, our old thoughts, our old addictions. But that's wrong. God has cleaned us up and has given us a new wardrobe. Let's wear it. Our old clothes have no use anymore.

So whilst I need mine to get back to my tent, in a spiritual sense, our old clothes are redundant.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

[2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV]