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My freshman year in college, I sorted my dirty laundry into three baskets labeled appropriately "dark," "light" and "dry-clean." At the same time every week, I washed the first two loads myself and dropped off the dry-cleaning.

Sophomore year, I ended up with three piles: the dark pile, the light pile and the why-did-I-buy-things-I-can't-afford-to-dry-clean pile. When I had time, once a week or once a month, I washed two of those piles and gave the third pile away.

Junior year, I skipped the piles in favor of the floor-filing system. Twice a year, I'd pick up my clothes in time for Mom's special "holiday cleaning" back home. While some families celebrated Christmas and Easter together with trees, egg hunts, and religious services, we bonded over detergent and fabric softener.

Senior year, Mom wasn't speaking to me anymore. I invented an "odor masking system" in which the cleanest dirty shirt and pants were simply tossed in the dryer with fragrant fabric softener sheets for five minutes. Easy as that, the odors were masked by the fresh fragrance of "spring rain" or "summer garden." No piles. No baskets. No worries.

I had started college intending to do laundry regularly, but I abandoned that plan for the convenience of simply masking the odor of dirty clothes. I still cared about cleanliness; I just didn't put forth the effort to stay that way.

Our spiritual lives are a lot like that. I sometimes drift away from daily prayer, solitude, Bible study and worship. As a result, my sin can go unnoticed and ignored, to the point that I get used to the stench of conviction. Getting clean either seems unimportant or too time consuming and embarrassing. So I search for my cleanest dirty shirt and go off to church or another mission trip. I mask the odor of sin with the fresh fragrance of religion.

Sin is the dirty laundry of life, but God has a cleaning process of his own. It happens the moment we trust Christ to forgive us of our sins, and continues through what we call "sanctification"—a lifelong process in which we continually discover sin and confess it, learn truth and conform to it—all by God's power.

Sanctification is God's way of making us become more like him. God makes the first move in this cleaning process by communicating to us that we have sinned. For me, that usually happens through Scripture. Maybe that's why I'm reluctant at times to read it.

But once we know we've sinned, we must confess that sin to God, knowing he will forgive us (1 John 1:9).

Then God requires us to repent, a verb which means I make a decision to turn and walk the other direction—away from my sin.

Tucked away in the closets of our hearts or scattered on the floor for all to see, there is laundry that needs to be washed. God will intervene, turn on the lights, call it dirty—and remind us of his ability to clean.

But it's our choice whether to let him. We can choose to live in filth, masking the stench with the sweet smell of religion, or admit we're dirty and ask God to make us clean. And even then, we still need to keep our dirty laundry from piling up again or we won't stay clean for long.

One day we'll be in a place that's dirt-free. Until then, do the laundry often.

Shaun Groves is a singer/songwriter living in Franklin, Tennessee. You can learn more about Shaun and his "dirty laundry" through his CD, Invitation to Eavesdrop (Rocketown), or his Web site, shaungroves.com.

Read more from 'Bands & Artists'

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