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Key Bible Verse: Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow (Psalm 51:7). Bonus Reading:Ezekiel 36:25-28

One summer, working at a Rocky Mountain camp, I was assigned to mop the dining hall after the campers bunked down. You can imagine the dirt tracked in by 80 kids and 30-odd staff. On some wet days, that floor was more brown than white.

I discovered that, strangely, I like to mop. There's a certain satisfaction in scrubbing at a particularly stubborn stain, and wearing it down until not a trace remains. I realized something else—that's how God feels about us. We feel terrible, and search for excuses to keep from coming to God with our sin. But I don't think He minds. He gets satisfaction out of taking our sin-soaked hearts, removing stubborn stains, and leaving them gleaming.

Now, I wouldn't have appreciated someone dumping a bucket of mud on the floor right after I finished cleaning. Neither would God appreciate me messing up my life just to give Him something to do. But when things got dirty, we didn't mind helping clean it up. Neither does God. He delights in making saints. Through the blood of Christ, that linoleum's been scrub-bed a sparkling white, and there's no dirt we can track on it that God can't wipe right off again—with a smile.

—David Shepherd

My Response: One thing I need to ask God to scrub out of my life is …

Thought to Apply: I was like a stone lying in deep mud, but He that is mighty lifted me up and placed me on top of the wall.
—Patrick (missionary to Ireland, 5th century)

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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Prayer for the Week

Thank you, Jesus, for dying in my place, so that the Father could pardon a rebel like me.

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