Reclamation Project

As homemakers most of us are very familiar with the frustration of keeping house. No sooner do you get things in order and "reclaim" the place, when things start to deteriorate- immediately! Oh, if it could just stay clean, if only for a little while! It occurs to me that God must feel the same frustration about the dirt and disorder in our lives. Even though he has made provision to reclaim us through confession and eating at his table on a weekly basis, we, too, get messed up, almost immediately. We come to the altar for strength and forgiveness, but probably don't even make it back home before we do or think something of which we are not proud. Our "spiritual space" is muddied all too soon after renewal at his altar. While God tries to get us clean and keep us clean, our reentry into the "world" soon takes care of that. I am sure He is greatly saddened by this, but, thankfully, He will never give up on getting our spiritual house in order. God has far more patience, and fortitude than we, when it comes to "keeping house."

Job 25.4-5 - How can mere man stand before God and claim to be righteous? Who in all the earth can boast that he is clean?

Psalm 19.12 - Who can detect his own failings? Wash out my hidden faults.

Matthew 23.25-28 - "Alas, for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who clean the outside of the cup and dish and leave the inside full of extortion and intemperance. Blind Pharisee! Clean the inside of the dish and cup first so that the outside may become clean as well. "Alas, for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of corruption. In the same way you appear to people from the outside like good honest men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Isaiah 1.16,18 - Oh, wash yourselves! Be clean! Let me no longer see you doing all these wicked things. No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow.

2 Timothy 2.21 - If you stay away from sin you will be like one of these dishes made of purest gold - the very best in the house - so that Christ himself can use you for his highest purposes.

2 Corinthians 7.1 - Let us turn away from everything wrong, whether of body or spirit, and purify ourselves, living in the wholesome fear of God, giving ourselves to him alone.

Psalm 51.1-2 - Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness, in your great tenderness wipe away my faults, wash me clean of my guilt, purify me from my sin.

Psalm 139.23-24 - Search me, O God, and know my heart; test my thoughts. Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

1 Peter 2.5 - Like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house.

1 Corinthians 3.16 - Don't you realize that all of you together are the house of God, and that the Spirit of God lives among you in his house?

Hebrews 3.6 - Christ, God's faithful son, is in complete charge of God's house. And we Christians are God's house - he lives in us!

Hebrews 10.21 - Since this great High Priest of ours rules over God's household, let us go right in to God himself, with true hearts fully trusting him to receive us, because we have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and because our bodies have been washed with pure water.

Ephesians 5.25-26 - Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. He did this to dedicate the church to God by his word, after making it clean by washing it with water, in order to present the church to himself in all its beauty - pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle, or any other imperfection.

Ephesians 1.4 - Long ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own, through what Christ would do for us; he decided then to make us holy in his eyes, without a single fault - we who stand before him covered in his love.