Don't avoid a regular cleaning.

I recently spent time washing my truck after it saw the bad side of driving through a cow pasture. Dirt, dust, and cow manure can make for an unsightly truck. When I had finished washing it and had done a final inspection for any spots I'd missed, I put my cleaning supplies up. I walked around one more time to see if I had missed anything and low and behold I did. I found that in my rush to get done I had forgotten to wash the wheels. They weren't too dirty so I thought I'd wait until the next time to wash them. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong! By the time I washed my truck again the front wheels on my truck had accumulated a large amount of brake dust. As I was cleaning the wheels I noticed how thick the break dust was but also how shiny the wheel looked as I began to clean it. As I found myself nearly halfway done with one wheel, I drew a line down the middle of the wheel with my rag and snapped a picture. It was remarkable how bad the tire looked when I neglected cleaning it.

Our spiritual life faces the same type of problem when we neglect to seek forgiveness from God for our sins. You and I sin daily. This means we disobey some aspect of God's rules each and every day. We can't get around it because we are sinful beings with a natural bend towards sin. The fact that we sin every day is a constant reminder of the fact that, even after we become a Christian, we daily need God's grace and forgiveness.

Prayer is one spiritual discipline that we should practice every day. Yes, we should share our requests with God, praise Him, and thank Him for His provision. But in addition to that we ought to also daily seek His forgiveness. In my humble opinion, it ought to be the very first thing we do in prayer before we do anything else. Why? Because our sin separates us from God. If we are separated from God spiritually because of sin, then how are we able to lift up our prayers of praise, thanks, and request with an attitude of humility and holiness. We ought to seek out the forgiveness of God first and foremost in our times of prayer, as well as doing it daily. This practice will not only help keep us spiritually clean, but it will help draw us closer to God with each passing day. It will help us see more clearly the sins that trip us up on a daily basis and we can seek to avoid them. 

If we don't see God's forgiveness on a daily basis we'll find ourselves like the tires on my truck. At first things don't look to bad, but before long we are covered up with unconfessed sin that separates us from God. This separation makes it harder for us to draw close to God and makes it harder for us to hear the Holy Spirit leading, guiding, and directing us.

Commit today to making prayer a daily habit (if you haven't already). Also commit to seeking God's forgiveness first and foremost in those times of prayer, so you can be drawn closer to Him and more sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. In the end, you'll be glad that you did!


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