Earlier this week I accidentally got some black mascara on my white and yellow bedspread. There’s no coming back from that. It will never be perfectly white and yellow again. I’ll forever look at this spot and remember that no one should try to apply make-up in a hurry while walking around their room.
Seven (Saba in Swahili: aren’t you all so proud that I’m working on the whole counting thing?!) hours later I was doing my daily devos and found myself reading Isaiah 1. While I was reading the first part of the chapter, all I could think of was, “This is why I don’t love reading in the Old Testament.” Everyone seems to be mad all the time and I can’t handle it when people are upset. Just when I was losing interest, I read “Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” Ok, that verse started to pull me back in considering where I’m at and all. Then, I read verse 18: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.”
Sin. I feel like I talk about this a lot so I’m sorry if you are sick of reading about it, but it’s kind of a big deal. The entire world literally changed forever when sin entered. I think we often view sin as this huge thing like murder, but sin is when you aren’t prayerfully spending your money. When you find yourself always wanting what others have. When you are gossiping about others. That’s sin: it pulls us away from God.
You are red like crimson and scarlet. Your life is stained. Some may only have a few spots here and there while others may feel like they are a big red fire-truck of sin rolling down the street. But then there’s Jesus. He makes us whole. His blood makes us white as snow.
One of my biggest fears is that people who are following after God are afraid to do big things for the Kingdom because of their past or daily sin. I am here to tell you that He doesn’t only MAKE us white as snow, but that He now SEES us as white as snow which means we have work to do. We have people to share the gospel with. We have orphans to love, adopt, and support. We have stains that can now be used as a tool and your tool will be a lot sharper when you start to see yourself the way God sees you.
I love my bedspread a little less because I stained it. I am why I can’t have nice things. But God doesn’t love you any less because you are stained. Please hear this! Please apply this to your own life! He looks at you like the perfect daughter you are. He looks at you like the perfect son you are. He sees you wholly – with sin and stains and everything else. He is making you Holy like Himself. Unlike my bedspread that I am unable to remove the stain from, He has the power to make you white as snow. No longer stained by sin.
So I’ll just be over here washing my bedspread with make-up remover for the 100th time. Isn’t it pretty remarkable that God only had to shed His blood once for all of our sins?
Read and believe these lyrics
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
O precious is the flow
that makes me white as snow;
no other fount I know;
nothing but the blood of Jesus.
"The world to see Your life in me" 