it's been a while since i've written an entry, and i've noticed that my entries have become a little darker in the past few months. i think it stems from finally realizing that i've been in a season of character refinement. i'm not going to sugarcoat it - it's been hard and it's been painful. God has been taking me through a time where He really wants to refine me, stamp out those sinful things in my heart that stain and choke so many aspects of my life.
during one of my qt times, i was reaching malachi 3, and i read this verse:
For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
all my life, i've heard of the refiner's fire. we sang the praise song a thousand times. i always knew that sometimes you have to go through the fire to be purified. it was a nice image. but this was the first time i had ever heard of a launderer's soap. why are there no praise songs about this concept? as i meditated on this phrase, i thought about how soap really works.
my dad's not the cleanest man in the world. i used to yell at him all the time for not washing his hands with soap. he would tell me, "mia! i washed my hands with water! all the germs have been washed away!" and i would yell right back at him and say, "NO, abba! all you did was make your germs wet! unless you use soap, you're not getting clean! you just have wet, germy hands now!" he laughed at me, but chose to ignore my childish notions of science.
but that's how soap works. soap is useless on its own. but if you use the soap, rub it against you, create a lot of friction, then the soap becomes an agent to clean. soap can only be effective if it goes through friction. water alone cannot make something clean. if i get a stain on my shirt, i can't get the stain out with water. i have to put soap on it. and i can't just put soap on it. then i just have a soapy stain. i have to rub out the stain and then rinse off all the soap to reveal the clean shirt underneath.
after all this meditation, i realized how applicable it is to say that God is like the launderer's soap. without God, we can't clean ourselves. we need Jesus to be the agent to clean us. and we need Him to put us through hard situations, a time of character refinement, in order to rub out our sins and stains. it's not easy. laundry is work. but our God wants us to be clean so much, that He keeps coming back to wash us clean. and even though i keep spilling stains on myself, He keeps wanting to wash me again. but on my part, i have to be willing to endure the friction, bc at the end of my life, or rather even now, i want so much to be clean. i am willing to endure the pain of being cleaned so that i can be white as snow after it all.
character refinement is tough. but i'm going to keep trusting in His desire to make me clean, and try to sing His praise a little more as i go through all this rubbing. if you're reading this, please try to keep me accountable to not be so grumble-y about the cleaning, but remind me of my future glory - the mia that God sees me as. =)
