Daily Devotional for December 7, 2017
Just Mud Dirt
“Patrick!” Mom’s voice startled him as he stepped into the kitchen. “Look at your shoes!” Patrick looked down at his feet and then at the trail of mud behind him. “How did your shoes get so dirty?” Mom asked.
Patrick shrugged. “I was just outside.”
“Well, please go back outside and clean off your shoes,” Mom said as she opened the door for him.
A few minutes later, Patrick came back, and he and Mom wiped up the dirt. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Patrick said.
Mom smiled. “No harm done. I know it was an accident. It’s pretty easy to get dirt on your shoes without knowing it, isn’t it?”
Patrick nodded. “I still don’t know how they got so dirty.”
“Well, at least it was just mud dirt—not sin dirt,” Mom said. Patrick looked puzzled. “Getting your shoes dirty with mud is a little like getting your life dirty with sin,” Mom explained. “Sometimes you don’t even think about what you’re doing, and then you suddenly realize that something you’ve done wasn’t right.”
“Does that ever happen to you?” asked Patrick.
Mom nodded. “Yes. When I mess up, it’s like my life has gotten dirty with sin. And do you know what I have to do then? To get clean again?”
Patrick thought about it. “Jesus would have to clean up the sin, wouldn’t He?”
“That’s right,” Mom replied. “He promises to clean away any sin from our lives when we confess it and ask for forgiveness.”
Patrick frowned. “Does that mean every time I sin, I’m not saved anymore until I say I’m sorry and ask for forgiveness?”
Mom shook her head. “No, Patrick. As Christians, we belong to Jesus, and nothing we do could ever separate us from Him. We’ll always be His children—just like you’ll always be my child, even when you have dirty shoes. But having sin in our lives makes it more difficult for us to live the way Jesus wants us to, and when we realize we’ve been tracking it around, we need Him to wash it away.”
Patrick smiled. “I’m glad Jesus will always forgive me when my life gets dirty with sin—just like you forgave me for tracking mud in the kitchen!” – Richard S. Maffeo
How about you?
Have you done something that’s gotten your life dirty with sin? Even though Jesus has already saved you from sin if you trust in Him, you’ll still struggle with it in your daily life until He comes back and gets rid of sin once and for all. When you sin, confess it to Him right away to keep it from tracking sin dirt in your life and getting in the way of living the way He wants you to. He’ll forgive you and make you clean!
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