So you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers-none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be….”
-1 Corinthians 6:9-11a
Black stained hands, panty hose as pants, socks for shoes, bugs, dirt, and lice in un-brushed hair, snot running down the stains of their dark skinned faces–this describes the children in the gypsy village we stayed at for a few days while in Romania.
Cracked walls, tree branches used as frames, tin roofs, and dried mud as walls. These are the homes that made up the gypsy village.
Children laughing and playing, women doing laundry, moms yelling for their kids, and women socializing with other women while the men were riding bikes to work and doing manual labor. This is what made up the streets of the gypsy village.
To be quite honest, I was reluctant to love on these kids. Then the Holy Spirit revealed his heart to me.
God used their ‘physical situation’ to reveal where my heart used to be and His work in my life and on the cross. We all started as dirt, dust from the ground; He gave us life. “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature” Genesis 2:7. He formed us from dirt to be created in His image, after his likeness. Then after we live this life, we return to dust. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return” Genesis 3:19.
Donald Miller puts it this way…”All of us are made form this stuff, this dirt. Everything in life is just this magical soil, fairy dust, if you will. Plant a seed in the soil and that seed will find the magic around it to make some sprig of wood that, with time from the fairy dust around it, will make a tree, and with the aid of water and more dirt and a hundred years, a tree the height of a skyscraper and the width of a house. All of it from dirt. Grass grows the same way, carrots, potatoes, onions, apples on trees, barely for beer. Rocks are dirt fired in the furnace of the earth’s belly, steel is processed rocks, diamonds are rocks forged in compression of earth’s weight, and people, you and I, are dirt lit with the warm breath of God, the spark of life, giving an embryo a heartbeat, the magical glint that brings the dirt alive, sets in its DNA a coded direction and a mysterious motion that becomes greater than a tree in complexity, able to question its own being, able to guess at it creation, able to love and to hate, to live inspired, then to die to return to dirt…”
I come from dirt. If you will, my heart used to be covered by dirt. Those who are called Children of God all used to be dirty and messy. I am wicked and sinful by nature and there is nothing I can do about it. I used to clean up my outer appearance, get “dolled up,” and look cute, but the cuteness didn’t transcend to my heart. It was still ugly. Then Jesus showed up in my life.
He looked passed the muck, the dirtiness, and the wickedness of my heart. He made a beautiful thing of out me. Through Him alone he made this possible. All my efforts failed in comparison to his sanctifying work on the cross. An inside scoop… all your efforts to make yourself clean and beautiful will fail as well.
Finishing v. 11 of 1 Corinthians it says “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
Still wicked by nature, but covered by the blood, desiring to love more like Jesus, I fight my flesh and start playing with these children, spinning them around as fast as I can. Their laughter becomes joyful music to my ears; their eyes sparkle in the natural sunlight at every twirl. I begin to see the beauty that Jesus sees in them and what he saw and still sees in me.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put in you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
-Ezekiel 36:26-27
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