We had an incident just before church yesterday that resulted in a gallon of PineSol in the carpet. After 3+ hours of using nothing but water and my carpet cleaner, it was still sudsing like shaving cream. 

As I worked on this, I kept thinking about something Tony Smith had talked about in the teaching. He quoted the passage about how Jesus came to convict the world of sin and righteousness. Sin makes sense, but convict the world of righteousness? Tony explained that it was to convict us of trying to earn our way into heaven by works and our own righteousness instead of trusting in grace and Jesus’ righteousness. The Bible says all our righteousness is like filthy rags to God. 

What’s this got to do with cleaning carpets? Well, PineSol is a great cleaner, but when you pour nothing but cleaner on something, it doesn’t clean it; it makes a mess! That cleaner is like our righteousness. If we only pour it on and cover our lives with our own righteousness, it’s a mess. 

What did I use to clean the mess? Water. What cleans our lives? Living Water! Our works without Jesus just make a mess. And you know what else? If I pour the water on and do nothing else, I still have a mess. The water needs to flow out just like the Living Water needs to flow onto us, over us, and through us to others. If it just goes in and stays, no cleansing is going on. 

Now I don’t know how many more gallons of pure water it will take to clean this, but I know the only way to clean it is to keep pouring pure water on it and taking it away. And you know that even after several times of emptying the carpet cleaner of this sudsy water, it is still pulling out dirt.

I don’t know how many gallons of the Living Water it will take to clean my life, but 1 drop of Jesus​’ blood is all it took to clean my soul. While on earth, I’ll keep trying to wash in the Living Water and keep washing my dirty sins away, but I know that when I stand before the throne, God won’t see the filth or the sudsy self-righteousness​. He will see me standing in purest white robes, cleaner than anything on earth could ever make them because of Jesus’ sacrifice for me that clothed me in His righteousness.

Thank You, Jesus, from the bottom of my heart.