At the end of January our washing machine quit working. The washer tub would fill with water … but it would not agitate the clothes. The washer would drain the water … but it would not spin the clothes to wring out the excess water.
Hubby and I ordered a new washing machine from Home Depot.
It would be two weeks until delivery.
So the long two weeks of waiting began.
Since the washer still filled the tub with water, I figured I could hand-agitate the clothes myself.
Have you ever tried bending down into a washer to hand-agitate a load of heavy wet clothes? It’s exhausting, to say the least.
My plan was to hand-agitate the clothes for 5 minutes … then let the clothes sit and soak for 10 minutes … then hand-agitate the clothes for another 5 minutes. Surely that would get the clothes clean.
After only a minute or two of hand-agitating the heavy, sopping-wet, unwieldy mess, I started to get hot and sweaty. After a full 5 minutes, my strength was spent.
Have you ever tried hand-wringing out a heavy, sopping-wet load of laundry? It’s tiring, to say the least. And time consuming! And after all that effort, the clothes still wound up going into the dryer heavy and sopping-wet.
The entire experience was draining! Exhausting! Time-consuming! And resulted in big ugly bruises on both my elbows (from bending over into the washer to hand-agitate the laundry).
Unconfessed sin in our lives is a lot like this.
When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin … and when we ignore the sin, and do not repent and confess the sin … our relationship with God winds up broken. Just like our broken washing machine.
Only God can make us clean.
It is our relationship with God which makes us clean.
And yet, just like I tried to hand-wash my laundry in a broken washer, we try to live our lives as if nothing is broken. We try really hard to live a “good” life. We put lots of effort into making ourselves look “squeaky-clean” and “super-spiritual.”
While in reality, our relationship with God is broken.
It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to try to live a “good”, “clean” life apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. We wind up with “bruised elbows” in our efforts to “be clean” our own way.
No matter how hard we try to live a “good”, “squeaky-clean”, “super-spiritual” life … if we have unconfessed sin, then the “washer” isn’t working … and our life isn’t “clean” after all.
“All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
– Isaiah 64:6
“O God, wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.”
– Psalm 51:2
“Cleanse me, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Create in me a pure heart, O God.”
– Psalm 51:7, 10
