Tearing Away the Old

     Some time ago, I admired the paint job in a friend’s bathroom. Her husband said he had textured and painted the walls himself and that he would be happy to do the same for us. I told him that his offer was wonderful, but that I would feel bad if he did all that labor at our house for free. He insisted. His wife said she’d help me tear the existing wallpaper down and added, the process can be “therapeutic!”

     A few months later, we began the project, which was only supposed to take a few hours. As it turned out, instead of being therapeutic, tearing down the wallpaper almost required therapy! The wallpaper was supposed to pull down in large sheets; however it ripped off in one-two inch pieces. I commented, “Now I know why I never took this project on by myself.” While it took countless hours to see the entire bathroom wall clean and free of any covering, there were small victories when we would see a section cleared away. At that point, we knew we were making progress.

     While toiling away, peeling away piece by piece of wallpaper, I thought “this is similar to the way sanctification works.” God takes one piece of our spiritual makeup at a time, tearing away the old and making us pure and holy like him in that area. I recently read a devotion that stated, “Spiritual formation takes time.” Believing in Jesus is the first step, but becoming like Christ takes a lifetime! In Philippians 1:6 Paul states, that he is confident that, “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” It is a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly process.

     Fortunately, redoing the guest bathroom did not take a lifetime, but it was a beautiful sight when all the wallpaper was down and the walls were ready to texture and paint. Don’t you know we are a beautiful sight to God when we’ve made a commitment to be obedient to him and our walls are clean; free of any old coverings? Where is God at work in your life today? The process may be tedious but trust that the end result will be worth the effort it took to get there.