Keeping clean.

1 Peter 3:13-18
The Message (MSG)
 13-18If with heart and soul you're doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you're still better off. Don't give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you're living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They'll end up realizing that they're the ones who need a bath. It's better to suffer for doing good, if that's what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That's what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others' sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.


This was the scripture tonight....


And it sums up the path we are trying to walk.

To let Christ live through us.... Living a clean life, willing to share our Savior with anyone who asks. Not afraid of ridicule.

Not afraid of punishment.


God is not here to protect us from all discomfort. He's here to help us through it.

Tonight, our minister spoke of the opportunity for fellowship with Christ when we suffer. To walk HIS path of pain.

During the service tonight, as I listened to his message, Kinsey chose to lie her three year old self down right under the pew.... Then slid herself forward a pew or two.

Then a pew or two more.

There was no way I could reach her, and she was quiet.... So I sat and waiting, worried, just a bit, about what the rest of the congregation thought.

Then I listened to the message. That God wanted us to live for him, to be clean. So on the dusty floor, there lay a three year old blonde, quietly singing to herself during the sermon....and what you ask was she singing?


Jesus loves me.


And who am I to argue with that?



She's been brought to God. As she was laying on the floor, UNDER the pew, she knew exactly to whom she belonged. I pray that those of us properly seated above her can open our hearts this Lenten season to know that same undeniable truth.


Jesus loves me, this I know.