Our Daily Bread July 3
Cleaning Method / By: Patricia Raybon Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts.
James 4:8
Today's Scripture & Insight:
James 4:4-10
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
At the sink, two little children cheerfully sing the “Happy Birthday” song—two times each—while washing their hands. “It takes that long to wash away the germs,” their mother tells them. So even before the COVID-19 pandemic, they’d learned to take time to clean dirt from their hands.
Keeping things clean can be a tedious process, as we learned in the pandemic. Scrubbing away sin, however, means following focused steps back to God.
James urged believers in Jesus scattered throughout the Roman Empire to turn their focus back to God. Beset by quarrels and fights, their battles for one-upmanship, possessions, worldly pleasures, money, and recognition made them an enemy of God. He warned them, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. . . . Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:7–8). But how?
“Come near to God and he will come near to you” (v. 8). These are sanitizing words describing the necessity of turning to God to scour away the soil of sin from our lives. James then further explained the cleaning method: “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (vv. 9–10).
Dealing with our sin is humbling. But, hallelujah, God is faithful to turn our “washing” into worship.
Today’s Hymns:
Cleanse me
Purify My Heart
Scripture and Respond:
Psalm 80:3
Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
2 Timothy 2:21
Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.
Reflection:
Which sins in your life haven’t you faced up to? Are you willing to turn back to God and let Him cleanse you so that your spiritual life will revive?
Prayer:
Holy God, thank You that Your cleaning methods for purifying sin draw me back to You. Wash my hands and purify my heart as I return.
Wong Wai Tung (Chief executive officer of The Great Wall Education Foundation) & Sam Chow (Administrative officer of The Great Wall Education Foundation)
