It Takes The Starch Out

Good muggy morning! As though you needed a reminder of the weather conditions lately! Hot, hot, hot for the last three days and more hot to come. Weather like this can take the starch right out of your shirt. I could attempt to confirm that, but I haven't worn any starch in a shirt for years. What is needed to take the starch out of you and me? Perhaps you did not realize that starch, other than the dietary kind, was a part of your person? We may have areas of our lives were there is a little too much starch. You may be stiff in your knowledge of financial matters and not allow Jesus to bend you a little. I may be stiff in a different area and God sends a bit of tough weather to take the starch out of me. Any tribulation in our lives might be God trying to work out the stiffness, to bend us to His will in some matter. Just as certain weather conditions take the starch out of a shirt, the tribulations of the Christian take the stiffness out of his life.

Pride in an area of life imparts a stiffness much as starch does to a cotton shirt. A shirt can become so stiff with starch and ironing that the wearer walks around obviously uncomfortable. We can get uncomfortable in our lives when too much prideful stiffness sets in. God sees this stiffness, but we cannot always tell what is going on until the bending and cracking of a tribulation brings the stiffness to light. God may use the circumstances of a trial to move us one way or another. Only later do we see that first painful event of the tribulation was the cracking of our stubborn shell. We read in the Bible of God exchanging hearts of stone for hearts of flesh, but do we tend to think that this transition will be painless? If we build up a stony shell of pride on our hearts that were purchased by the blood of the Lamb, we may well find out that the cracking of that stony shell is painful. God will change our hearts to look like that of His Son. What seems painful now, may be seen to us as a wonderful expression of God's love one day.

I could use a bit less starch on my heart. Lead me gently, Lord Jesus, but please do not hesitate to crack my stony shell!

Bucky