Zestfully Clean!

The following was written from a youth camp we recently did at Spirit West Coast...

So I'm sitting here at 6 AM waiting for the showers to open at Spirit West Coast in Monterey, CA. In fact, I've been here for almost an hour already - I've got an hour left to wait. I'm not the only nutty one. I recruited several other guys from our camp to sit here with me - ALL waiting for the first hot showers of the day. In awhile, there will be dozens lined up - then hundreds and even thousands throughout the day! It got me thinking about why we crave being clean. I mean, when I am camping, I expect to get dirty, but I still crave the opportunity to feel clean.

I remember being in Rwanda - one of the world's poorest countries - and seeing a little boy being given a bath by his mother out in the wide open. The toddler was ecstatic as his mom washed him in a small plastic basin of hand-carried H2O. Quite simply, no matter what side of the planet we live on, we long to feel clean. You can see where I'm going with this...

It causes me to ask questions about the attractive opportunity we have in Jesus. Unfortunately, man-made religious rules and traditions have smothered Jesus with so much baggage that many people - even professing Chistians - lose sight of the primarly reason we came to Jesus in the first place! We came to get clean. We came for forgivwness. We came not to attach ourselves to more burdens and religiosity. We came to find life and freedom and reconciliation to God. We came to get clean.

Do you know anyone who resists Jesus because their experience with His professed followers has been negative? Its a shame how my life complicates Jesus for others. I don't MEAN to do so. I just sometimes get distracted from the joy available to me in what I've been given by Jesus. When I fail to rest in that joy, I become legalistic, judgmental and prudish. I unintentionally turn people OFF to the Jesus who simply wants to make them clean too. As I sit here now watching dozens of others assemble in line for the shower, I'm reminded of our universal human condition: we all desperately need to be clean. We can only disquise our odor for so long before we must face the fact that we need a shower! If you are a follower of Jesus - why did YOU originally come to Him? If you are not yet a follower of Christ - what's keeping you away?