Our laundry room is in the process of getting a makeover. When completed, it will be a much more functional room. And it will be neater, as well, which will make me very happy! There was a long wire shelf over the washer and dryer, which has now been removed.
In my previous career as a beauty consultant, I did a lot of makeovers, helping women choose the right skin care products and the right eye shadow and the right lip color. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed helping women feel better about how themselves. For me, that career was about more than lipstick; it was an opportunity to encourage other women, to get to know them better, and to bring some joy and sunshine into their daily lives.
Have you ever felt you needed a makeover? Maybe a new hair color, a different hair style, a different eye shadow, or perhaps a new wardrobe?
While each of us may from time to time need an update to our hair style or our wardrobe, far more often we need a makeover on the inside. A spiritual makeover.
In the spiritual sense, it's much like tuning a musical instrument. You can polish the piano or the violin or the flute, or any other instrument, all day long, but if that instrument is out of tune, all the polish in the world won't help. It will still be out of tune, no matter how much the exterior of the instrument shines.
That's true for us as well. No matter how good we look on the outside, it's what's inside that counts. I think that's why David prayed, in Psalm 51:10, "Create in me a clean heart, O God."
When we place our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are given a clean heart. But too often that heart gets "dirtied" by our thoughts and our attitudes, our prejudices and our resentments, our bitterness and our worry.....by all those things that are the sins of our lives.
We get that cleaned up when we pray as David did, "Against You, and You only, have I sinned.....Create in me a clean heart." (Psalm 51:4, 10)
That's the first step in our spiritual makeover: confession of sin. Before you get a makeover, whether at a party or at the cosmetic counter or in the privacy of your own bathroom, you have to wash your face. You have to clean the old makeup away. That's what confession of sin does.
In the letter to the Colossians, Paul gets specific about some of the things we need to have washed away in our spiritual makeover.
"But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth." (Colossians 3:8 ESV)
And then comes the makeover. This spiritual makeover is much more than a new lip gloss. Much more than an external change. A spiritual makeover involves attitudes of the heart.
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." (Colossians 3:12-14 ESV)
Do you need a makeover today?
Come, Thou Fount of ev'ry blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy praise.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let Thy grace, Lord, like a fetter,
Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it.
Seal it for Thy courts above.
(words:Robert Robinson; traditional American melody, John Wyeth)
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