In our beautiful home the LORD blessed us with, our range has a glass stovetop. I love it. Most of the time. But when food, soup or sauce spills over the edge of the pot it gets on the surface and makes quite a mess. Sometimes it’s nearly impossible to clean, and when you cook on it again, it gets even worse.
(If you have a glass stovetop you know what I mean!)
And then you’re gone a few days like I recently was, and your family keeps cooking on it while you’re gone …. and …. well … you end up with a really big, stuck on mess that doesn’t even budge.
So last weekend when I was home I tried more diligently to remove the stains with the daily cleaner designed for that. (which we hardly ever use … oops!)
It didn’t come off.
So I did what every other smart, time-saving American would do. I picked up my phone, went to my Amazon app, looked up glass stovetop cleaners … and bought them all. I was determined.
The cleaning products came the next day and hubby took a stab at the stains with the paste and special scrubber … and it helped, somewhat, but didn’t get it all cleaned.
This morning, when everyone else was sleeping, I decided to bring out the big boy, the razor blade scraper included in the kit … and I started scraping. Meticulously … and determined.
Some areas came off quick and some areas took more diligent work, which I lovingly did down to the finest detail, because I was looking forward to my shiny glass stovetop again.
And that’s when I realized, this is how God works on us. We keep getting stuck or clogged up in the same areas over and over … and it sort of piles up.
And then as we seek GOD and work on overcoming whatever it is we’re struggling with (while HE’s pursuing us) we understand and enjoy new levels of freedom from things that have held us back, and feel lighter and happier and more optimistic.
And then we struggle with the same doubts and fears again … and fall back into old bad habits and make some of the same mistakes again.
And then HE picks us up and brushes us off … and we go again …
Until the next “revelation” (or level of understanding) … and HE scrapes away some more of the junk that has clogged us up and kept us stuck over the years.
And we feel great and lighter … then we struggle with the same thing again.
Then HE scrapes away some more.
And then we start relying on the daily cleaner to keep everything nice and shiny and clean, with no build up … ahhhh … we learned something new!
In GOD this daily cleaner is the Bible, and spending intimate time with GOD on a daily basis.
That’s when we notice that we’re getting “stuck” less and less … while we become more and more “free” and “clean”.
Walking with GOD is a beautiful journey, and each one of us is sooooo important to HIM and sooooo loved by HIM, beyond anything we could ever comprehend!
And HE’s molding us, strengthening us and refining us … and scraping away all the old junk on a regular basis until we are perfect and complete lacking in nothing … and finally free.
Oh how HE loves us!