I was praying one night about the “stuff” on my prayer list, belaboring a few urgent items and baring my soul before my Father about things that were concerning me. Amid my ramblings, God quietly asked me what the “things” were that I was grasping in my hands. I told Him they were things that I must hold on to so I wouldn’t lose them (things like the bit of cash reserve that was put away for a rainy day, our two at-home businesses, and even family members). These were very important things I needed to handle very carefully, lest they drop and become further out of control. I was holding on tightly to each one!
Then God asked me to remember a scene from my sons’ childhood. A time when they had two things that they really wanted to keep – one in each hand. Perhaps it was two sticky pieces of candy that they licked first from one hand then the other. But when they spotted a favorite toy, they wanted that too. What were they to do?
Do you remember such a scene at your house? Do you remember how you tried not to laugh as you watched them struggle and how you came to their rescue with a washcloth for their hands and a saucer for the candy? Then you washed their little hands so they could play with the toy and distracted them from the candy.
With that image firmly before my eyes, God came to my rescue! He reminded me I was holding on to “sticky pieces of candy” so tightly that I had no way to hold a new blessing or answer to prayer He had for me. I was so absorbed in holding on to my sticky money, business, and people that I was missing being able to appropriate God’s new and abundant blessings He had for me.
How foolish I’d been. I was not consciously holding on and assuming responsibility for all those things; but by not trusting God with them, that was exactly what I was doing. How gently and perfectly God corrected me and called me to repentance.
After a trip to the cross to seek His forgiveness and lay aside my load of “sticky stuff,” He washed my hands in the blood of Jesus and made me white as snow. He called me to open my hands and be available to receive His blessing – now without the encumbrance of stuff in the way – but with an open and expectant heart and hands!
Will this early Christmas lesson last me a lifetime? Absolutely! What sticky stuff are you holding on to that is interfering with you being able to receive God’s newest blessings? Need your hands washed? Try the fountain at the foot of the cross!
“…let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV
Authored by Ruthann Gleason