Remodeling....

Well, we began the remodeling process on one of our bathrooms about 3 weeks ago now. We've gotten most of the floor ripped up and the wall paper off the walls. And now it's been sitting like that for about 3 weeks while we try and find time to finish it. It was one of those projects you get started on and then realize you're going to need to do a little more than what you thought you would when you first started. Then life got in the way, and we haven't had a free weekend since then to finish it. And with everything on the calendar for this month, it looks like it's going to be the first of March before another "somewhat free" weekend shows up.

As I look at the bare, scrapped walls of my bathroom, it makes me think about what we do when we begin to "remodel" our lives. We jump in whole heartedly to start scraping off all of the ugliness and outdatedness, then once we are left with bare walls, it causes us to realize there is a lot more to it, that just scrapping away all of the old "stuff".

If we are going to remodel our lives, we have to scrape away all the old stuff; we have to get down to the bare walls, the cracks that need to fixed, and anything else that is covering up what we need to change in our lives. In order for God to remodel us, we need to really examine what's left when we get down to the bare walls. Just like we have to examine those bare walls in the bathroom, before we can decide what it's going to take to make it look right again.

Once you do that, you can begin the process of making things look new again. You can redo the walls, the floor, the shower cutains, etc. And when you are finished everything will look fresh and bright and renewed.

Will my bathroom ever get completely finished? Yes, at least until we decide it's time to remodel again. Are our lives ever completely remodeled? Not really. Our lives are one place in which remodeling is never really finished. I believe we should always be at the stage of continual remodeling in our lives. We need to be continuing to remodel our lives to reflect the life of Jesus and be worthy to be one who is called a child of God. We should constantly be changing and mirroring the image of Jesus in every aspect of our lives.

Only when we meet Jesus will our remodeling be completely finished. When we meet Christ and He makes us completely New!! Jesus is the potter and we are the clay. He is continaully reshaping us and remodeling us to look more and more like Him. We just have to give Him the freedom to remodel us and not resist His reshaping of our lives.

Once my bathroom is finished, it won't always stay looking as clean and new as things do when they are first finished. But if we allow Jesus to continually reshape and remodel us, our lives will begin to look like Christ, the perfect template for all of us to remodeling our lives after.

Praise God for the perfect son and template he gave us to use as we daily remodel our lives.