Rusty Gold
My husband and I have a guilty pleasure to confess. It is not anything that is detrimental to our spirits or disastrous for our physical bodies. It is just wasted minutes spent watching a program where we learn pretty much nil except the value of someone else's junk. We love to spend late nights peering into other people's garages, basements, and store rooms via "American Pickers".
The hosts, Frank and Mike, travel around the country in a van looking for valuable recyclables - Rusty Gold. Their eyes light up and sweat begins to roll off their foreheads when they spy something they can transform from junk to treasure. Rare bicycles and tin toys or porcelain cafeteria signs and oil pumps incite giddiness between them. Mike likes to say "I'm just an ordinary guy looking for extraordinary things".
Rusty gold, huh? Their finds are covered in dust and cobwebs and years of grime, neglected under a bottom shelf at the back of a rarely entered shed. But they can see through the mud and mire to the beauty underneath.
Does this sound familiar to you? God slapped me upside the forehead one late night while watching those antique archaeologists dig. I practically heard His voice quietly shouting:
YOU are MY Rusty Gold.
YOU are MY rare treasure covered in sin.
YOU are MY priceless find.
I KNOW your beauty beneath the grime.
Does the Lord really convict me while watching the History channel?! Absolutely. So much so, He began to bring to mind all of my rust obscuring the gold underneath. Ugliness like PRIDE, FEAR, DOUBT, INSECURITY, and JEALOUSY. Every sin I hold onto and continue to control adds another layer of funkiness to what God had intended. Every sin I refuse to surrender and hand over to an All Forgiving God contributes to the gunk accumulating around the beautiful edges He created. When I resist His desire to transform me into a new creation by living out the old sins, I add an even thicker layer of yuck.
Just as the treasure hunters lovingly clean and restore their precious treasures, my merciful God knows and sees my true value and worth. He waits for me to surrender so that He may polish away the rust of my pride and fear. He is ready with His scouring pad to remove my grime of insecurity and jealousy. My gracious God is ready with his soft buffing cloth to remove my scratches and scuffs of selfish living and ugly ways.
Unlike "American Pickers", my transformation is not neatly wrapped up in an hour. Occasionally, I actually purposefully hide with my filthiness inside a cabinet not to be seen. But the Lord is relentless in His patient pursuit of my transformation. The Bible says:
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6
I rest confidently that regardless of my new dents and dirt I acquire along the way, He will NOT stop His good work in me. My Father will continue to shape and reform me into His new creation . . ."Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
American Picker's host, Mike, is an ordinary guy looking for extraordinary things. But MY God is an EXTRAORDINARY GOD perfecting a rusty piece of gold like me.
The hosts, Frank and Mike, travel around the country in a van looking for valuable recyclables - Rusty Gold. Their eyes light up and sweat begins to roll off their foreheads when they spy something they can transform from junk to treasure. Rare bicycles and tin toys or porcelain cafeteria signs and oil pumps incite giddiness between them. Mike likes to say "I'm just an ordinary guy looking for extraordinary things".
Rusty gold, huh? Their finds are covered in dust and cobwebs and years of grime, neglected under a bottom shelf at the back of a rarely entered shed. But they can see through the mud and mire to the beauty underneath.
Does this sound familiar to you? God slapped me upside the forehead one late night while watching those antique archaeologists dig. I practically heard His voice quietly shouting:
YOU are MY Rusty Gold.
YOU are MY rare treasure covered in sin.
YOU are MY priceless find.
I KNOW your beauty beneath the grime.
Does the Lord really convict me while watching the History channel?! Absolutely. So much so, He began to bring to mind all of my rust obscuring the gold underneath. Ugliness like PRIDE, FEAR, DOUBT, INSECURITY, and JEALOUSY. Every sin I hold onto and continue to control adds another layer of funkiness to what God had intended. Every sin I refuse to surrender and hand over to an All Forgiving God contributes to the gunk accumulating around the beautiful edges He created. When I resist His desire to transform me into a new creation by living out the old sins, I add an even thicker layer of yuck.
Just as the treasure hunters lovingly clean and restore their precious treasures, my merciful God knows and sees my true value and worth. He waits for me to surrender so that He may polish away the rust of my pride and fear. He is ready with His scouring pad to remove my grime of insecurity and jealousy. My gracious God is ready with his soft buffing cloth to remove my scratches and scuffs of selfish living and ugly ways.
Unlike "American Pickers", my transformation is not neatly wrapped up in an hour. Occasionally, I actually purposefully hide with my filthiness inside a cabinet not to be seen. But the Lord is relentless in His patient pursuit of my transformation. The Bible says:
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6
I rest confidently that regardless of my new dents and dirt I acquire along the way, He will NOT stop His good work in me. My Father will continue to shape and reform me into His new creation . . ."Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
American Picker's host, Mike, is an ordinary guy looking for extraordinary things. But MY God is an EXTRAORDINARY GOD perfecting a rusty piece of gold like me.
So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image. 2 Corinthians 3:18
restore my heart, oh God. thank you, Father, for always perfecting this rusty mess that is me.
ReplyDeleteMandy, you always know exactly what I'm trying to say! Thank you for condensing my whole, long conversation into a concise thought!
ReplyDelete