Rubbed Oil
My home has wood cabinets in the kitchen. The shine on them dimmed and raw wood emerged from all the wear and tear 18 years brings to a well used kitchen. In an effort to bring them back to life, I recently spent time cleaning and re-finishing them. As I rubbed oil into the wood, they began to shine. The cabinets looked new and bright. The blemishes disappeared and the water damage faded away.
Throughout the Bible, God talks about anointing his people with oil. When we choose to follow Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – He annoints us with the Holy Spirit. When we are sick and in need of healing, He anoints us. When we are led to go speak His words, He anoints us. Like the oil penetrating deep into cabinets unable to be washed away, the Holy Spirit is rubbed into us. He penetrates and fills all our crevices with Himself. Like the cabinets, we are renewed and shine bright. Our brokenness is wiped clean and our sins are erased. We are first brought into life by the Holy Spirit when we say yes to following Christ. We are then brought deeper into life as a follower of Christ when we ask for His forgiveness every time our comforts and circumstances slide us into earthly brokenness because of our lack of pursuit of Him.
When the cabinets were first installed in my home 18 years ago they shined bright without blemish- much like the anointing our baptism first gives us. But as a human follower of Christ, over time we will slip up. We sin. We stutterstep. We are too rough with our God-given gifts. We may still be looking at Jesus in our daily lives, but our eyes are clouded and our vision faded. So we run crooked. The shine on our cabinets begins to dim as pieces of our old self emerge. We get knicked and our raw wood becomes exposed.
We loose clear sight of God because:
Our comfort’s distract us and we are unable to rest with our Comforter.
Our circumstances defeat us and we run from our Warrior.
Our relationships consume us and God becomes hidden under a mound of our pride and hurt.
It is here in this place of faded sight where we need to ask God to forgive us and uncloud our eyes. We need to ask God to anoint us. Sometimes life is so hard we need to gather our people and ask them to ask God to anoint us. We need Him to rub His oil on us so our blemishes can fade. In His anointing we shine bright because we are fully re-connected to Him. We are able to rest with Him. We are able to run to Him. We are able to delight in Him because our pride and hurt fade away.
The beauty of our God is every time we ask for forgiveness, He is fills us with His Holy Spirit. In our willingness to humble ourselves and ask, we are also reminded that He is a graceful leader. He is a leader who has promised to love, rescue, and protect whenever we falter. We are weak and He is more than strong enough to push us into bondage. Yet He chooses to forever set us free. THAT is God bleeding grace. We are loved by The One who doesn’t just see us when we are broken. He sees us and choses to heal our brokenness because He wants us to be connected with Him fully and completely for all of our days. And it is in this healing where we become able to speak truth and do good as we serve Him!
“But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie.”