Holy Heat

For I, the LORD, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt, that I might be your God. Therefore, you must be holy because I am holy.

Leviticus 11:45

Have you ever taken a few shortcuts in completing a task to save precious time? To this day, my beautiful daughter has a little scar from trying to iron her clothes while they were still on! I wonder who she got that creative idea from!

I thought about this episode recently because I was ready to tackle a project—replacing the fabric lining in the special Lane cedar hope chest that my parents gave to me when I graduated from high school. Grabbing my staple gun, I laid the new fabric inside the chest and began fastening it. I was in a hurry to get it done, so I took a shortcut and did not iron the fabric first, thinking I could stretch the wrinkles out. It didn’t take long to see that my shortcut wasn’t working. It looked awful! I had to waste precious time pulling out all the staples, then I literally had to go back to the ironing board!

Every day I rely on the Lord to apply His holy heat to the wrinkles in my life, in order to shape me in a way that brings glory to Him. There are no shortcuts in living a holy life; we reflect the glory of God through His power and patient teaching. Our wrinkles are smoothed out by the gracious hand of our loving God. Ephesians 5:25-27 says, “Christ loved the church. He gave up His life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish.”

No doubt about it, God sees us as holy people in Jesus Christ. Whatever hard things that come into our lives as “holy heat” will be circumstances God will use to conform us to look more like Christ until all our earthly wrinkles are gone forever!

“Iron on, Lord!” Next time you iron a piece of clothing, ask God to reveal any stubborn wrinkles in your heart. Place them on His ironing board of holy heat.