hanging out in the proverbial Church Drain...

I had a crazy busy clean day this weekend. The kind where your children live in fear up in their rooms..one, because you keep assigning them chores and two, because you are acting like a lunatic and not so pleasant to be around. That was our Saturday morning. I started in the laundry room. Un-Assembling the clothes rack was my first priority. I then started on the breakfast nook and family room. I dusted, straightened, and vacuumed. I turned around and gave the kitchen a look and grabbed my bucket and Murphy's oil soap and got ready to rumble. I go to the bucket of supplies and pick out my sponge. I dip the bone dry tiny thing into the water and POOF it soaks up twice it's weight and size and I go to work. I almost feel like this post should be a musical and I should burst into a cleaning song complete with singing animals and such..but no, I had to make due with my ipod and the shuffle button. It was about the time Bono was singing about streets having no name when I noticed something. The water in my bucket was getting pretty filthy and I was allowing this sponge to get saturated with the crud and wiping my floors with it. I went and emptied the bucket and got fresh water and soap and started fresh. I cleaned the kitchen, got the laundry partially done and the house was in good order. It struck me later that night as I lie in bed waiting for sleep to eventually show up for our date that I realized something. We are like sponges. Each of us. We soak up more than we can imagine and can hold it quite well. But there is only so much we can hold until we have to be wrung out. Have you ever left a sponge in your sink or laundry room sink for many days? It is putrid! It stinks to high heaven and can even start growing mold and bacteria. It is not able to be used for anything useful and usually gets thrown out. We are like that too you know. I mean, sometimes we go to church, or Bible study and soak in the word. We soak in teachings, we go to all sorts of events and programs filling ourselves to the brim. All good things mind you..but sometimes that is where we stop. We then lie around the proverbial Church drain and just start to stink. We start to grow mold and mildew and just are not useful for anything other than sitting there. We need to be wrung out! I am a firm believer in SERVING! If you are a member or even an attender at a home church you should be SERVING! And not just AT your church. If your church has outreaches into your community DO IT! If they don't have these programs CREATE ONE and INVITE OTHERS TO SERVE WITH YOU! What good is it to fill up on Jesus if we do not allow Him to wring us out to reach and serve others? What good is that? We should be reaching out to our communities, our neighbors and sharing the good news with them. We should be more concerned about that than our order or worship or what our next great "plan" for our church is. I mean, come on. Why in the world would we put the lost and hurting on the back burner to stuff like that? I want to be wrung out. I want to be available to share Jesus with others. I want to be comfortable being UN-comfortable. I don't want to be a putrid, moldy sponge not able to be used.. I want to be used BY God FOR God.