There are five sponges lying in your laundry tub. For once every member of your family has been helping to clean up different areas of your home. All the sponges look the same.
You are curious as to where everyone cleaned but you can't tell by looking - they all look the same. Anyway, now it's time to clean up and put it all away! You squeeze each sponge to clean it.
As you squeeze the first sponge, you see breadcrumbs so you decide that someone cleaned the kitchen with that one. When you squeeze the second sponge, you find tub and tile cleaner - that one was used to clean the bathroom.
Next, in the third sponge, you find motor oil. Someone has cleaned the garage! In the fourth sponge, there's a strong smell of baby powder when it is squeezed - yep, the baby's nursery was done with that one!
And finally, in the fifth one, is floor wax. That was the one you used on the hall floor! As you lay the last one down, you look again at their similarity - and they all look the same until they're squeezed.
Christians are the same way. As life squeezes us, different things come out - anger from one, a need for revenge from another, impatient tears from one, remorse from yet another - also greed, untruth, lust - and finally, from one saint, pours forth the love of Christ.
Just like the sponge, we can only squeeze out what is put in. Stay in the Word daily, and be in continuous prayer, so that when life puts the squeeze on you (and it WILL), Jesus, and Jesus ALONE will shine forth from you!
Have a blessed, squeaky-clean day!
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