Step #1: First thing I have to do is to sort the clothes, lights from dark. If I were to get a red shirt in with the white socks, or my dad's good Sabbath shirt, they would no longer be white :). And my dad would have a pink shirt. :) This is what the Lord has to do with us, He has to separate us from the evil influences of this world. (This is when we are convicted to go on the Christian walk.)
Step #2: Next I have to put the load into the washing machine. Where it is agitated and scrubbed and rinsed and then it goes through the cycle once more. It takes about 30 minutes for it be completed. God has to wash away our sins, and sometimes the cleaning is going to hurt. And to us it may feel as if it is forever, when in the sight of God it only takes a second. (Another way to look at it is baptism, but I'll just focus on this for now.)
Step #3: So now I have to put the clothes in the dryer, where they are spun around and around for a little over an hour. When God is finished washing us He must dry our characters out, or you could say He sends the Holy Spirit into our lives.
Step #4: Some of clothes are done now and folded, but others such as skirts and some shirts and my dad's Sabbath pants have to be ironed. Now those of you who know how to iron you'll understand, but for those of you who don't, a short explanation is...you take the iron and fill it with pure water and plug it in and it heats up, then you take whatever you may have to iron and put the hot iron on top of it and move it around.
God must now iron some of us out, we have lots of wrinkles in our lives that we can't handle. And He must use a little heat to get it out, and sometimes He has to steam and spray us. Trials is another way to look at it, and sometimes we may think that the heat is to much and that it is lasting forever, but we have to remember that God is holding the iron!
I also like to think of these four steps as a sorting process. In the first step you have to sort through and find the light clothing, then you take that load put it in the wash and put most of it in the dryer. Some clothes can't be dried by the machine, they have to air dry. So also in the last stage, when most of the clothes are folded and put away, some have to still endure the test and final conflict.
In each of these stages, there are some that are taken away, and some left, and in the end, the pile that has to be ironed is only a small amount of clothes, or people. But when the ironing is over, they to are to be hung up and put away.
Through the years God has done the same, He has separated the Christians from the world, then He has washed them, and some leave after that, or some die, and some fall away. Then He must dry us, and again most of the people will be laid to rest before the end time. Then the remnant people, those that are left, will have to face the hardest time known to mankind. But when it is all done, those who are alive and remaining will be caught up together with those that have died and we will all see Jesus in the end.
To me this was a powerful lesson, and I never look at doing laundry quite in the same way I used to. I hope too that you have learned something that you may never before thought of, and maybe come up with something else.
I want to go through with the whole process, so that when I'm done I can wear a white robe in heaven, but most important of all, to see Jesus face to face, don't you?
I want Jesus to iron me!
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