I love watching COPS. It's a serious addiction I think. Its mostly due to my deep love and respect for law enforcement but also because I'm convinced I should have been a cop. So I live vicariously through my best gal pal Rox and her life as a law enforcement officer and through shows like COPS.
I like to claim that I have street training as a cop because I watch so many crime shows. ;) I'm still waiting for my badge and taser to be issued to me by some police force. At the beginning of ever episode of COPS the voice says, "All subjects are innocent until proven guilty." I've heard that so many times. Something caught my attention tonight as I heard it again.
I was never innocent until proven guilty. I was guilty until Jesus Christ claimed me and made me innocent. I had an "aha" moment and couldn't wait to get to my computer to write it out. In our world today it's PC to make sure everyone is innocent until proven guilty. You could catch a crook in your house, with your t.v. in his hands headed out the door and hold him til the cops show up. When the police arrive they will cuff him and read him his rights. As he waits for trial he is absolutely innocent unless the lawyers can prove him guilty of the crime. His lawyers will do all they can to prove him innocent.
In our spiritual lives this is completely flipped on it's head. I was completely guilty of every heinous sin you can think of. The seed of the original sin, that sin of Adam from which all sin has grown, was planted inside me at conception. Within me was the ability to commit every crime great and small. Spiritually I was devoid of anything good and noble. I was bad and ignoble. I embraced the darkness and all that was evil in this world. I flaunted my guilty status like a badge to the world and to God.
When I sought out Christ in my pitiful state, I was ready to let Him remove all my guilty stains. When I walked forward into the light of His death and embraced the fact that He died for me, my death stains were washed off. It was like stepping under one of those super cool waterfall showerheads after rolling around in lots of mud. Not the fun mud that we like to play in as children. This was sewage mud, the worst you can imagine. Sticky in my hair, caked into every crevice of my soul. Stinking and foul to the heavens. There was no hiding my guilt no matter how much I proclaimed it! I stepped beneath that flow of crystal clear water and it began to fall off. In my mind, because I think dramatically, I can see the dirt continuing to flow off of me and swirl in the drain before it's gone forever.
Perhaps I'll continue to stand under that downpour of water from the Savior until I leave this world. Spiritually I am clean. I am dressed as a bride ready for her Groom. I am still on this earth and I still get contaminated. So, in my thoughts the cleansing never ends until He brings about the new heavens and new earth.
Some days I can still smell the foul stench that was my former self. I can feel the tendrils of that past life trying to bring me back. Its in those moments that I hit my knees beneath that water and move out of the way to allow the Warrior King to fight those hauntings back into the abyss. I am no longer guilty. I have been set free. My God, my Savior has rescued me. And like a flood, His mercy reigns. Unending love.
Amazing grace.
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