Shake Off The Dust And Live

"My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word!" - Psalm 119:25 ESV

Maybe we think the dust just sticks to us like mud sometimes sticks to our shoes. Our soul gets dusty also and it hangs on to that dust. Our soul has a great capacity to wallow there.

"And you will be brought low; from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down; your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech shall whisper." - Isaiah 29:4 ESV

Then our speech becomes a past tense spirituality. Someone once alive with hope but now dead in oppression. A person who speaks muffled words that do not have life in the moment and have an old frame of reference.

"Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake yourself from the dust and arise; be seated, O Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion." - Isaiah 52:1-2 ESV

It is the Word that gives us life and with our will we shake ourselves. We don't linger long in the bed of dusty thinking. We rise get a shower of grace from God and put on the beautiful white garments of salvation. The dust does not cling to those garments. They are new, clean and white and have an eternal quality to them that is stain resistant.

"Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him... When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, 'Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.' " - John 13:5, 12-14 ESV

That was such an act of service. Grace in action. People get dirty feet. We get dirty feet. Grace and mercy remove the grime. They don't assign blame... they just clean up the mess and wash the dirty puddle away so there is no trace there ever was any there to clean up. In the midst of all of this is God's Word that revives... it describes a life that is present tense, living and relevant to our moment to moment living.

God has given all who believe a robe of Christ's righteousness. It is a special garment that will be worn at a future wedding feast but it is also meant to be worn on a daily basis.

Today... We shake off the dust, get revived in grace, put on Jesus Christ and live in the freshness of a present tense life.

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