Grace Paint!

I have found that there are 2 kinds of people in the world: those who like to paint and those who will avoid painting at all cost!  People give various reasons for why they would never want to paint a room in their home.  Maybe it is skill level or confidence which I understand.  It's OK.  Not everyone likes to paint.  I am trying to understand people who are not like me.

I love to paint and have found many benefits in painting.  It is therapeutic in that it calms me down and gives me confidence in doing something that I can do pretty well.  It is enriching in that I can listen to sermons on my MP3 player and get ideas for my own preaching.  It is helpful to others in that I get to help out others who don't paint. Sometimes they even pay me which is always beneficial!

Mostly, I can't think about painting without thinking about God's grace.  Because every wall has it's history, often times I need to paint over nasty stains.  Who knows how they got that way but they now make the wall look shabby and worn out.  Many stains are so bad that there is no way to return the wall to a good condition except by using a stain blocker.  Without the stain blocker, the stain would bleed through and the wall would still look shabby.

I love to use Kilz stain blocker which covers the stain and allows the wall to accept a good coat of paint.  The stain is still there but it is now covered.  No one will ever see the stain again!  It will not bleed through to the final coat of paint and it will look as if the wall never had a stain on it!  It's a miracle!

We all are like walls: we all have nasty stains.  God calls them sin.  Even pastors have sins.  They are just better at hiding them.  The miracle is that my God sends me grace as a stain blocker to cover the nasty sin stains in my life.  Through the work of Jesus and my trust in him, he covers my stains.  The stains are still there but they have been covered and will NEVER be seen again.  When God looks at me, he doesn't see a dirty, shabby, sin-filled rebel.  He sees me as a beautiful clean and new person who has no sin stains.  All of this because of God's incredible grace!  Isn't God's grace amazing?

Oh, I do love painting!