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Jan 11, 2020 08:00am

Do You Have “Dishwasher Faith”?

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It seems to me that the dishwasher has got to be the most misunderstood appliance in our homes today. I think it is supposed to be used to wash dirty dishes, but, at least in my home, we don’t treat it that way.

For all intents and purposes, we wash the dirty dishes before we put them in there and I think a lot of families do the same. Some may just rinse them beforehand but in any case, it seems that rarely do we just put them in the dishwasher as is.

We don’t treat other appliances that way. We don’t warm up the house before using the heater or cool it down before turning on the air conditioner. We don’t heat food up before putting it on the stove. We don’t generally clean the floor before using the vacuum and so forth. But we always clean the dishes in some way before we use the dishwasher.

Why do we do that?

Apparently, we don’t have faith that our dishwasher will do what it is supposed to do without some help from us. And even if we had that faith, it seems that the rules of placing the dishes in there are so complicated that most of us wouldn’t get it right anyway. So, we clean them enough beforehand to leave the machine with minimal work to do.

Unfortunately, we often treat our spiritual faith in much the same way as we treat our faith in the dishwasher.

We feel a need to clean up before we come to Jesus. We feel that our plates are too dirty for Jesus to handle, so we try to clean them before approaching him or we just avoid him altogether. Our problems and failures seem too messy for Jesus, so we just let them pile up in the sink.

Religion can make the rules as complicated as the rules for correctly loading a dishwasher, so we let those supposed rules hinder us from coming to Jesus for what we need.

We may phrase it differently or want to deny it, but the bottom line is that, just like a dishwasher, we often don’t fully trust Jesus to do what He is supposed to do.

—We don’t fully trust that Jesus provided the way for full and perfect cleaning of our dishes at the Cross.

—We don’t fully trust that the blood of Jesus was the ultimate and perfect cleanser.

—We don’t fully trust that when Jesus bought us with his life that he bought us in AS IS condition.

SO HOW DO WE ASSURE OUR DISHES ARE CLEAN?

The short answer is that we must trust the dishwasher to do its job. We must have faith that Jesus is who he said, did what he said, and can continue to do what he says. He said he died on the cross to wash our dishes. Trust the dishwasher!
It is not necessary for us to presoak, scrub, or rinse. Trust the dishwasher!
We cannot let rules keep us from Jesus. Despite religion, Jesus’ rules are pretty simple–love God and love others and trust the dishwasher!
Believe that through the work of Jesus on the cross, God accepts us without disclaimers and small print. We were purchased in AS IS condition. He is fully aware of any repairs that we may need and is fully capable of handling them so we should never ever hesitate to approach him as we are. Just trust the dishwasher!

The truth is that we all are all in need of a dishwasher that we can trust and depend on and we have that in Jesus. We can depend on him to do what he was designed to do, but first we must place our trust in him. If you have not done that, you can do so now. You can present your dirty dishes to Jesus and place your trust in him to clean them up through what he has already done on the cross. You don’t have to understand it all. You just need to trust the dishwasher.

If you don’t feel complete confidence in that trust, I hope that you will quickly reach out to a godly counselor that can help you firm up that decision. Regardless of how dirty, greasy, or caked on our dishes are, we have the assurance that they can come out sparkling clean. We just need to trust the dishwasher!