Two weeks ago I took my car to the automatic car wash. It was so covered with pollen, it was no longer a red car, it was now officially green! I washed it, brought it home, and it was shiny and bright. And it was red again! But not for long. By the next day, it was already covered in more pollen, and needed another trip to the car wash. Later that week I took it to a different place, where attendants clean and shine your car by hand, and work hard to remove every spot, and get your car looking almost new! They did a great job. There was not a trace of pollen, or anything else on my car. I left the car wash and drove straight home. I got out, walked around the car, to inspect it. To my amazement, there was already a very thin layer of pollen beginning to cover the back of the car. It literally took 15 minutes to get home from the car wash, and that fast, the process was starting all over again.

Thankfully it rained a few days later, and it helped to keep the pollen problem under control. But for several days, keeping the car clean, even when it was just sitting in the driveway, was nearly impossible.

It’s a lot like repentance. When God first called you, you learned about repentance. You learned that there were things you needed to change. And you started making changes to get rid of sin, and become clean before God. But you probably found out that sometimes it’s hard to stay that way. You may have found yourself drifting back into the old way of life, and needing to repent all over again. Staying clean seemed impossible. Then one day you were baptized. The water covered you completely, and cleansed you spiritually. You now had something to help keep the problem under control. Now you had God’s Holy Spirit!

It’s like the rain. It washed the pollen off the car, and it helped clear the air of the pollen that was settling on everything. Without it the car would need cleaning again rather quickly. But even with the rain, the car will eventually get dirty again. Even with God’s Spirit, we will still make mistakes and need to repent again, and come before God, asking for forgiveness. And we will be cleansed again. But it’s a lifelong process. We need to repent every day, because we aren’t perfect. Being baptized and having God’s Spirit doesn’t make us perfect. We still have to fight against human nature and the influences of Satan’s world that are all around us, like pollen on a spring day.

As we grow, we get closer to God’s way of life, God’s way of thinking, God’s way of living. We will never be totally perfect as long as we’re in this human body. But the time will come when we are like God in every way…when we are finally perfect. That will come when we’re resurrected into the Family of God. Imagine if your car never got dirty, never needed washing. As long as we have pollen in the air, that won’t happen. But the time will come when we won’t have human nature any more…because we won’t be human! That’s a hard concept to imagine, because we’ve never known anything but human life. But that’s the future we have to look forward to!

Stay strong. Use God’s Spirit to help you resist the pollutions of the world around you. Keep yourself spiritually clean, and as close to being like God as you can. The next time you see a fine coating of pollen on your recently cleaned car, remember that this world is just like that. But with a right Spirit, we can be shielded from this world’s ways, and remain able to resist them.