Sitting here watching my cows eat lush grass on a cool, misty morning while I write this actually.

Knowing now my next project is taking our little blue tractor up to the house to pressure wash all the crap off it so it doesn’t rust. Kinda had me thinking it’s kinda like us… Hang with me, haha.

So, we have a lot of crap (sin) we have to deal with, and sometimes, when we just cut loose with it, it can get pretty messy. We all have made a mess of things, including myself. I’ll be the first one to admit that. But it’s what you do with the crap afterward.

You might not know this, but dairy farms (a farm that milks cows for milk) deal with a lot, and I mean a lot, of crap. But one thing you might not know is crap on a four-wheeler, bobcat, or tractor will make it rust faster than anything! Pretty sure you could put crap on one wheel fender and take a DeWalt grinder and by the time the grinder has a hole in the fender, you look over, and there is no fender on the other side. Ok, I might be a little dramatic, but you get my point. One thing though we see on a lot of dairy farms is, since you have to go get cows in twice a day, why would you bother to wash it off? It’s just going to get dirty again, right? Well, what is smarter: taking 5 minutes to run the hose over a four-wheeler and being able to only buy one and every once in a while fix it? Or going through 5 four-wheelers because they just keep rusting? I mean, to me, the smart thing is to just wash the crap off.

Kinda like us humans, we deal with a lot every single day and a lot of sin. But the amazing thing is Jesus is standing there in muck boots with a pressure washer, ready to clean off the crap. But once it’s clean, then what? Did you know that rose bushes and most plants love, and I mean love, crap? They actually need it. So once you clean it off, you can use it to help someone. Example: in my youth years, I did a lot of crap that Jesus had to wash off of me, and I put it in my garden, and now it is being used as a beautiful thing to help teach other young people what not to do. To help warn them and say, "I’ve been where you are, or you don’t want to go there." Everything should be used for the glory of God, right? Right! Even our crappy sin.

But one thing that is just plain dumb is to sin and keep living in the crap or to sin be forgiven and then not let it go. I see a lot of people, myself included, that we sin, and then we hold on to the guilt and feelings of it after we have been forgiven. Why? If Jesus says “ok, I got you, you’re now good to go” Why don’t we live like that? It would be really dumb and probably end me up in the looney bin if I came up and grabbed a baggy out of the kitchen and collected a bunch of cow crap, stuck it in my pocket, and carried it with me everywhere I went. Pretty sure Joe would not be ok with that or any of my peeps, lol. But that’s the same thing as if I sinned and got forgiven and didn’t let it go…

Life sometimes gets crappy; there is no doubt about it. But it’s what you do with the crap that matters. I hope this will help encourage someone to wash the crap off. Remember, we are not defined by our crap; we are defined by Christ if you are a true Christ follower.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. (1 John 1:9)

“There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. (Romans 8:1)

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you”. (Ephesians 4:31-32)