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 Every room in our home has been re-done since we moved in almost 14 years ago – every room but the kitchen.  The original wallpaper was long out of date and the colors simply didn’t fit the rest of the house.  We had put off renovating because we knew it would be a chore – stripping wall paper, spackling, sanding, priming, and painting.
I finally bit the bullet and started stripping wallpaper about three weeks ago.  Last week, I gave a couple of late nights to spackle over huge sections of the damaged wall.  Then on Saturday, we lined up for the main event. 
We had invited some teenagers to help us, offering to pay them a little.  We started with the sanding, then we wiped down the walls, and then we primed the space. 
The clock registered 6:00 PM and we faced a choice – quit and go eat (my vote) or push hard and put on the paint.  I was outvoted.
We painted fast and furious.  Fast and furious painting also means paint gets on the floor (in spite of drop cloths), on the counters, on the ceiling, on our clothes, in our hair (or in my case, on my scalp), and on the furniture.  But by 8:00 PM, we were done!  The transformation was startling.  The room looked fabulous.  Sure, we had to touch up the white trim, but overall, things looked great.  We went to eat and celebrate.
When I got up the next morning, things still looked great, although a little dark, due to time change.  It was in the afternoon with the sunlight streaming through the windows that we noticed the thin spots, the streaks, and the places we just out and out missed.  Oops.  It didn’t take us long to decide on a second coat.
This is what I learned from that experience.  When God first comes into your life, the transformation can be startling.  You feel a peace you have never felt before.  You find old temptations no longer attractive.  The truth is you are different and things look different.  Then God’s Holy Spirit shines a stronger light to show you places where you are not done.  We need another coat of grace, we need to touch up the unfinished parts, we need to let God complete His work in us.
Many believers chicken out here.  They feel its too much work.  But God wants to bring you to completion.  Let Him finish His work.  Let His light show you where you are not yet done.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.