“Someone who has washed,” said Jesus to him, “doesn’t need to wash again, except for their feet. They are clean all over…” John 13:10
Peter refuses, at first, Jesus’s offer to wash his feeties. But after Yeshua tells him that if He doesn’t wash him he doesn’t belong to him (an interesting thought for reflection itself–for another day), Peter responds basically with, “Well alrighty then! Not just my feet-get my hands and head and everything!”
Jesus’s response to this exclamation is really interesting to me. You can read it in the verse above.
In meditation upon these divine words, this is what I heard: You’re already clean because of your trust in Me; you don’t need to completely start over every day. You just need to let me wash the dust of the world off your feet that accumulates each day from walking in it. Otherwise you become susceptible to disease and sickness.
Without some form of daily renewal of your mind, the world’s thinking and priorities will indeed attach themselves to you.
This renewal can of course look a thousand different ways. For me it looks like sitting in silent nothingness, allowing Jesus to speak whatever He has to say to me that particular day, and set the record straight again on what is true about GOD, myself, and the world, and show me what are the lies I’ve heard that need to be discarded. Without this silencing of the many shouting voices vying for my attention, I simply cannot hear the beautiful voice of Jesus’s Spirit whispering to me.
Love it, Rob! Yeah, daily renewal (referring back to the renewed mind in Rom 12) is such an important exhortation, and something more and deeper than “daily devotions” as we seem to practice it around here. Probably aligned with the original intent, but degraded to a checked box activity many times. Also digging the description of what Jesus often communicates to us in quiet (though I am not quiet nearly enough). As you mentioned, Ruth Barton says the same thing: it’s Him telling us what’s true which is so needed…I tell myself a lot of crap, as do so many other voices. Thanks for speaking true truth, hermano