Change Your Clothes

Change Your Clothes
10And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he put upon his flesh, and take up the ashes which the fire hath consumed with the burnt offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar. 11And he shall put off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place. (Leviticus 6:10-11)
The burnt offering was an instruction that was given to Moses by God. It was an offering that was burnt wholly on the altar, and was done as a result of sin committed by the people. If the people stole something, deceived someone, etc: they were required to make restitution with an additional twenty percent. They would then take an offering to Aaron and his sons (the priests) for compensation to God. The priest was to leave the offering smoldering all night into ashes, and the ashes were removed in the morning. It was called the burnt offering "because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning" (6:9). It was an act of worship on the part of a man, apart from guilt of specific offence. It was the priest’s job to take care of the fire upon the altar. The first fire upon the altar came from heaven, (ch. 9:24); by keeping that up continually, all their sacrifices might be said to be consumed with the fire from heaven, in token of God's acceptance..
I heard a great man of God say that we must remove the ashes from the fire on which we make our sacrifices. He said if we don’t, the ashes would cause the fire to go out. Like the priest, our fire should never go out. My first question upon hearing this was “what is the fire?” The fire is our holy affections, the exercise of our faith, and love…the fire is our prayers and our praise. All which must be made without ceasing. When we have the fire burning then sacrifice becomes the norm. The second question that came to my mind was, “What are the ashes?” The ashes are the remnant of your past. Hearing this shed a whole new meaning for me. I started remembering about things in my past, and how I used to handle them. I decided not anymore. Well, when you make up your mind about something, you can certainly expect the enemy to come and challenge you on it. Sure enough on the next day, an old situation came up. As I sat to face this challenge, my first instinct was to go back to evil foreboding (forecasting an evil report of the outcome of this situation). However, I remembered what the man of God had said: “change your clothes and remove the ashes”
Instead of evil foreboding, I decided to change my clothes. Changing my clothes for me meant to change my thinking, change my mindset, change how I looked at things. If I still looked at the situation like I used to, I would probably have left the ashes. I would have been thinking that this is just the way it is suppose to be. No, I decided I would not accept this situation to have the same outcome… instead I would change my clothes, and remove the ashes. What a difference an act of obedience makes! That situation has since changed, and my fire is burning as bright as ever! What about you…isn’t it time to change your clothes?