Toothpaste Confession

Brush your teeth. It will never go out of style.

Your mouth will go out of style long before brushing it does.

Trust me. 

Here's the story:

The other day, I ran out of toothpaste. I had passed the point of wrenching and squeezing every last drop of toothpaste out of the tube. That tube was bone dry. It was this night that I stood over my bathroom sink, disoriented and perplexed because I had actually ran out of something that never runs out. Seriously. It's like contact solution. There's always enough for one more day.

Except for today.

Having been moving through the cycle of "recognition" --> "denial" --> "acceptance" --> "action" (not able to get to "action" because I don't have a car and it was late), I now began to accept my circumstance and therefore attempted to employ a problem solving strategy to find an ameliorative next step. As I thought of nothing profound, I thought I would simply rinse out my mouth with water- you know, just swish around water in my mouth for half a minute then gargle for a short period of time. That should at least get me through the night until I can get some more toothpaste.

So I did. I rinsed out my mouth and went to bed. The next morning I was up early and off to my 8AM class. Not having toothpaste, I again did not brush my teeth. To my own chagrin, I repeated that same cycle that night and went to bed. The next morning (36 hours from when I discovered my lack of toothpaste), it occurred to me that I could ask my friend, with whom I live, for some of his toothpaste. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I didn't. Of course, being the great guy that he is, he allowed me to brush my teeth with his toothpaste.

Here is the glorious moment. Having not brushed my teeth now for about 48 hours, I have eaten 5-6 meals and slept twice. However, it really didn't feel like my mouth was that dirty.

Then the moment of truth: after spending a good few minutes scrubbing away at my dental fixtures, I did what any normal person does and I spit the toothpaste out into the sink.

What I saw that day was one of most gross things I have ever seen come out of my mouth after cleaning it. I couldn't believe the grotesque color of purplish brown to which the toothpaste had turned after having entered and consequently exited my mouth. I couldn't get over it. What could I have eaten that would have made such a horrible thing?

Then it hit me:

When we go any period of time harboring unconfessed sin in our hearts (put your sin here), our spirits get dirty. They get gross. They get stinky and smelly. Without the cleansing power of God's Word coupled with repentance and genuinely humble and honest confession of sin, your soul is getting plaque piled onto it. My soul is getting plaque piled onto it.

The problem is that we so often never feel how bad it gets. Unconfessed sin creates a mountain of garbage in our hearts that is cloaked to both our noses and even our eyes because it rarely piles up all at once. Just like a frog can be boiled to death because of the nearly imperceptible change in temperature, so also our hearts can become cold, hard, and calloused because of repeated and unconfessed offenses to our God and Savior. 

The Moral:

1) Brush your teeth. Don't let your mouth become a germ zoo.

2) Dig into the Word. Don't just do your devotions, really dig into the Word. Spend time in prayer and confessing sin. Listen to Christocentric praise music and kneel next to your bed and pray through the music. I love songs of response, but we all need time looking at God for who He is. We can't only think about what He's done for us; we must focus on who He is, because the time we spend meditating on who God is will directly affect how we live. 

He is my hope for a clean mouth and a pure heart.

.DSN.