What Is That Smell?

Today I spent the morning at the hospital with one of our dear church families. I don't know about your area, but our hospitals are a smoking free zone. As far as I know you are not even allowed to smoke anywhere on campus. Imagine my surprise then, when I got in my car to leave and smelled a faint odor of tobacco!!
I looked all around, but didn't see anyone smoking outside my car. I smelled my jacket, just to see if the smell was there, even though I had been around no one who was smoking that day. Finally I decided that the smell must have come in through the vents, so I opened the sun roof on my car, even though it was raining, hoping to suck the smell out. It only worked nominally.
Not long after returning home, I had to go out again to gas up the car for my wife. When I opened the car and got in, the same tobacco smell hit me right in the nose! I could not figure it out! I had not been smoking, neither had a smoker been in my car that I was aware of. I drove to the gas station rather irritated. I was mentally chewing out the new air freshener I had purchased, for not doing its job!
After getting gas, I opened the car door to get in and happened to look down on the floor mat. There on the mat was a quarter size pile of crushed up cigar! Somehow, I had stepped on someones discarded cigar and it had stuck to the bottom of my shoe and then transferred to the floor of my car. In less that ten seconds I had removed the offending pile and by the time I was home the smell was gone!! What a problem a little pile of tobacco made!

Then I began to think. Something I try not to do often!! Here I had been suffering from a smell that I knew I did not produce. Had I not discovered the source, anyone else who rode in my car would have been bothered the same way. They may have even wondered, "Now why does the Preacher's car smell like tobacco?" The answer to the problem was that I had picked up the odor from where I had been that day.

In much the same way, our lives take on the odor of where we have been. We smell like the people we hang around. I didn't have to smoke to smell like a smoker. I simply had to transfer some of their cigar to my vehicle. It was innocent enough, but the damage was done. Unfortunately sometimes the smell we pick up by being in the wrong places is not so easily removed. Ecclesiastes 7:1 ¶ A good name [is] better than precious ointment... Do you see here how a good reputation is better than perfume? I tried everything to mask the smell of that cigar, but it kept coming back. I could have put five air fresheners in my car, and the smell would not have gone away. I had to remove the offending pile of tobacco.

So many Christians spend just a little time dabbling in the world and walk away with a stench. We hang on to just one of our favorite sins, and it sours our smell. I have often met a man who I thought I should have liked, but there was just something "wrong" about him. Later I would find out that it was some little thing that was giving off that "smell".

Now I didn't pick up that tobacco on purpose, but that didn't stop it from smelling. We must daily seek the Lord to cleanse us from anything we have picked up on our feet throughout the day. Consider this verse. John 13:10 Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash [his] feet, but is clean every whit... As a saved man, I am clean through the blood of Christ. However, as I walk through life I get my feet dirty in the filth and refuse of this world. Failure to recognize and remove this filth will affect the way I smell. Years ago I heard a song. I don't remember the author, but the lyrics went like this,

"Wash my feet Lord,
I got them dirty today,
As I walked on the sand,
and on the clay.
Though I'm clean all over,
You made me that way.
It's just my feet Lord,
I got them dirty today."

Have you taken time to look at the bottom of your spiritual shoes? Why not do it now before someone asks, "What is that smell?"