Skin and Spots

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 242, Skin and Spots.

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil." Jeremiah 13:23.

God asks two questions, one right after the other, and both have the same obvious answer: no. The Ethiopian cannot change the color of his own skin. The leopard cannot change its own spots. It isn't a lack of effort — it's an impossibility of nature. God is not playing with loose metaphors here. He is setting up ground for a truth that's hard to swallow.

And here is the truth: "can you do good who are accustomed to do evil?" Notice the word accustomed. This is not sin committed once, in a moment of weakness. It's a path worn down, repeated, trained — so constant it no longer feels like choice. It has become custom. It has become second nature.

It's frightening to think about, isn't it? Because we all have areas like this. A way of reacting in anger that's already automatic. A pattern of small lies that slips out before we even think. A way of running, avoiding, protecting ourselves that no longer passes through the filter of conscience — it just happens. And when someone tries to show you this, the first reaction is to defend it: "that's just who I am." Except "that's just who I am" is exactly the problem Jeremiah is exposing.

But pay attention to something important: this verse is not a sentence of despair. It's the opposite. It's the exact point where God's grace becomes necessary — and therefore, powerful. If you could change your most deeply rooted patterns on your own, you wouldn't need a Savior. You'd just need more willpower. But God is saying, with total clarity: on your own, you cannot. And that is exactly where He steps in.

Later in Jeremiah, God promises a new heart, a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone. He does not ask you to scrape off your own spots with your own fingernails. He promises to transform the skin from the inside. That is not willpower — that is the work of God.

So today, I want to invite you into an honesty that stings a little. What habit, what pattern of sin has become so much a custom in your life that you almost don't notice it's there anymore? This isn't so you drown in guilt. It's so you can name it clearly before God — and ask, specifically, for a new heart in that area. Don't just ask for strength to resist once. Ask for transformation at the root.

The Ethiopian cannot change his own skin. The leopard cannot change his own spots. But God changes hearts. And that is what He wants to do in yours, today.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.