Taking ourselves out of the slums

This week in my new testament class, we had a lesson that really impacted me.  In it our teacher Brother Griffin talked to us about the Savior cleaning the feet of the twelve apostles during the passover feast.  In John 13:8 it says "Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."  Christ had to wash the feet of the disciples, the very dirtiest part of them.  He wasn't taking the disciples out of the world or going to stop them from traveling and getting dirty, but he would clean their feet so that they would want to be clean again.  Brother Griffin said that Christ takes the slums out of the people and then they take themselves out of the slums.

This really hit me.  Christ won't remove temptation from me.  He won't make it so that I don't get dirty, but he will clean me from my past temptations and then I will be more motivated to stay away from temptation in the future.  This kind of reminded me of how it goes when I clean my room.  If I just showered I hate having my room be dirty because I feel like it will make me dirty.  I then decide to clean my room so that how I feel and the place that I am in, will be the same - clean.  We can even go a step further.  When my room is clean I try to keep it clean as long as possible.  I avoid letting things sneak in or get messy.  If we relate this to our lives.  If we go partake of the sacrament each week, we become clean.  We are still in the world(room), which is messy, but we can clean up the area we are living in.  We can become more righteous and stay in the right path.  We will be in the world, but not of the world.  We will be removing ourselves from the slums because the slums have been taken out of us.