While giving his personal testimony, Zig Ziglar tells the following story.
He was scheduled for a seminar to which he left late. Driving late into the night he arrived at his hotel and unpacked his clothes. To his horror he saw that the shirt he had brought had come out of the travel bag and rolled around the trunk of his car. Rubbing against the tire and jack, the shirt had large stains on it. He took it into the hotel restroom and tried to clean it. That only smeared it.
Frantically he ran to a nearby store and bought various kinds of cleaners and again tried to clean the shirt. Everything he did only made the stain worse. Now it seemed to be set in and permanent. His intent was right, his effort admirable but the result only made it worse.
As a last resort he found a Laundromat and took the shirt to them. As he entered a friendly young lady who asked how she could help him greeted him. He responded with his crisis. He began to explain all the efforts he had made to clean the shirt himself.
In the middle of his explanation the young lady help up her hand like a traffic cop to stop him. She said, Mr Ziglar, if you could clean it yourself, you wouldn’t need us.
Ziglar compared that situation with God. If people could clean up their own lives, they wouldn’t need God. Clearly they can’t.
