I have had the urge lately to purge things out of my house. I want and plan to go through each room extensively and get rid of excess junk that we just don’t use. But I can see a parallel in my inner self wanting to do the same thing.
I am beginning to believe that just like the unmatched socks that I keep, or the few unpacked boxes in the basement, from seven years ago that we might need, I have beliefs and reasons in my mind that I also leave unattended, these thoughts can crowd up my other thoughts and prohibit me from being honest with my ways.
For instance my old abandonment issues, fear of failure, fear of loss, trust issues that crowd in when I get to the end of my rope, can leave me insecure when trials come.
Trials have a way of bubbling up old issues to the surface and can really expose us for where our heart is at, causing us to respond out of those painful places. Our behaviors during our healthy times can be poisoned with how we handle the hard times if we don’t clean out the baggage from our past.
I’m talking the core beliefs the standards we set for ourselves above the mess of our lives, but these can’t be put in place with out a clean up of sorts. We can’t stand strong if our other things we used to have keep getting in the way of our ways of today.
It’s like a refrigerator; when you first move into a place, it’s all organized and clean, but after time it gets cluttered and leftovers start to take over. If it doesn’t get cleaned out it starts to smell and it’s hard to tell which is good and which is bad.
I got up this morning asking God, What? How? WHY?! And I felt like the answer was…clean house and know why!
Clean out your old wants and needs. Clean out the old issues and reasons for doing things, like seeking approval and security in this world. Put away the old and live in the new.
…to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24 ESV
I challenge you as I challenge myself, let’s clean out the old and be renewed.
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