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Cleaning Your Closet

We’ve been making some changes.   We are moving to an upstairs bedroom and making our old bedroom a den/study.   The thing about cleaning is that you always find things that you never knew or forgot you ever had.  It’s truly amazing!  I can’t even imagine why we kept some of the things we found.  We spent a lot of time throwing “junk” away.  Today, we cleaned the closet.  Wow!  As I was cleaning and throwing things out I was amazed at how much junk we had stored in a 3x9x 6 space.  One thing we dragged out of the closet was a box of old electrical/ computer cables.  Really!  Technology has advanced so much that not one of those cables would be good for anything now, unless I want to tie someone up. I’ll admit some days the thought has crossed my mind, but not today.  They went to the curb along with countless other articles.  As I was sorting, keeping, giving and throwing, I thought about my life.  What does God want to do in my closet/ life? I can just see God saying, “Let’s get rid of this, it’s holding you back from following me” or maybe, “This is great but it’s no longer necessary.  It served a purpose but now it’s time to let it go.”  For still other things he may whisper, “This is good.  I still have plans for this.  Let’s put this in the keep pile!”  The problem is that unlike the closet, we are capable of saying, “No” to God.  I know at times I have held on to a habit, a bad friendship or something else that I’m sure God wanted me to “kick to the curb” but I was unwilling to give him permission to get rid of it.   The problem is that as long as I had unnecessary things in the closet, I had no room in the closet for the things that really should have been in there.  I had to get rid of the box of old internet cables and other useless things in order to make room for what really should have been stored there.  So in my life, as long as I hold on to the pointless clutter, I may end up with no room for anything else.  Friends, God wants to bless us with a good abundant life that will be good and pleasing to him but often we have our life full of things we don’t need and will never use so we have no more room for anything.  Sometimes we have to be willing to let God clean the closet.  Yes, there may be some things that God says you need to give “the old heave ho”.   Yes, may hurt for a bit.  We can, however, trust him.  If he say it needs to go then it’s for our good to make us better.  God will never ask us to give up what we really need.  He loves us way more than we can imagine. His goal is to take all those unnecessary things and replace them with things that will give us an abundant life.  Oops! It’s time to get back to cleaning the closet.
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