Breaking The Chains Biblical Recovery Ministry

CLEANING HOUSE

"I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.  I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.  But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land. (Exodus 23:27-30)

As we approach the new year, many of us are starting to clean house, clearing out the clutter to make room for the new stuff we’ve received on Christmas. What is it about the new year that makes us want to do this as opposed to doing it through out the year? Why do we wait until the end of the year to clean our homes of the clutter instead of cleaning it out little by little through out the year? When we wait until the end of the year, sometimes the mound of clutter is so much it seems difficult to tackle. We look at it and become frustrated before we even begin, thinking “This will take me forever. How will I ever even make a dent in this!” But if we clean the clutter little by little through out the year, taking a room at a time, it’s not only easier to tackle, but it takes half the time and we are better able to keep up with it as opposed to allowing it to pile up because we don’t want to deal with it at the time. The same goes for our internal homes…our spiritual life. Many times we don’t tackle the strongholds and problems when they arise, but simply allow them to pile up because we don’t want to deal with it or our issues seem to hard to take care of and we end up just pushing it into any room we can find within ourselves and by the end of the year or many years, our rooms are bursting and some days those closet doors in those rooms burst wide open and out comes all the internal junk we keep storing, causing breakdowns and many problems. How many times have you become frustrated struggling through the same strongholds and problems and pray “Lord, please remove these things from my life!” Well, there is a reason the Lord doesn’t remove our internal clutter all at once and I was reminded of this while going through my own inward and outward clutter and I had even prayed the same thing. As we see in verses 28-30, it states:

But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.

When the Lord cleans up our clutter…strongholds, problems, etc…He makes sure that we are filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul states in Galatians 5:16 that we must live by the Spirit. We must have the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. So when the Lord works in us, little by little He brings in the fruit of the Spirit and drives out that which we are bound too…our strongholds. This takes time and for good reason. If God were to just remove our strongholds and leave us empty, this would give the enemy the freedom to come back to a clean house with even more strongholds. In Matthew 12:43-45, Christ explains this very thing:

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."

So, we must not only allow God the time to work in us but we must allow Him TO work in us by surrendering all of ourselves to Him and trusting that He will clean us up and bring the healing that we so desire:

Psalm 147:3
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Sometimes it can seem like a long painful process but that is because He has to start from the beginning. This may mean stripping us bare, right down to our foundation and working His way back up again, just like when you remodel a house. Some homes are so in need of repair that we strip them down to the foundation, just keeping the frame and slowly rebuild and adding more strength to the home using stronger materials. It’s no different when God rebuilds us. God strengthens our foundation through Jesus Christ and then begins slowly adding in, little by little, the fruit of the Spirit while pushing out the internal clutter. By the time He is done, we truly feel like new people and that is what we want…to be renewed.

So lets all make a New Year’s resolution to keep the clutter in our external homes and internal homes down by taking care of problems, issues and “junk” as it comes upon us, turning to God and allowing Him to clean our internal home as we clean our external home, and by the end of the year, we will be free of clutter as well as stress!

 copyright ©2008 Breaking The Chains Biblical Recovery Ministry

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