Cleaning House

Cleaning the house is definitely one of my least favorite activities...while the house is never super dirty it never fails that the dust & grime seem to build up over time and before I know it my house is driving me crazy! Sometimes I am in a cleaning mood & I hop right up to clean it myself and other times I become incredibly lazy & call up my mom's housecleaner to come do a deep clean for us!

Unfortunately, cleaning the house of my life is something I dread just as much. This week our sermon focused on the Housecleaning Choice: I openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, & someone I trust. I don't know about you but actually looking at our faults & recognizing they are present is hard enough...let alone confessing those to God. There's something about actually verbalizing those faults in our prayers that make them more real, more awful, & more sinful. However, as I've learned in the past weeks its through those prayers of confession that God makes my heart pure & allows the healing process to continue.

"Happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God" Matthew 5:8 (GNB)

Just like the dust & grime in our house, those little things in our life & our heart begin to build up to eventually make us look at our life & wonder what happened to me? Sure, we notice those big things where we fail...but those little white lies or judgmental thoughts or jealousy seem to happen without us even realizing it. If we go to God & give EVERYTHING to Him, he will most definitely forgive us and just as important...He will forget those transgressions as if they had nevre even happened.

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful & just and will forgive us our
sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9 NIV

One huge point I learned from this week deals with the matter of guilt. As Christians we all feel some level of guilt when we sin, and maybe we feel an even deeper level of guilt when we continue to sin in the same way over & over again. However, while those first feelings of guilt may be a result of our Christian conscience...once we have asked for forgiveness & repented of those sins any future guilt for that particular sin doesn't come from God. It simply comes from Satan as a way of causing us to question the very nature of God. Sure, each & every time we sin we may feel guilty but once we give that sin over to God all of our guilt should be gone.

"Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my
guilt. I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord. And you
forgave me! All my guilt is gone." Psalm 32:5 NLT

We have to get real with God for this guilt to be removed & we know we are getting real with God when we get real with one another. Find that one person, an accountability partner, that you can be completely real with & together you can experience God's grace.