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I thought to myself this will be a piece of cake. I had never thought of myself as being the kind of person who had a great deal of clothes even though I had noticed that my closet was getting a bit full. I figured it would take just a few minutes and I would have a nice clean closet and be back sitting on my couch. I was wrong, oh boy was I wrong.

I just kept pulling clothes off the rack. It seemed as though they were growing in there. I thought maybe someone was slipping behind me and putting clothes in my closet while I wasn’t looking. Needless to say this was not a short term project.

After a good while of work the job was done. There was more room in my closet and I had found clothes I had forgotten I had. As well as filling up two boxes of clothes I was not able to wear for our church’s clothes ministry. As I looked at the closet I thought to myself, I should do this more often.

Cleaning out your closet is a good thing both at your home and in your spiritual life. Many of us have closets full of things in our life that we need to get in the closet and clean out. It would do us well and it would send us on the road to a good healthy relationship with God. Let me give you some comparisons of the two.

1. When I checked in my closet I found many good things I had not wore in months. They were buried in the back where I could not see them and they were going unused. When we take a look in the closets of our life we will find many good things God had intended for us to use but we have either forgotten about them or put them on the shelf. Take a peek back there and see if there is something God can use that you have ignored lately.
2. Be liberal in what you get rid of. As I looked at some of these clothes some of them were close to being able to worn by me, but in order to really clean out the closet I had to let even some pretty good things go. This will allow someone to have some nice clothes who really needs them and it will clean out my closet to make room for some new things. Same with your spiritual closet, there are some aspects of your life you need let go of so that God can send some new experiences into your life.
3. The farther you go back in my closet the darker it gets. I just had to reach back there and pull it into the light. Same with our spiritual life, there are things we have pushed back into the darkness of our life hoping they will go away. They want on their own and they do nothing but bog down your spiritual life. Pull it out into the light, expose it to God, seek His help in dealing with it, put it in a box and send it on its way. Certainly do not keep putting it in the closet like so many do. For many the dark places of the closet are the fullest. Those dark places are the places God needs to get to the worst, let Him have it.
4. As I cleaned my closet it left me with some room but I guarantee you that in a matter of just a few months it will be full again. Closets need to be cleaned often and that goes for your spiritual one. Check in their daily; make sure you’re not loading it down with unneeded worry, guilt or heartache. You already know this but let me remind you, the more often you check your closet the easier it is too keep clean and uncluttered. The same goes with your spiritual life, the more often you check it, the easier it is to keep your life clean and uncluttered of the burdens of life.

Closets were made to hold things so they could be found and used when needed. Your spiritual life lessons are to be used the same way. Make sure your closet of spiritual experiences is clean, positive and ready for use when needed. To do that takes work, well, what are you waiting for? Get in there; it’s not going to clean itself you know!

Scripture: Isaiah 43:18-19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Prayer: Dear patient Lord, we thank you that we can give you the things of the past and you forgive us for our sins. Help us to be bold not to hold anything back from you but to give you all of our lives. We thank you for new experiences that help us grow and we look forward to the day we shall see you face to face. In Christ Name, Amen.