Creeping Clutter

There are two very distinct parts of my house: the public area and the private area. The public rooms (the living room, kitchen and dining room) are kept neat and clean, but the private area—ay ay yi! They're a mess! If there were a contest for the biggest and best piles, I'd make it into the finals.

I've been operating my life—the internal workings of my life—in the same manner as my housekeeping. The front, public part is kept neat and clean, but the private part of my life—ay ay yi! The clutter has been accumulating there my whole life. Sure, I've gone in and cleaned and weeded out and sorted through and gotten rid of a lot over the years, but there's still clutter in my heart.

The problem with clutter ANYwhere is that it tends to creep, and before you know it, there's evidence of your clutter everywhere. But it's not just that. Living and working in a cluttered place leads to misery. You may not recognize it as misery while you're living in it, but it is. You can't think clearly, or function fully, when there's clutter piled around you. You have to keep stopping what you're doing and search through the clutter, over the clutter, or around the clutter. Or you have to shove it out of the way so you have a place to work, or a place to put more...stuff, which turns into more clutter unless you take care of it correctly.

The same principles are true in your heart as in your home. If the space in your heart is taken up with clutter, there's less room for God to place things. And if He does place something there, will you be able to find it when you want it or need it? How about when God gives you a job and you need to use that certain thing—will you be able to reach out and easily put your hands on it? And don't even try that famous excuse of knowing exactly where things are within the piles. It may be true, but it's even easier to find, and get to things when they're are neat and put away in their home.

Then there's the fact that within your (ok, my) millions of piles, there's millions of things that can be gotten rid of. Things that I should never have kept in the first place. They're eating up valuable space in my home and in my heart.

When I come right down to it and strip away all the excuses, clutter in my home, and in my heart, is just plain SIN.

...let us also lay aside every encumbrance,
and the sin which so easily entangles us...
~Hebrews 12:1

Clutter entangles us just as surely as sin.

Have you tried running while wrapped up in a blanket? How about in a floor length skirt? Your legs become tangled in your skirts and you are, at the very least, slowed down, and more than likely tripped up and taken down. The skirt hinders your progress and your speed.

Get rid of the sin and get rid of the clutter and you'll discover just how free and fast you can move. In your life and for God.

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