Sunday, April 3, 2011

Project Simplify- week four, of the heart

SO, this week I did work on the pantry and the fridge.  Really.  I did.  However, in the middle of it all, my fridge broke.  On top of a whirlwind week of husband travel, Nana in town, and Andrew's birthday we dealt with replacing the fridge on my husband's lone day off.  Therefore, I don't have anything to show for this week's project, but I wanted to share how cleaning and simplifying impacts my spiritual growth and falls into place in God's work in my heart.



Project Simplify--my innermost heart.

By nature, clutter follows me.  I've loved being a part of project simplify.  It's enabled me to push myself to finish areas I generally only begin to organize.  When I'm cleaning and organizing I sense a greater lesson to be learned in the process. God speaks of the clutter in my heart.

I organize, I toss, I file, I clean, I see what fits, I inspect what is rotten, all to make a better home for my family and a better home to share with others.

WOW! Do you see what I am seeing?  With all this focus on my home (a very needed focus), a bigger need comes into focus.  Residing within me there are things that are in disorder, things that no longer fit, things that are filthy, and things that have gone rotten.  My heart, a temple of the living God, needs to be simplified and reconstructed.  Things and people are in the Holy of Holies, God's place.  I have been fighting and working with everything that I am and more importantly with all His energy, to get things in order.

But how?  Sin patterns learned from my youth root themselves deeply and threaten to strangle what is pure.  How can I change them?  My flesh is weak.  I cannot.  There's such a big mess that I wouldn't know where to begin.  One holds the power and the strength to break me and mold me.  One.  My heart simplifies to beat for One.  I fall before Him.  I cry, weep even, I grieve, and I let go with great struggle.  Daily I come empty and wait for Him to fill.

I find that in giving up one idol, another stands in line to fill the place.  I hunger for something other, for one who completes and I turn to God's Word to fight off the temptation to be filled with any other.  He speaks and I want to know His language.  I want for it to be so deeply rooted that it overcomes the strangling roots of self that tend to take over.

God shows me progress, in a humbled posture.  Though I'm worn out and bruised and weary, He brings joy and renewal for the battle. I can sense that He is near.

This is the hardest cleaning job I've ever been involved in.







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