For years, my wonderful mother tried to instill her love of cleaning in me, but I am sad to say that she failed. I hate cleaning. With a passion. It is by far my least favorite household chore. So then, how is it that one of my favorite ministry days on the race so far involved cleaning a church from top to bottom for about 7 hours? Because God used that time to reveal to me what he was doing in my heart.
Allow me to explain.
I haven’t really blogged about anything deep or substantial since we left on the Race, and I’ve been doing that on purpose. They tell us at training camp that we should have a vision for our blog and decide what kind of message we want to deliver through our posts. My vision was that I could use my blog to share my team’s experiences in order to show the power and love of God. I definitely did not want to use this blog as a personal diary, as I’m not huge on sharing my feelings with strangers. But, I now realize that these first 6 weeks for me haven’t been about God showing up around me, but God showing up in me, and I feel led to share that with you.
I read in my devotional the other day that we should think of ourselves as a dwelling place for God and the Holy Spirit. The author then asked us to consider if we have made ourselves a comfortable home for the Lord. Are we a place He would want to live? The true meaning of this question didn’t hit me until Saturday when we were cleaning the church. I spent the day clearing out cobwebs, wiping down chairs, cleaning dust off of pipes, and scraping paint off of light switches. And I loved it. I told the Lord that I was surprisingly happy to help clean and make the house of God into a more inviting and welcoming place. And that’s when I realized that this is what my first part of the race has really been about. God has been cleaning me. He has been clearing out the cobwebs of selfishness, wiping down my bad attitude, cleaning the dust of my laziness, and scraping the hardened paint off of my heart.
I am confident that I have already changed so much for the better, and I can see the differences in my thoughts and actions daily. The Lord truly has been working to clear out all of the bad in me, in order to make it more comfortable for Him, and to make me more like Him. And that is a form of cleaning that I believe I can learn to love.
"The question is, is God comfortable in you? Does He feel at home within you? Even though the Spirit of God lives within you, other things live in you, too – such as fear, anger, jealousy, or murmuring and complaining. If you want to be a comfortable home for the Spirit of the Lord, we must give up things that cause us to forget about His presence or are offensive to Him. We must stop grumbling, allowing strife and unrest inside us, or harboring unforgiveness. Instead, we need to make sure our inner lives are engaged in things that please and honor God's presence. Our mouths should be full of praise and thanksgiving. We all need to take inventory of what goes in our hearts because they are the dwelling place of God. When we examine our inner lives, we are looking at holy ground where God has chosen to make His home. Let's commit to making Him comfortable in us."
– Joyce Meyer, Hearing from God Each Morning
