As the days of winter come to an end—we prepare for the warmer days of spring: a time when we typically clean our houses from top to bottom.  Spring is a time to get our house in order.  Although I’m not referring to our houses that we live in, of brick and mortar, but our physical bodies that are houses of the Holy Spirit.  1 Corinthians 6:19 tells us, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

It is time to remove the dust and stubborn grime from our lives.  Only, we’re not alone to do spring cleaning by ourselves.  Our role in cleaning our lives is confessing to God the areas of habitual sin and willful disobedience.  Once we confess and turn to Jesus for help to avoid committing the same old sin over and over, we can begin to enjoy the springtime season of our lives.  I pray that God will open our eyes to see the hidden sins in our lives—once exposed, we will have a deep desire to want to sin no more.  For those known areas of disobedience, I pray that we can take those directly to God and confess that we need help resisting the temptation to disobey God’s plan for our lives.

Let me give a couple of examples.  Many years ago, I thought it was okay to pay all my bills first, then, give what I had left as an offering to God.  When I learned that I must give God my tithes and offerings before paying my bills, I thought, “No way!”  Surely God doesn’t want me to lose my house, have my car repossessed, or not have food to eat!  And it seemed like, every week that I avoided paying my tithes and offering, I ended up incurring an unplanned expense that was almost exactly the same amount of what my tithes and offerings to God should have been.  After several times of noticing that I couldn’t afford not to pay my tithes and offering, I decided to prioritize my bills into the “must have” “nice to have” and “don’t really need at all.”  Doing this is an exercise that I still do from time to time.  I let go of getting my hair done every week, and learned to do it myself.  I cut my clothing budget to something new twice a year, not ever paycheck.  I eliminating eating out and ate a sandwich, one bag of chips and a pop for lunch for an entire year!  Not only did I have enough money to pay my tithes and offering but I had money to save.  This practice continued, although I finally started eating more for lunch, and I increased my giving to God well beyond 10%!

Another example of asking God to help me with bad habits occurred recently.  A couple of years ago, I wasn’t praying to God daily, not to mention reading my bible daily.  I was so consumed with my career, being a mom, a wife, going to school for a second career, volunteering and having time to watch my favorite TV show that I didn’t make time to spend with God.  I felt pretty successful most of the time, although I was much stressed.  The stress stole my sleep and my ability to function on days.  I was very sad.  I noticed, that the sadder I became, the more time I had to call on God to help me.  I struggled with letting go of anything that I was doing.  I tried to incorporate time with God and still do all the other things too.  This led to a complete wear down of my body…diseases began to invade my body and mind.  When I felt like a worn-our dishcloth I remember telling God, “I can’t do this.”  I asked God to help me to be what He wanted me to be, at this particular time in my life.  At that point, there wasn’t much I wanted to be, other than a wife and mother, and daughter and sister…well you see how my priorities had changed.  God has used these past couple years of my life to bring me into a wonderful place of peace with Him.  And although I’m still often under attacks with over committing, over achieving, facing physical illnesses—God sustains me with peace.  Actually, the past two years of my life have been the worst and best two years of my life.  I still can’t understand how that can be—if you know, feel free to share it with me.  All I know is that God is always in control of my days and nights.  And He cares for me.  He takes very good care of every need I have!  He keeps surprising me with blessings that I didn’t ask for—and the things I ask for, He grants in His way and in His time.

Dear Lord, search our lives today.  Search our intentions and our actions.  Don’t let us desire the things that are not good for us.  Break the unhealthy habits in our lives.  Increase our faith in You O Lord.  If you show us the areas that need to be cleaned up this spring, we will surrender them to You.  You can cleanse us from our bad habits, and willful disobedience.  Let our goal be to seek a deeper relationship with You and others.  We need Your help Lord.  Jesus died for all the dust bunnies and skeletons that are hiding under our beds and in our closets.  Let Your Word shine light on the areas in our lives that need correcting.  And then cleanse us of our sins and we will turn away from them as free people.  As we come closer to You, You will come closer to us.  Replace our desire to continue in sin with a desire to please You.  Set our hearts to follow Jesus.  James 4:8.  We thank you Lord for helping us with our spring cleaning today.  In Jesus name we pray, Amen.