Thursday, February 15, 2007

Deep Cleaning

We have an air duct cleaning company here today, cleaning the heat vents, furnace, cold air returns, dryer vent and sanitizing everything. The process involves huge hoses and compressors, lots of noise and quite a bit of cash! We generally keep a clean house but my husband has been changing the furnace filters every month and they keep coming out filthy. We decided we needed to get into the places we couldn't see and clean them out too. And that requires specialists. Life is like that. On the surface our lives appear clean, proper, socially acceptable but deep inside the recesses of our minds and hearts, filth can be hiding. Sometimes it's small stuff, like molds and mildews - like a critical spirit - small stuff but deadly! We need to cleanse our hearts and lives by engaging the Specialist, God Himself and following Romans 12 verses 1 and 2: "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (The Message) Once we let God "deep clean" our lives, everything is changed. We will respond differently to people; we will love more freely and accept others without judging them. Isn't it good to know that your life can be really clean, from the inside out? Plus the peace that will come is unsurpassed by anything in this world. It's time to clean house!