What is the state of your closet? Yes, THAT closet: The one that is big and
roomy and seems to fill up with all of the unmatched, unwanted, and forgotten stuff in
your life.
I actually like to clean closets. I love to pull
everything out and sort it into three piles: the keepers, the give-away pile,
and the stuff I don’t really want but am not yet willing to part with. The keepers and give-away piles are
easy. We pull close what we love and
dispose of what is bad or unnecessary. It is the stuff that I don’t really want
but am not willing to part with that is difficult.
My heart is
the same way. It is easy to keep the good stuff close to my heart, and it’s pretty
easy to let go of what is glaringly bad in my life. It is difficult to part with the stuff that I
don’t really want but have an emotional attachment to. Sometimes I am emotionally attached to my
feeling of anger toward someone. It
could be that I have unrealistic expectations for my spouse. Maybe I am attached to a need to control
everything and everyone around me. We
can become emotionally attached to our feelings, sins, desires or entitlements
and these are the very things that God wants us to dispose of.
I think of a
closet as a place where things are stored and forgotten. The closet space in my
heart, however, works differently. What
I store in my heart may seem put away and out of sight, but it will inevitably
affect my life through my attitude and actions,
What should I be storing in the personal closet
space of my heart? Philippians 4:8 tells
us to dwell on the whatever’s:
"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever
is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any
excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
If what I am storing in my closet is not part of God’s list of
whatever’s, it is probably something I should dispose of. This week I plan on examining
the closet space in my heart and see what I'm storing there. I plan to embrace the keepers, and add at least
one of the things I am holding tightly to, to the give-away pile.