Christian Devotional - Spring Cleaning

March is here and with it, those two words of infamy: spring cleaning.




I am not usually a big fan of spring cleaning, but several weeks ago I bought a new vacuum cleaner.








I am SOOOOO happy with this vacuum cleaner. Seriously, a
vacuum cleaner should not make a person this happy. Quite frankly for what we
paid for it, it better continue to make me happy for a long time to come, but
that’s a separate point. :)



So what does a vacuum cleaner have to do with a devotional?
Well, as I’ve been cleaning lately, a thought hit me that I want to share with
you.



There is a difference between “cleaning” and “rearranging.”



We are very good at “rearranging” the figurative dirt in our
lives. We know how to scoot it over here, dress it up, slide it back here and
all these other tricks to try and make our life look presentable. Ephesians
2:8-9 “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”



When we are busy trying to rearrange our dirt, we’re doing
that in our own strength and we can never really get rid of it. We just end up
moving it around or relocating it. We can dress it up and try to make our dirt
look nicer, or even give it a nicer sounding name but really, it’s just
dressed-up-dirt.



Cleaning, on the other hand, is when we allow God to come to
us and actually remove the dirt. Like the verse says, we can’t do that on our
own. We can’t remove the dirt on our own. The best we can do is push it around
and rearrange it. We need the grace of God and his gift that we receive through
faith, in order to clean up our life. Have we come to God in confession and repentance? God, even more than my new vacuum
cleaner, is able to reach down into the tiniest crevice of our life and remove
every spec of dirt that tries to hide. He’s willing and able to do that for us
if we will just let him.



So as we look at our life and start our spring cleaning, spend
some time thinking about whether you are truly allowing God to clean your life,
or are you just feebly attempting to rearrange the dirt on our own?  Bring your life to Him daily and allow Him to
do the deep cleaning!



Kristi Burchfiel, Christian devotional author and speaker

Living in the World – Living out the Word

Check out my website and daily devotions either on my blog or on my Facebook page

www.BooksByAmanda.com