My junk drawer

My house is kept pretty neat, most of the time. Ok, some of the time (I do have three children after all). Most things in my home has a place; toys in the toy box, clothes in drawers, food in the refrigerator. 'Everything has a place and a place for everything'. When I find something I am not sure what to do with, I stuff it in one of my junk drawers. I am sure every home has one. What's inside may startle you, I have everything from receipts to tape, hairbows to paper that has been drawn on....the list goes on and on, I honestly don't even know what is past the initial glance inside there. Many a things have been 'lost' only to be found in the junk drawer. What purpose does the junk drawer serve in my home? To store things, things that if I be honest with myself, should be either thrown away or put in their original spot. I could almost rename my junk drawer to 'I don't want to deal with it now' drawer. 

Over a period of time, my junk drawer accumulates things. Lots of things. And before I know it, I am pushing things down in the drawer to shut it completely, telling myself it needs to be cleaned out, knowing I won't anytime soon. So the cycle continues until it is spilling out everywhere, and I am left with a mess. A preventable mess, if I had kept to the adage "Everything has a place..." 

If I am honest with myself, I do this very same thing in my spiritual walk. There are things I go through that I could label "I don't want to deal with it now" and stuff it in my spiritual junk drawer. You may do the same thing too. Whether it is something that has caused you pain, and you don't want to face it just yet (or ever), or something that your angry about and like to keep around just in case. Maybe it's a blessing that you are trying to live off of and refuse to move on from. Whatever the situation, you stuff it inside your drawer, hoping no one opens it up to see what's inside. After awhile, your hurts, disappointments, anger, jealousy all accumulates in your drawer. You can only stuff a container so full before it spills out.  When it spills out into our lives, we realize, just like I do when my literal drawers spill out, just how much junk is actually in there! The hurts and shame of the past, that should have been dealt with long ago, are now seeping into our everyday lives. 

It seems you eat, sleep, breathe your past. What do we do now? We need to clean out our drawers, deal with what's inside. It's painful, unfair, and not something we want to do...but we don't have to clean it out alone. Jesus helps us when we are too scared to open our junk drawers to even begin cleaning. He can clean the spill-overs, and restore us once again. There is nothing too shameful, horrid, or embarrassing to Him. He has seen every sin take place and loves you still. 

Psalm 55:22 Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall

You must do in order to have. If you want to be free from the chains that drag you down, the past hurts and shames of yesterdays to be gone, you must give them to God. He will not come and force His way into your heart to clean it out. We must open ourselves up to Him and give Him the good, the bad and the ugly, scary, dark places in there. We have a great promise that He will take care of us when we do! It's scary letting Him see our inmost parts, the parts we keep hidden with great care, but when we do, He will do His part and care for us. 

Just like the mess in my junk drawers, the things inside have a place, most of it belongs in the trash. Why keep it around? It serves only to hurt us, or drag us down, causes us to be weary, or bitter. God has great plans for us, but we cannot accomplish them with our junk spilling over. Don't wait around until you are ready to clean it out, because honestly, we never will be. Do it now! Ask God to help you open the closed doors of your heart, and forgive who needs to be forgiven, move on, and let go. Clean out your junk drawer! With His help, it can be a opportunity to grow, learn and deepen your relationship with Him! 


  

The process of forgiving.

Love your enemies? All of them? Surely not! It is nearly impossible for me to even think of them, let alone like them and surely not love them. Jesus must not know what they did to me. If He knew, He'd understand why I just cannot love my enemies...right?

Luke 6:27-28 But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Jesus couldn't have said it more clear here when He tells us how to deal with our enemies. He gives us several actions to take towards them; LOVE, DO GOOD, BLESS, & PRAY. Those are things we're okay with doing, to people we get along with. It's easy to pray for our children, or our spouses. Do good? No problem, we can do good things for those who do good for us. To the person(s) who caused us pain; love isn't the verb we want to put in the same sentence with their name. Surely God will understand if we don't feel like forgiving them. Besides, the pain is too real, the scar too deep, the hate all too real. Can we slip by without forgiving? 

 Matthew 6:15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

That takes my excuses and reasons and blows them right out the window. According to Jesus, if we harbor unforgiveness towards others, He does the same towards us. No 'if, and's, or but's about it'. There are no shades of gray when it comes to God. What He says, He means. We must forgive! If you really think about it, God has forgiven us many more times than we will ever have to forgive someone. He did it, even when He knew we would mess up again. He didn't rub the pain it caused Him in our faces, didn't make us wallow and beg. He simply forgave us because He loves us. Of course, we aren't nowhere near that perfect, and cannot simply forgive and be done. God knows that. The main thing is to begin the road to forgiveness. It's a process, one that takes time, prayer, learning and lots of healing. As Stormie Omartian said, "Forgiveness doesn't make the other person right, it makes you free."

We all have had someone in our lives that has hurt us in some way or another, and we find ourselves with a choice. We can either take the road of anger, which leads to resentment, and eventually hate and bitterness. This road is a slow poison to the soul, eating away at everything. It eventually becomes who you are, nothing good comes from it. Or we can take the other road, the road to forgiveness. Though it isn't always a peaceful journey, it is the way Christ wants us to go. Besides, we know we never walk any road alone. He is there with us, He knows it's not a easy task. Psalm 34:18 says "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted..." He is close to you when people do you wrong. He restores your joy!

 Isaiah 53:3,5 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Jesus was a man 'familiar with suffering'. He who did no wrong was burdened by humanity's sins. If anyone had the right to hold a grudge against someone, it would be Him. He did so much for us, and yet we sometimes do so little for Him. Yet, in His unending love, He chooses to forgive us of our mistakes, and mess-ups time and time again. He is the example of grace. We don't deserve His forgiveness, but He chooses to forgive anyway. We cannot expect Him to forgive us when we mess up and then we withhold it from others. What kind of Christian would we truly be? We are to be an example of Christ. 

Though forgiveness is a hard process, we can be free through it. There is nothing like letting go of the pain and anger and letting Christ mend our wounds. We can learn so much from the pain, the journey, and the end result. Besides, we are never too 'holy' to be free from sin. We all mess up, and I'm glad God forgives, and teaches others to forgive as well! 

-Megan