By Doug Creamer

I looked out the window at a sunny, beautiful day. Then I opened the front door and felt the breezy, freezing air and closed the door. This will be a week that I will enjoy from inside my warm house. I enjoy being outside as much as possible, but with the extreme cold I will find some things that need doing inside. I am not even sure I will attempt to go for a walk this week as temperatures are expected to be below freezing for most of the week.

I don’t like hot and humid weather or breezy and cold weather. The only really good part about cold weather is the possibility of snow. It is easy to be lazy when it’s cold. I can scroll social media, watch some TV or curl up with a good book. The hours pass and very little gets accomplished. The problem with trying to tackle inside projects is that it usually involves cleaning out something. When you clean out a cabinet or closet you have to throw things away. Therein lies the problem. I am sentimental. It’s hard to give up stuff. I took a carload to Goodwill before Christmas and really should do it again.

When things are neat, clean, tidy and organized, it feels good. The problem lies with the process. If you decide to start with this closet then you will need to work on that closet too because some of these things need to be in that closet. The result is a huge mess because everything will be pulled out and then we are back to making decisions about what stays and what goes and those decisions feel impossible. You always need that thing you got rid of two weeks ago.

So you close the closet doors and find something else to do. It seems easier to pretend the problem doesn’t exist than to find the energy to work through the mess and make the tough decisions about what to keep and what to let go.

These same principles apply to our spiritual lives. There are habits, attitudes and things that need our attention and need changing but the work required causes us to close the doors and move on unchanged. We all carry spiritual baggage that we need to eject from our lives. We carry past hurts, brokenness, failures, disappointments, disillusionment, anxieties, distrust and a bunch of other things. The solution is to carry all these things to Jesus because He cares deeply for each one of us and wants to lift those burdens off our lives. The trouble is that it takes time and we have to open those closet doors up for Jesus. It’s a mess and we would rather pretend those things don’t exist, so we end up carrying this heavy load that God never intended for us to carry.

Jesus came to heal us from our hurts and brokenness. He knows all the ways we have been disillusioned and disappointed by people and He wants us to know that we can trust Him. He knows all the anxieties and fears we face and He wants us to know that He holds our future and everything about our lives in His hands. There is no failure that He can’t redeem.

Can you imagine what life would be like if you didn’t have to carry all the mess around? Why do we try to find ways to repay God for our sins? Jesus already paid that price for us. All we have to do is accept His free gift of forgiveness. Salvation is a free gift open for anyone who will receive it. We need to bring Jesus to the mess hidden in the closets of our lives and allow Him to help us clean it out. He wants to clean out all the mess and have a beautiful place where He can store our testimony to His goodness. Our story of His forgiveness. Our faith in His guidance. Our hope in the future He has planned for us. Our peace that surpasses understanding. Our joy at the wonder of what God can do with our brokenness.

I want to encourage you to open your closet doors to your Heavenly Father, who is in the business of cleaning up messes. It takes time, energy and faith to open those doors. God is compassionate and loving. He doesn’t want you to carry all that stuff around. Let Him lift the burdens off your shoulders so you can walk free as He intended. Let His love and joy clean and clear your heart so you can walk in His peace.

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041 or doug@dougcreamer.com.