Today I watched a video of a man who bought the contents of a house from the heirs of an estate. They wanted to improve and sell the house, but the former owner had been, at best, a collector and,at worst, a hoarder. After seeing the video, I'm leaning toward the second description.
In the initial tour of the house in the video, he found massive piles of things in every room, leaving no room to walk. Everything was dust-covered, outdated, and of little value. There was everything from clothing to sheet music to nail polish to bad artwork. He wondered if he would find enough items of value to recoup his investment, and he had only eight weeks to totally empty this large, massively cluttered home.
I thought how daunting a task that must be; seeing nothing but junk piled three feet or more up the walls of every room and figuring out how to go through it all and decide what was trash and what still had a use, much less what had any great value. He could have spent eight weeks moving mountains of trash and only find a few hundred dollars worth of salvageable items. On the other hand, there could have been hidden stacks of cash, expensive jewelry, or dusty priceless antiques under all the clutter. It would just take an enormous amount of time and effort to uncover what was valuable in the mess.
Our lives are like that hoarder's house. We have collections of sin, guilt, rebellion, and pride. Even though we knew it was smothering us and taking over our lives, cluttering up all our relationships, creating an unhealthy environment for us - we still kept piling bad over bad until we had destroyed any hope of living comfortably in that house. We took the promise of a clean, empty space and turned it into chaos. Then, along came Jesus. He paid for the contents of that house because he knew there was something of value in us. When we surrender the contents of our soul to Him, He cleans out all that is useless, dirty, negative, and toxic and replaces it with His righteousness. He unearths the beautiful and priceless things He has put within us and helps us to function as we were designed to operate. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has made all things beautiful in His time...."
It's not just a one-time event either. It's amazing what Jesus has done for us and continues to do in our lives. We are initially cleansed as we are born again, and then the Holy Spirit works in our lives to sanctify us, setting us apart to be useful in the kingdom of God; reaching a level of fulfillment which we never would have dreamed possible. However, none of that happens without our consent and our cooperation. Allow Jesus to take your messy life and find all that is valuable within you to use for the glory of God.
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