Look and Feel Better This Spring!
by Jeanne Alcott
We all know that after a long, cold winter, we look forward to getting out more often. We want to experience sunshine and fresh air! That’s also when many households undergo what’s called spring-cleaning.
We put away the heavy blankets and air out the house. We dust from top to bottom and maybe even do a few projects, such as repainting a room or thoroughly cleaning the garage. Everything is thoroughly inspected and gone over from the windows to the furniture.
I once read that a possible origin of spring-cleaning can be traced to an ancient Jewish practice. It was done in anticipation of their springtime holiday of Passover. As you probably know, this holiday is celebrated in remembrance of the Jews’ flight from Egypt after they had been held captive there for more than 400 years.
On a much different level, that’s similar to how we can feel during the winter—as if we’ve been held captive for years! We want to break out of that old season and do some new things. We were less active during those cold months, but now we’re ready for some activity. We may have even let some wrong habits develop, and we need to get up and get going from the “captivity” of winter.
Simply put, in the spring, we want to look and feel better!
Is It Time for a Spiritual Spring-Cleaning?
That’s also what we have to do spiritually every once in a while. We have to do a spiritual spring-cleaning so we can look and feel better. Perhaps that will entail clearing out some unwanted mindsets that have been allowed to creep in and develop in our thoughts, emotions, and attitudes. We’ll also need to change certain behaviors. That means we’ll have to take a look at places where dust may have accumulated in our lives—even places where, in the past, we desired to follow the Lord with everything within us, but something changed somewhere along the way and we became cold.
Performing spiritual spring-cleaning in our lives means we’ll need to sweep out some things that we’ve allowed “inside” and didn’t even realize we’d done it. Those things, like cobwebs, became annoying and unattractive parts of our personalities and lives.
We’re inspecting our lives and doing a thorough work “top to bottom.” For example, have we allowed something in our hearts or minds that is affecting our outlook, values, and motives? Has something pure about our lives become impure? Just as junk can accumulate in our home, it’s amazing what can accumulate in our spiritual “house” if we’re not being mindful and doing regular upkeep.
Think about what it’s like when you clean out your garage or the closets in your house. At some point, you usually say, “Where did all this stuff come from?”
The same can be true spiritually. You might ask:
· “Where did this bitter feeling come from?”
· “How did I let anger build up in me like that?”
· “When did discouragement creep in and get such a hold on me?”
It’s interesting how wrong attitudes and outlooks can accumulate in our lives so subtly that we don’t notice them right away. On the other hand, just as we can accumulate certain items or possessions, we can also lose them. We wonder where certain things about our spiritual lives have gone.
· Where is my desire to seek God?
· Why don’t I have energy and drive anymore?
· Where is my motivation to serve others instead of just living for myself?
We need the Holy Spirit’s help as we perform “spring-cleaning” on the inside of our lives so that we look and feel better inside and outside too!
How To Get Started
If we want to do spiritual spring-cleaning in our lives, we’ll need the Holy Spirit’s help. But where do we start? Psalm 139:23-24 should be our prayer:
Search me thoroughly, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
“Search me thoroughly.” In other words, we’re saying, “Lord, take inventory of me. Look at my heart and my motives. Analyze my thoughts. Do this, Lord, so I can know if there’s any wrong or hurtful way in me. If there is, please lead me out of that so I can look and feel better as Your child.”
We shouldn’t wince at the idea of undergoing a cleansing like that—because that kind of “spring-cleaning” is the only way we’re going to see better days! Without spring-cleaning, the wrong ways that have developed and accumulated in us over time will be hurtful not only to ourselves, but also to others and to the work of God.
It’s just a smart thing to submit to having our spiritual houses searched and swept and cleansed!
Take Inventory, Clean, and Repair
As we take inventory of our lives, we begin noticing attitudes and behaviors that aren’t really “us.” We’re taking a close look and observing how we’ve been thinking and feeling, and we realize we’ve begun to allow ourselves to act in ways we don’t desire to see exemplified. It’s then that we must make the decision to “clean” our spiritual houses of those behaviors and whatever thoughts might be causing them.
After inventory and cleaning, the last step of this spiritual spring-cleaning is repairing any damage that has been done physically or emotionally so that restoration can come.
Thank God that we have been given the Holy Spirit who will give us the discerning ability to see these things for what they really are. And as painful as it can be when we see them, He gives us the strength to rid ourselves of those unwanted, accumulated things that can seem hard to let go of.
Our tendency is to want to cling to our belongings! Sometimes we do it because those things are sentimental to us and we’re used to having them around. Or maybe those things bring us some measure of comfort. So at times we don’t want to undergo the pain of change and of clearing them from our lives.
But when those things are cleaned out, we can see the better us that’s in there! Our lives will be improved, and the real us that God wants to be revealed will not be hidden and obscured amidst all the “stuff” of our lives that we allowed to accumulate.
This truth reminds me of the artist Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel many centuries ago. Michelangelo spent five painstaking years lying on his back painting the ceiling frescoes depicting the fall of mankind. After all that time, his work was finally completed, but the scenes had already begun to fade! Within 100 years, the images were indiscernible.
One painter described Michelangelo’s masterpiece as “colors through a smoked glass.” And that’s true of our lives when we allow “dust” to perpetually settle over us without doing regular spiritual housecleaning.
God’s Masterpiece Revealed in You!
It’s sad that we can accumulate so many hang-ups, habits, and brokenness that the “original” God made us to be can’t be seen! We need to undergo cleaning so His masterpiece in us can be observed.
Fortunately, that's what happened to the Sistine Chapel. In 1989, after years of artists’ working carefully to clean all the frescoes on the ceiling, the originals could be seen once again. And the result was breathtaking! For the first time in nearly 500 years, people could see Michelangelo’s masterpiece the way it was intended. Beautiful colors that had been buried for centuries once again shined through.
God wants others to see in you the breathtaking beauty that He has placed within you. You may not feel that way right now, but if you will allow His Spirit to do some cleaning and uncovering, He will unveil the good things within you. And He’ll do away with the things that are hurtful.
Second Timothy 2:21 says, So whoever cleanses himself [from what is ignoble and unclean, who separates himself from contact with contaminating and corrupting influences] will then himself be a vessel set apart and useful for honorable and noble purposes, consecrated and profitable to the Master, fit and ready for any good work.
If we want to be usable by God, we’re going to have to allow Him to clean or remove from our “house” what is detrimental to us. It may be painful as we dig and do the deep work of spiritual spring-cleaning. But the results will be greater beauty, greater usefulness, and greater satisfaction.
That’s what God wants for you! He wants you to be content with who you are and how you think and act. He wants you to look and feel better! He wants you to be fit, prepared, and ready to do His will for your life so you can experience His best blessings. All the work of inventory, cleaning, and repair will be worth it as it reveals God’s masterpiece in you!
We Want To Believe With You and Pray for You!
Let’s do as God says in His Word and come into a prayer of agreement for your needs, then believe what the Lord said. Whatever [anything and everything] they may ask, it will come to pass and be done for them by My Father in heaven (Matt. 18:19).
There is so much power available to you as we do this. So let us pray with you by sharing your requests for God. Click here now and we will receive them as soon as you send them. After we pray, we’ll send you a letter filled with words from God’s Spirit for your life.
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