Time to Clean House

It is inevitable that when I wear white pants, I will have little marks and stains on them. I want to blame it on the fact that I spill because I am wearing white pants, but the truth is that I spill all the time. I just don’t see it all the time. I think I spill as much on my jeans as I do on my white pants. It is just that white pants display dirt.

The same is true of sin in our lives. We can go through life thinking, Well, I’m not sinning that much, when actually we are. The Bible tells us, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (1 John 1:8–9 NLT).

I tend to be a messy person. My wife Cathe, however, is the polar opposite. She is always cleaning. She is constantly straightening things up. If we deal with sin in our lives the way I deal with cleaning, then it will build up until we have a spiritual crisis. That is because we have gone about it in the wrong way—the procrastinator’s way. But if we are smart, we will handle sin the way Cathe handles cleaning, which is to keep messes from building up. That means constantly confessing our sins before God.

Maybe there is something in your life that you have tried to change, but you can’t. Now is the time to ask God to clean house. Ask Him to help you. Don’t try to clean up your life before you come to God. Come to God, and then let Him clean up your life.