Cleaning House

I was walking our dog, Jack, around the neighborhood as school was just letting out. A young mother was walking her little girl home. As we neared I heard the mother say, “You’ll need to clean your room before you have anyone over for a sleepover.” Immediately my thoughts flashed back to times in my childhood when my mother would say to me and my sister, “Girls, we have company coming. Help me get ready.” The getting ready meant dusting and picking up any clutter off coffee tables. The carpets were vacuumed and the bathroom was made fresh and in good order. It would be embarrassing to have company over if the house was a mess. That’s our physical world, but it’s no different in our spiritual worlds.

We are instructed in I John 2:28, Remain in fellowship with Christ so that when He returns, you will be full of courage and not shrink back from Him in shame (NLT). In other words, since we know Jesus could come for us at any moment, we need to keep our hearts clean so we’re not embarrassed at any sinful clutter strewn about the coffee tables of our minds where sinful thoughts that turn into ungodly actions occur. We don’t know the time when Jesus will come, but we do know that His arrival will be like a thief in the night, unexpected, unannounced (I Thessalonians 5:4). Therefore, we must be ready with cleaned minds and hearts, ready with the greatest of gladness to look into Jesus’ eyes, embracing Him with all our love. Imagine if His return should happen when we are living with a mess of unconfessed sin in our lives. Suppose His coming finds us in willful sin, perhaps gossiping or ignoring God’s Word or deliberately being unhelpful to someone who annoys us.

We are embarrassed when company arrives to find our home in a massive heap of disorder. How much more would the shame be of Jesus coming to find the home of our hearts in tangled webs of deceit, or nonchalance to His love letter to us which is the Word of God. How embarrassing for us should He arrive when our minds are filled with ungodly thoughts that have festered into masses of unholy behavior. Oh no! Must the One Who gave His life for us, paying for our every sin, be brought into such filthy disarray? Let it not happen!

Instead, let us keep our houses clean. Let us keep our eyes on Him. Let us strain our ears to hear every guidance of the Holy Spirit. Let us do, with a joyful heart, all He tells us to do. Let us go where He says to go, and let us run away from every sin that would entice us to be embarrassed should Jesus come today. Keeping the homes of our hearts is not a drudgery to do, but a joy, for it keeps our intimacy with Jesus ongoing. Walking in daily closeness with Him is the greatest of all joy and the height of peace.