Holy House Cleaning

Every once and a while, it's important for us to take a minute to evaluate our lives and do some holy house keeping.

Am I truly loving people around me? Am I serving those in need? Am I letting my emotions get the best of me instead of pursuing a life of progressive integrity? 

Here are some things that I'm doing to work out some of the emotional gunk that is holding me back from being the person that I would like to be:

Stop, pray, and speak positive truths. Life does not go as planned. That is a truth. We all experience suffering and hurt in one way or another, but it's how we respond and choose to deal with these things that leads us to either freedom or spiritual bondage.

We need to stop and pray for God to give us the power to forgive those that hurt us. Not forgiving them is keeping us in a cycle of hatred that is not hurting them, but hurting ourselves. 

We need to step up our attitude of gratitude because while things around us change, God does not change. He wants the best for us. He wants to give us all of the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control to get through what life throws at us. 

But, we have to ask for it each day. 

And the Bible says that God will give these things to us if we just ask for it. To truly become people that live our lives in love.

Plan. If you can predict times that are particularly stressful for you, sit and create a language for those times so that anger and anxiety does not overwhelm you. 

If people keep telling you how you should be doing something that you are not currently doing or talking negatively about your life and you are bothered by it. Create a sentence to say to calm you down and stop the conversation. "Thank you for your advice, I will strongly consider it and appreciate your concern."

If you get overwhelmed by the amount of work that you have to do say, "One thing at a time, I can do this with God's help!"

Reverse the negative. To every negative statement there is a positive statement.

"I'm a horrible cook" to "I am a Ramen expert."

"I can't do anything right" to "We all have different talents and I am thankful for the ones that I have been given."

God wants to clean out our hearts on a regular basis. The Bible talks in Malachi about how God's love is a refining fire. Throughout our life, we go through cycles of purging out the bad stuff and putting in the good.

Who's with me on this journey?