My friend Christi has been doing some extreme cleaning lately. Both of her parents have passed away and she’s been charged with cleaning out the home they lived in for decades. And it’s a mess.
The challenge is that her parents were hoarders; they simply could not throw away anything.
Surrounded by massive clutter—with ceiling-high piles of papers and multiples of items saved over a forty-year span—Christi feels overwhelmed.
There are all kinds of messes in life: physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial disorder.
And, there are different levels of messiness, too, from a bit untidy to totally chaotic to somewhere in between.
What about your life? Maybe it looks something like this:
Each day is a rerun of wiping up after kids with muddy shoes or full diapers.
Or, you have piles of papers on your dining room table and scurry to hide them when company comes.
Or, you’re running from meeting to meeting at work, and never seem to have time to organize a “real life.”
Could it be that your home is spotless, like a veritable showroom with things perfectly in place—except the one thing that matters most?
Your heart.
Like taking out the garbage at home, your heart needs to be cleansed, healed and filled on a daily basis. And you can do that every day—every moment—when you come to God in prayer.
“Your messes are God’s opportunities,” says Michael Yaconelli in Messy Spirituality. “They’re not what He shuns; they’re where He meets you, opens your eyes to the fullness of his love, and transforms you with His grace.”
I’ve often wished there was a book on how to fix broken lives and restore messes, one that would help me know what to do to make things right again.
And then I found it.
It’s called the Bible. From beginning to end, the Bible is chock-full of stories of God renovating the messed up lives of men and women—even seemingly “good people.”
Thankfully, God is all about fixing broken things and restoring hearts, for people long ago and for us today.
You can clear the clutter and change your life as you talk with God in prayer. Instead of waiting for an annual spring cleaning, you can come to Him at any time. He is always there.
God is willing and more than able to restore your messy life. The results may not always look like you think they should or happen on your timetable, but God can surely bring order to even the most chaotic or cluttered situations.
God can help you to:
Order your heart to make room for God and connect with Him on deeper levels.
Order your emotions and clear out lingering anger, bitterness, pride or other things to help you find increased joy and contentment.
Order your thoughts and get rid of mental clutter so you can focus on your priorities—like getting in shape, or spending your time and money more effectively.
Order your home so you can find the things you need, and have more freedom and peace.
Prayer is vital to making significant life changes. As you come to God in prayer and ask Him to cleanse, heal and restore every area of your life.
As you bring order to your life in the physical and emotional spaces around you, remember that it’s a process. Going from mess to order or from chaos to simplicity doesn’t happen overnight.
As you pray and take action, you will find more peace and freedom. And, you will be making room for new things.
And when you do, you never know what surprises God may have in store for you.
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For more about this topic, see Praying with Power When Life Gets Tough.