This past weekend I have this strong compulsion to finally clean our house!

The moment I started doing this everyone in the house started dropping the other things that they are doing and decided to help me (they realized that this is a once in a lifetime event hehehe).

I never realized that we have looots of books! Ranging from children encyclopedias, storybooks, to gigantic volume-encyclopedias, self help books, catholic books, christian books, fiction pocket books (I never realized that I have a lot of Hardy boys hehehe), nursing books, cook books (these are from my mom’s and aunt’s.  These books are so heavy and old so when I attempted to trash them out only to have my mom angry hehehe), magazines, song hits, Reader’s digest, newspapers (the ironic part is that we stopped subscribing from Reader’s digest and newspapers for almost 5 years now!). I was also amazed that we have lots of dictionaries and new testament bibles in Filipino language.

I also found some old favorite toys, literary pieces that I made when I was a kid and some old pictures of myself (when I was only 65 kilos hehehe).

It took me 2 whole afternoon cleaning the living room alone! Whew!

While I was trashing all the unnecessary items in our house, I can’t stop asking myself: “why haven’t I thrown this a long time ago, it is rubbish and it is just taking space! ” I just can’t believe I’m hoarding some things that are actually useless!!!

Then it hit me. God reminded me on how he deals with our hearts. God sends the Holy Spirit continually to remove things that are rubbish and unnecessary for us and in His sight. However, we tend to resist God when He asks us to surrender (throw) something out of our life (like old habitual sins, unhealthy attitudes, displeasing motives, forgiveness and bitterness, etc.) that has been staying around your heart for the longest time.

Like our house (hehehe), the Holy Spirit will continually search our hearts and will always find something that is not pleasing in God’s eyes. Sometimes we never realized it was there all along and we might not remember how it got there, but what we must do is faithfully surrender it to God.

Listen, confess and repent.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” – 1john1:7-10 (NIV)

Let us be allowed to be cleaned by God.