Holiness is Like Spring Cleaning Your Soul.

My youngest sister Hannah put her house on the market this week and has been checking out new homes in our area. One home that she went to inspect was an adorable, old, perfectly restored cape style home right up the road from our house. Hannah reports that the house was gorgeous, perfect and the decor looked like it had been done by an interior designer. After her appointment was over, I drove past the “said” house on my way back from the bank and noticed the owners in the driveway, lugging trash bags full of items they’d hidden for the showing back into the house. I chuckled to myself, totally able to relate to this poor home owner who probably got a half hour notice that people were coming through her house again to “inspect” it.

I couldn’t help but think that this is our tendency as well. We’re “quick pick-up” Christians, hiding our real problems and shining up the outside, in an attempt to portray a perfect, put together appearance on the outside. We equate being a good Christian with moralism, a good reputation with holiness, when in fact, holiness is so much more. Instead of doing the hard work, dealing with our internal heart sin, we’re content to mask sin, hiding things we know to be ungodly or sinful. We become content with outer surface holiness, when God is appalled by this. He cares about truth in the inward parts, purity of heart and righteous motives.

Here’s the thing: we can fool others with a facade, but we can’t fool God. God says that this approach is hypocrisy and that he will resist {actually, fight against} the proud woman who hides, excuses, defends or overlooks her own sin.

Our lives are to be a testimony to the watching world.

Here are some questions for self reflection. If you are truly a believer in Christ, the Holy Spirit has already prompted you on the areas YOU need to change. Your areas of change will be different from my areas that need changing.  If you’ve been fighting against Him, now is the time to submit and confess any sin He’s brought to your mind. If you want to be holy, the first step is to agree with God about your sin. Don’t dismiss it, defend it, overlook it, explain it away–God says that our sin is an abomination to him, stems from our own pride and cannot be tolerated or coddled in our life if we are truly following hard after Him.

If others were to take a “scrutinizing look” at your life, what would they find?

Do you appear outwardly godly while inwardly your thoughts and desires are ungodly?

If people could see your thoughts, would they conclude that you are a holy person? A loving person?

If they could replay your phone conversations and read your texts, see the movies and tv programs you’ve watched, see how you spent your money and time, see what you did when nobody was watching, if they could get a script of your words, would they conclude that you were the real deal Christian? Holy? Or would they conclude that what you portrayed and how you lived were really full of hypocrisy and that you were a fraud?

Ephesians 4:17-30 tells us that there are things in our lives that we need to put off and put on. It is a helpful list, because we sometimes slip back into old habits. Here is an excellent free list based on Eph. 4 that I find helpful to keep out for myself.

Holiness is not a one time decision as anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time can tell you. Holiness is like spring cleaning your house. Once you clean up the cobwebs here, you notice something out of place over there, so you get out your windex and clean the picture frame glass, only to notice that your couch needs vacuuming. Once you get into God’s word to align YOUR life up to it, you find you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Holiness is a day by day, moment by moment decision. It is a daily choice to keep our eyes on Christ’s holiness, to see ourselves as we really are in our sin, to abide close to Christ, depend on Him and then rest in Him. It is a decision to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to be quick to confess and forsake our sin. When we “hold on” to our sin, we’re showing who and what we really love, aren’t we?

He gives us the strength and grace to “put off” sinfulness and he paid the price and gave us the power to do it through the precious blood of His son. We are no longer slaves to sin like we used to be. When we sin now, it’s because we chose to sin. We are redeemed, purified and our purpose now is to do the good works of His father.

So while you are spring cleaning your home, cleaning out cobwebs, windex-ing streaky glass and straightening out dresser drawers, think about the condition of your inward “temple”–the place that the Holy Spirit dwells. Does anything need to be re-arranged? Tossed out? Cleansed? Fixed? Do it this week. 🙂