Spiritual Clutter Bug?

Scripture: Ephesians 4:17 - 32; 2 Chronicles 29:1-19

Title: Spiritual Clutterbug?

Theme: Spiritual Cleansing

Sermon is based on the need to do some spiritual decluttering.

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I want to talk to you this morning about reshaping the sacred space in our lives. That is to say I want for us to take some time this morning and reflect on our lives and see if we need to do a little spiritual cleaning or what has been called - spiritually decluttering.

Some of us this morning could be labeled Clutter Bugs and others well may be on the road to being hoarders so a little intervention is good for all of us.

One of the ways you can test yourself if you are a clutter bug is to go to your closets, the drawers in your office, work shop or kitchen and open them. Are they tidy? Are they well organized? Is there stuff there that you constantly use?

Or do they suffer from a little or a lot of clutter? Are they full of all kinds of stuff because you either didn't know what to do with it or you just knew that you needed to save it? Or have other people just piled stuff in without your knowledge or permission?

Imagine this with me and see if there is something like this in your house.

We yank open our junk drawer and noticed that in the corner is a button we thought we needed to keep but now we realize we no longer own that coat. Stuffed over in another corner are some crumpled up receipts. How old they are we really don't know. Laying on top of a stack of other papers is a ticket where we went to see a movie. It was a good movie so we wanted to keep the ticket as a nice reminder. As we rummage around we find that there all kinds of stuff - some expired medications, quite a number of pens, paper clips, rubber bands, bobby pens, a screw driver or two and some other miscellaneous stuff.

Hmm. Maybe we do need to do a little decluttering. Let's go to another area of our home - a Closet.

Looking in we notice that there are some shoes we thought we would like but we didn't . However, we don't want to get rid of them because there is a chance that we might still need them some day. There is no reason to get rid of them - yet. There are those clothes that use to fit and after we go on this diet or that diet then we will be able to wear them again. At least that is our plan. Forget that they will no longer be in style. The main thing is there are they to remind us or motivate us to put down that Girl Scout Cookie or that bowl of ice cream.

And why should we get rid of that shirt or those old jeans? They have finally gotten comfortable. Sure there are a few holes but that just means that the material has gotten soft enough to feel good. No reason to get rid of good clothes.

Does that sound like you or at least like someone you know?

On top of all of this there are those little grime areas that find themselves in our homes. We do our best to turn a blind eye but every now and then we see them. Actually, we see them better in someone else's house than we do our own but we won't talk about that.

You know those little grime areas - the space on top of the refrigerator. The spot behind the washing machine. That little gap underneath the microwave. That area underneath the sofa or the stuff in the sofa. That little track that goes along the window sills and the windows themselves. The grime that seems to somehow build up along the baseboards and in the corners. Where does all that stuff come from anyway?

The reality is this morning most of us have some clutter, some unnecessary messes and some disorder in our homes. There are some shelves that need straightening and some areas that need some tender loving care.

I think it is also legitimate to say that in most of our lives there are some things that that for lack of a better word are merely "junk". Things that get stuck here and there instead of being tossed in the garbage can. We either didn't take the time to toss them or we just got lazy and decided not to do it.

Now, of course, there are some things that do have value. They were bought thinking that we needed them or that they would work but then we found out that they were either the wrong size, the wrong product or just didn't work. We kept them because we didn't want to go and stand in some kind of line to get a refund. It's too much of a hassle and there is the odd chance that we could use it someday.