Let It Go!

 

Photo by Living In Monrovia 2009

As time goes by, I find that my prayers get longer. I would like to hope that this is because as I become closer to God, I want to spend more quiet time with Him, but I fear this is only part of the reason.

Another reasonable explanation for longer prayers may also be that as we grow older, so do our friends and families, and with aging comes a host of physical, financial and spiritual needs. So our intercessory prayers become laden with many pressing urgent requests. These needs seldom resolve right away, so our prayer list grows daily with new emergencies and continued chronic problems.

Sometimes it is clear that our prayers have been answered, whether or not to our liking, and we can remove that request from our list. For example, if we pray for healing for a loved one with cancer, and that person goes home to be with the Lord, then we know that the healing has been accomplished, not in this world, as we had hoped, but in Heaven. We can then pray for peace and comfort for ourselves and others who mourn, but it would be pointless to continue to pray for healing.

But sometimes the direction our prayers should take is less clear cut. What if a loved one has a stroke, and we pray for recovery, and God grants it, is it then wrong to pray that they won’t have any more strokes? Should we thank God, trust Him to work all things together according to His perfect will (Romans 8:28), and move on to other requests?

Or has God allowed this situation in our lives to increase our dependence on and faith in Him, and even our thankfulness? When this type of situation occurs in my life, I’m ashamed to admit that sometimes my gratitude is short-lived. I thank God for the positive outcome of the prayer request – for a day or two – and then my prayers turn to “and please Lord, don’t let that happen again.”

I am reminded of ten lepers whom Jesus cleansed and healed, but only one returned to thank Him, and he was rewarded with spiritual as well as physical healing (Luke 17:12-19). I wonder if the others forgot about the Great Physician altogether, or if they were sacrificing and praying in the temple to never contract leprosy again.

The danger of this type of prayer is that it can become the sin of worry, which is motivated by fear and reflects a lack of faith. Fear should be cast out of our hearts by God’s perfect love (1 John 4:18), and without faith, it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6).

Perhaps the most extreme example of this type of worry is the believer who doubts their eternal security. Rather than knowing they are Heaven-bound, they may always worry that their last sin was too great, or that the cumulative total of their sins was too many, for God to forgive. Such doubt erodes joy in the Lord and peace that passes all understanding.

Do we trust God to provide for all our needs, physical and spiritual, or do we feel that we need to remind Him of how threatened we felt in a particular situation, and how bad it would be if that situation occurred once more?

Do we trust in His perfect will and timing, knowing that He knows all our needs even before we ask Him (Matthew 6:8), and that any trial He permits in our life is for our ultimate good, the good of others, and His glory?  

Can we trust Him to give us perfect peace by keeping our minds, hearts and souls fixed on Him (Isaiah 26:3), or do we need to perpetuate the illusion that we are in control? If we worry/pray enough about a negative experience not recurring, do we think we can prevent it?

Over the years, it seems that the stuff in our house has multiplied just as our prayer list has grown, and not always for the better! I enjoy having many clothes to choose from so that I can dress in a manner that reflects the song I plan to sing in church, and my husband enjoys collecting and studying fossilized shells and animal bones and teeth that we gather from the beach. We both appreciate having photos and other mementos of our family, travels, and dance ministry.

These things are not expensive, or may even be free, but they are not without cost, as they take time to dust, sort, and find suitable places to store them. Taken to the extreme, acquiring things can become hoarding, with our possessions not only getting underfoot and causing stress, but even creating a health or safety hazard.

Many missionaries our church supports have the opposite problem, living in huts with straw roofs and dirt floors, and having few if any possessions, yet they have joy in the Lord (Nehemiah 8:10; Psalm 35:9; Isaiah 29:19) and the peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7), for they trust God to provide for their daily needs (Matthew 6:25-34).

Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread (Matthew 6:11), and to have only one coat (Luke 9:3), not to hoard provisions for future use. This can become a foolish pursuit, for we are not promised tomorrow (James 4:14). Even our prized possessions are more likely to be a burden than a treasure to those who survive us.

As Jesus explained, we should instead store up treasure in Heaven, free of corruption from rust and decay, and of loss by theft (Luke 12:33; Matthew 6:19-20). Once we are saved by trusting in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only Way (John 14:6) to Heaven, we can enjoy these treasures throughout eternity! They are not physical trophies, but spiritual blessings and rewards given for souls we help bring to Christ through our witness, testimony, and lifestyle.

A well-known story tells of a little girl who cherished her prized possession – an inexpensive fake “pearl” necklace she found in a box of Cracker Jack. She wore it everywhere, even to go to sleep at night. One day her father asked her to give him the necklace, because he wanted to give her something else instead. She stubbornly refused, clutching it tightly to her neck.

“Honey, don’t you trust me?” her father asked. “I can’t give you your special gift until you let that go.”

Finally, after much cajoling, the little girl reluctantly unclasped the necklace, held it tightly in her palm for a few moments, and slowly released her grip on it, placing it in her father’s hand. Much to her surprise and delight, her father brought out an elegant velvet box holding a strand of genuine pearls of great value. As he lovingly fastened the clasp around her neck, she realized that letting go was the best decision!

May we trust our Father to always provide His best for us and be willing to relinquish what we think we need – control, self-sufficiency, earthly goods, and even prayers borne out of worry rather than of faith. May we let go of whatever hinders us from collecting souls for Jesus!

© 2023 Laurie Collett

Spring Cleaning

 

On Sunday, March 20th of this year, is the first day of spring! A much needed new beginning from a winter of extreme weather, natural disasters, pandemic, and now war. The recently high and continuous pollen alert triggered us to do a thorough house cleaning before allergies overwhelm us. Even my computer, which some days falls asleep unless I tend to it constantly, needs a good purging of unwanted emails and files. All this prompted me to repost the following:

At last, winter is over, the Christmas decorations have long since been stashed in the attic, and the empty space in our living room and on mantels and hutches seems to invite more mementos, for nature truly does abhor a vacuum.

Time for spring cleaning! Sometimes when I go on a cleaning streak, I fool myself that I’m accomplishing something meaningful. Sometimes I organize and clean the things in my life to give myself the illusion of control, which is far more feasible over things than it is over circumstances or negative attitudes.

My husband often jokes that our house looks like a museum, not because its contents are of great material value, but because we tend to collect and display many things. I attribute such proclivities of mine to genetics. My aunt left me her collections – spoons, teacups, Hummel figurines; and my mother her collections of books and Russian Easter eggs. I guess I am just too sentimental not to display them. And of course, my husband and I had to add to this by collecting books and spoons of our own, and Christmas ornaments unique to every place we have visited.

The upfront cost of these trinkets was minimal, and they do bring smiles to our faces when they trigger the associated memories. But they take up wall space, and drawer space, and make dusting seem like an endless task. As you might imagine, I tend to put this off for special occasions or for when we are expecting company. No doubt our allergies would improve if we didn’t have so much to dust!

My husband got the bug for collecting from the beach, which at least has no additional monetary cost beyond the expense of traveling there. First it was shells, then sharks’ teeth, and now fossils that delight us as we marvel that petrified horse toes, ankle bones of a camel, and other rare finds wash up on the shore!

He has run out of space for these in the collector’s chests I bought him one Christmas. (Yes, one of the problems with having a lot of stuff is that you have to buy more stuff to organize and store it). So now the best of these treasures find temporary lodging there until they are relegated to the garage, replaced by newer and more interesting specimens.

Speaking of the garage, its musty corners have been the bane of my existence lately as I continue the never-ending chore of sorting through old stuff. Stuff that got dumped in boxes, moved to a paid storage facility, then from one closet and garage to the next. It followed us, binding us like the chains of Ebenezer Scrooge, as we moved from one home to another, as I closed my private practice, and as my mother closed her gift shop and moved from Pennsylvania to Florida.

When our son outgrew his childhood things, went to college, moved into his own place, and got married, guess who was left holding his unwanted stuff? When my mother and then my husband’s mother moved from their homes to an assisted living facility and then passed into eternity, we became curators of their remaining stuff.

At first I justified this by rationalizing that we are documenting our family history and preserving family heirlooms for future generations. And sometimes I do enjoy opening boxes for the thrill of perhaps discovering some lost treasure, or awakening a joyful memory that has slumbered through the years, or wondering about people I don’t recognize in old photos of family get-togethers.

Yet some memories are best left undisturbed, and the reminder can be as troubling as finding a silverfish scurrying across a dainty embroidered napkin. When I am being honest with myself, I realize that the costs of holding on to these unneeded things can be stifling and oppressive. The expense of a storage facility, in retrospect, was totally unjustified as I have recently opened cartons only to find that their contents are obsolete, damaged by time and the elements, or not worth saving in the first place.

Yet we are not alone in this folly. In 2014 alone, with rates on the rise ever since, there were approximately 52,000 self-storage facilities in the U.S., occupying a total roofed area three times the size of Manhattan, and generating more than $5,200,000,000 in revenue each year, renting to one of every ten U.S. families!

Not to mention the intangible costs: clutter, lack of access to space needed to maintain a home workshop or to protect vehicles, potential for injury and fatigue from repeated moving of heavy boxes, and exposure to allergens causing respiratory or skin issues. Or even tripping over a wayward box and falling. At first we may think we enjoy owning a lot of stuff, until we realize that the stuff owns us.

Too much clutter has invaded other areas of my life. The DVR is constantly warning me “97% full,” even though I delete programs as soon as I watch them. As I only play these programs as background while exercising, sorting through mail, or cleaning, will I ever get through them all? On a more worrisome note, my Inbox is filling up so rapidly and I’ve accumulated so many downloads that now my computer is crawling at a turtle’s pace.  It’s time to clear those out too, before it crashes altogether.

Dealing with all this junk reminds me of the need to release the spiritual burdens in our life. Jesus was the perfect, sinless sacrifice Who died on the cross to pay for all our sins (John 1:29; Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). So why do we refuse to lay down our heavy burdens of guilt over past mistakes at the foot of His cross and just leave them there?

He is risen from the dead (Acts 17:3; Romans 8:34; 1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 20) so that all who trust Him as Lord and Savior will have eternal life with Him in Heaven (John 3:16), and even now are elevated to heavenly places with Him (Ephesians 1:3; 2:6).

So why do we needlessly carry around the weight of a bad attitude, unthankful spirit, unclean heart, or fear? He has liberated us from this spiritual clutter, cleansed us from our sins in His own precious blood (1 John 1:7), and robed us with the pristine garment of His righteousness (Job 29:14; Isaiah 61:10).

As we tackle spring cleaning, whether it be just vacuuming and yard work, or more vigorous measures like pressure washing the driveway, or finally parting with cumbersome baggage, may we not neglect the need for spiritual cleansing. Scripture tells us to cleanse daily by washing with the water of the Word (Ephesians 5:26).

If we neglect this, God, as our loving Father, may see fit to do some pressure washing, first using the Word as a two-edged sword to cleave apart joints from marrow and soul from spirit (Hebrews 4:12), and then applying physical pressure in the form of trials to chasten us (Hebrews 12:6).

God wants to bless us with His best gifts (Matthew 7:11), but as long as our arms and hearts are filled with the junk of our life before we were saved, He will not replace this with His abundant blessings (Philippians 4:19) His burden is easy and His yoke is light, so why do we stubbornly cling to our old ways? He invites us to come to Him for respite from our burdens and to learn from His servant’s heart, and He promises us rest (Matthew 11:28-30).

Being yoked together with Jesus (Hebrews 13:5) ensures that He will help us, and that He will not only carry our burdens (1 Peter 5:7), but that He will carry us. Learning from Him to have a servant’s heart means that our priorities will be in the right place, on loving and serving Him and others (Luke 10:27), and not on hoarding excess things that weigh us down (Luke 12:15-34). Peace comes not from having earthly riches or provisions, but from storing up treasures in Heaven, where we can enjoy them throughout eternity (Matthew 6:19-20).

Suddenly I feel motivated to rummage through the remaining boxes in the garage, armed with a huge trash bag for most of the contents and cleaning supplies for those items that can be salvaged and given away. More importantly, I vow to cleanse myself daily in the Living Water (John 4:10) of His Word!

© 2019 Laurie Collett

Reposted from the archives

 

Spring Cleaning

At last, winter is over, the Christmas decorations have long since been stashed in the attic, and the empty space in our living room and on mantels and hutches seems to invite more mementos, for nature truly does abhor a vacuum.

Time for spring cleaning! Sometimes when I go on a cleaning streak, I fool myself that I’m accomplishing something meaningful. Sometimes I organize and clean the things in my life to give myself the illusion of control, which is far more feasible over things than it is over circumstances or negative attitudes.

My husband often jokes that our house looks like a museum, not because its contents are of great material value, but because we tend to collect and display many things. I attribute such proclivities of mine to genetics. My aunt left me her collections – spoons, teacups, Hummel figurines; and my mother her collections of books and Russian Easter eggs. I guess I am just too sentimental not to display them. And of course, my husband and I had to add to this by collecting books and spoons of our own, and Christmas ornaments unique to every place we have visited.

The upfront cost of these trinkets was minimal, and they do bring smiles to our faces when they trigger the associated memories. But they take up wall space, and drawer space, and make dusting seem like an endless task. As you might imagine, I tend to put this off for special occasions or for when we are expecting company. No doubt our allergies would improve if we didn’t have so much to dust!

My husband got the bug for collecting from the beach, which at least has no additional monetary cost beyond the expense of traveling there. First it was shells, then sharks’ teeth, and now fossils that delight us as we marvel that petrified horse toes, ankle bones of a camel, and other rare finds wash up on the shore!

He has run out of space for these in the collector’s chests I bought him one Christmas. (Yes, one of the problems with having a lot of stuff is that you have to buy more stuff to organize and store it). So now the best of these treasures find temporary lodging there until they are relegated to the garage, replaced by newer and more interesting specimens.

Speaking of the garage, its musty corners have been the bane of my existence lately as I continue the never-ending chore of sorting through old stuff. Stuff that got dumped in boxes, moved to a paid storage facility, then from one closet and garage to the next. It followed us, binding us like the chains of Ebenezer Scrooge, as we moved from one home to another, as I closed my private practice, and as my mother closed her gift shop and moved from Pennsylvania to Florida.

When our son outgrew his childhood things, went to college, moved into his own place, and got married, guess who was left holding his unwanted stuff? When my mother and then my husband’s mother moved from their homes to an assisted living facility and then passed into eternity, we became curators of their remaining stuff.

At first I justified this by rationalizing that we are documenting our family history and preserving family heirlooms for future generations. And sometimes I do enjoy opening boxes for the thrill of perhaps discovering some lost treasure, or awakening a joyful memory that has slumbered through the years, or wondering about people I don’t recognize in old photos of family get-togethers.

Yet some memories are best left undisturbed, and the reminder can be as troubling as finding a silverfish scurrying across a dainty embroidered napkin. When I am being honest with myself, I realize that the costs of holding on to these unneeded things can be stifling and oppressive. The expense of a storage facility, in retrospect, was totally unjustified as I have recently opened cartons only to find that their contents are obsolete, damaged by time and the elements, or not worth saving in the first place.

Yet we are not alone in this folly. In 2014 alone, with rates on the rise ever since, there were approximately 52,000 self-storage facilities in the U.S., occupying a total roofed area three times the size of Manhattan, and generating more than $5,200,000,000 in revenue each year, renting to one of every ten U.S. families!

Not to mention the intangible costs: clutter, lack of access to space needed to maintain a home workshop or to protect vehicles, potential for injury and fatigue from repeated moving of heavy boxes, and exposure to allergens causing respiratory or skin issues. Or even tripping over a wayward box and falling. At first we may think we enjoy owning a lot of stuff, until we realize that the stuff owns us.

Too much clutter has invaded other areas of my life. The DVR is in constantly warning me “97% full,” even though I delete programs as soon as I watch them. As I only play these programs as background while exercising, sorting through mail, or cleaning, will I ever get through them all? On a more worrisome note, my Inbox is filling up so rapidly and I’ve accumulated so many downloads that now my computer is crawling at a turtle’s pace.  It’s time to clear those out too, before it crashes altogether.

Dealing with all this junk reminds me of the need to release the spiritual burdens in our life. Jesus was the perfect, sinless sacrifice Who died on the cross to pay for all our sins (John 1:29; Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). So why do we refuse to lay down our heavy burdens of guilt over past mistakes at the foot of His cross and just leave them there?

He is risen from the dead (Acts 17:3; Romans 8:34; 1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 20) so that all who trust Him as Lord and Savior will have eternal life with Him in Heaven (John 3:16), and even now are elevated to heavenly places with Him (Ephesians 1:3; 2:6).

So why do we needlessly carry around the weight of a bad attitude, unthankful spirit, unclean heart, or fear? He has liberated us from this spiritual clutter, cleansed us from our sins in His own precious blood (1 John 1:7), and robed us with the pristine garment of His righteousness (Job 29:14; Isaiah 61:10).

As we tackle spring cleaning, whether it be just vacuuming and yard work, or more vigorous measures like pressure washing the driveway, or finally parting with cumbersome baggage, may we not neglect the need for spiritual cleansing. Scripture tells us to cleanse daily by washing with the water of the Word (Ephesians 5:26).

If we neglect this, God, as our loving Father, may see fit to do some pressure washing, first using the Word as a two-edged sword to cleave apart joints from marrow and soul from spirit (Hebrews 4:12), and then applying physical pressure in the form of trials to chasten us (Hebrews 12:6).

God wants to bless us with His best gifts (Matthew 7:11), but as long as our arms and hearts are filled with the junk of our life before we were saved, He will not replace this with His abundant blessings (Philippians 4:19) His burden is easy and His yoke is light, so why do we stubbornly cling onto our old ways? He invites us to come to Him for respite from our burdens and to learn from His servant’s heart, and He promises us rest (Matthew 11:28-30).

Being yoked together with Jesus (Hebrews 13:5) ensures that He will help us, and that He will not only carry our burdens (1 Peter 5:7), but that He will carry us. Learning from Him to have a servant’s heart means that our priorities will be in the right place, on loving and serving Him and others (Luke 10:27), and not on hoarding excess things that weigh us down (Luke 12:15-34). Peace comes not from having earthly riches or provisions, but from storing up treasures in Heaven, where we can enjoy them throughout eternity (Matthew 6:19-20).

Suddenly I feel motivated to rummage through the remaining boxes in the garage, armed with a huge trash bag for most of the contents and cleaning supplies for those items that can be salvaged and given away. More importantly, I vow to cleanse myself daily in the Living Water (John 4:10) of His Word!

© 2019 Laurie Collett