Take The Garbage Out!

Wednesday, 22 Jan 2003

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Test me and know my thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
Psalm 139:23-24
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I have been back in the Psalms a lot these past few days. I remember when they comforted me so, after losing Phil. I remember before he died I thought if I should lose him and I could do nothing else, I would sit in a chair and just read the Psalms. Sit there for a month or more, if need be, and just read. I didn't know what to expect if he should go, but I knew I would need HELP!

I did, and God did help me, and continues to help me each day I live.

Now I come to the Psalms a different person. I come knowing that they give comfort, and I come knowing that they speak of God's promises. Of David's struggles. Of the many times he "failed" God, but kept coming back to where he knew the answers where, with God. So many Psalms start off with David in desperation, wondering where God is, crying out to God, and end with such thanksgiving for all that God has done for him. How many times have I come to read those words that David wrote and felt the same way? So many times, I cannot count. Starting off with a heart so completely broken I didn't think I could stand one more minute, and leaving my time with God restored, refreshed, renewed, and ready to face the world again. However harsh this world is, God provides His way of escape if we will only look to Him in our distress.

And this morning I came again, to the Psalms and spent some time there. Looking to be renewed and refreshed as another day was about to begin. How can we wake in the morning already loaded down with the day? How can we sleep an entire night, but wake with a stomach knotting up and worries filling our mind before our feet reach the floor? You would think we would sleep it all away and wake up ready to meet our day, not bogged down from what was and what is to be. Perhaps that is why God calls to us before our feet even reach the floor. He knows that about us. He knows how we like to carry things from one day into the next. Of course He does, He is our Creator!

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!
They are innumerable!
I can't even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me!
Psalm 139:17-18
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When we wake up in the morning, God is still with us. When we wake up in the night, like I did last night about 3 a.m., God was still with me. As He was with me when I drifted off to sleep last night. He never leaves us. We can talk with Him any hour of the night or day, and that comforts me. I never get His answering machine, His voice mail, His secretary. I never have to leave a message, call back some other time or miss Him completely. He is there, waiting, wanting to hear from us, longing to be a part of our day, each day we live.

It's not that He doesn't know what is going to happen, and we have to fill Him in. It's not like He doesn't know our every thought, our every move before we make it. He does! But He wants us to know that He knows, that He cares, and that He is with us through it all.

You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
Psalm 139:16
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Every moment...All He asks is that after He created us, we allow Him to join us on this journey. To help us along the way, and to let Him take from us everything that is hurting us or hindering us or causing us to fear in any way. And yet, we neglect Him so...we hide away what hurts, we hide away what shames us, and we crawl out of our beds and enter into our days alone. Stomachs in knots, heads aching, and thoughts churning. Wondering which way to turn, where we can go to get some peace, some answers, some vision for the future.

Come, He says...Come.

Then Jesus said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and
carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
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That's not just at night when we are tired from the day. That is in the morning, all day long, whenever we need rest, He is there wanting to carry us!
Why refuse such an offer?
Are we nuts?
Are we too tired to take advantage of what has been offered to us?
Are we so buried under the heavy burdens that we can't see straight?

God wants us to start our day with Him, each and every day!

O Lord, hear me as I pray;
pay attention to my groaning.
Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
for I will never pray to anyone but you.
Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.
Psalm 5:1-3
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In the morning, come. Before the day starts, before your feet hit the floor, before all the world comes crashing in and wanting your time, your attention and your energy! Speak with God, and empty yourself of all that you have carried over from the day before and through the night. Don't carry it into another day. Leave it at the foot of the Throne of God and walk away from it, refreshed and renewed and ready for what the new day holds.

I thought of bringing my confessions to God this morning and how dirty and smelly that mess can be. As all my thoughts and activities from the previous day come back to my mind, I sought God's forgiveness. It's not that I robbed a convenience store, cheated on my husband, or murdered someone in a dark alley...those are big and those are obvious and those you could spot a mile away. It's the pride and the critical nature and the self-sufficiency that start to block my way into God's presence. Those things that could seemingly go unnoticed by the world at large, but loom large between me and my Father in Heaven. He knows, He knows each thought whether spoken or not. He knows what a stumbling block they can be because if not confessed, they form a wedge in my relationship with Him. Just what the enemy is hoping for each day I live. Just what I don't want, each day I live. I want a clear path to my Father. I want to be able to come to Him any time of the day and know that we are close. That I have been open with Him, and that He will be available because I have made myself available to Him.

It reminds me of my arrival back home from a retreat this last weekend. I walked into the house and there was a strange smell. It almost smelled like something was smokey, or had been burned...it hit me immediately but I could not put my finger on it. Jim had been in the house for awhile and had grown used to the smell, so he couldn't smell it. As we discussed it, it came out that he had had sardines and that's what was in the garbage. Those little tiny stinky fish were stinking up the whole house! The garbage needed to go OUT!

It's like that in our lives. We think something, or say something, or do something and it is itty-bitty at the time, not meaning much to us or anyone, and yet it gets added to our "garbage can" that day. By the end of the day the can is filling up with all the little things that weren't so "godly" that we did. Nothing so big as for all the world to know. Perhaps we spoke a harsh word here or there, or thought a critical thought about someone we know or maybe even a complete stranger on the street. Maybe God nudged us to do a kind deed but we were too "busy" to listen to His call. Whatever it may be, it all might seem like little stuff but as it sits in the "garbage can" all night long, we wake in the morning to its stink. We know something is not quite right, and we have to make a decision. Will we ignore the stink, or will we investigate where it is coming from, what is amiss, and take it to God in prayer, asking Him to shine His light on those areas in our lives that are not so pleasing to Him. Those areas that He "smells" so much better than we can, because we can ignore them for quite awhile. Maybe we will just get used to them and we can go about our business, or pull out a can of air freshener to cover it up, or just leave the house and ignore the stench if we choose.

Or we can pray...
Answer me when I call,
O God who declares me innocent.
Take away my distress.
Have mercy on me and hear my prayer.
Psalm 4:1
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We can start our day with God and empty the "garbage". Start out fresh and clean and ready for what lies ahead. Get rid of the knots in the stomach, the head that aches and the things that want to weigh us down. All we have to do is go to our Father and bring it all to Him. Be honest about who we are, what we think, what we have done, and lay it at His feet. He doesn't mind, really! He wants us to!

I thought of it as a recycling place this morning, not as a garbage dump. It seemed offensive to me to think of God's Throne room as a garbage dump for all the trash in my life. But a recycling place seems cleaner and more productive. There could be a large table set out and I could pour out my life onto that table and God could sift through it and see what could be done about these things. He could refine it all by fire and turn them into something worthwhile. He could take that critical nature and mold it and transform it into a loving spirit for all the people of the world. He could pick up the self-sufficiency and hold it in His own hand as I hold His, and we could walk together instead of doing things on my own. He could, He would and He wants to!

This last weekend at the retreat I was on, a woman explained to us about our Vital Capacity. That's a medical term for the breath we breathe! Obviously, it is Vital because without it, we would have no capacity!! She took us through an exercise of exhaling everything in our lungs and then inhaling to our fullest capacity! If you don't pass out, it is very cleansing!! I did that again this morning about four times. Exhaling to the point of feeling like my lungs didn't have an ounce of air left in them, and then inhaling to the point of thinking they might burst. How often do we breathe that deeply? For the most part, as she explained, we use only a small portion of our lungs, never clearing them out completely or inhaling and filling them with completely fresh air each time.

Isn't that our lives? Don't we only exhale small bits, and only inhale small bits, not living to our fullest potential? Living shallow for most of our days and covering up what we might not want to bring before God. Thinking that we can hide who we are from the very One who created us if we don't exhale it all before Him? And then we shrink from His presence because we don't feel comfortable with the One who already knows, because we have not been completely open and honest with Him. Thereby, missing out on so many wonderful things that He has waiting for us! Things He wants us to "inhale" each day!

God knows:

O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
Psalm 139:1
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God knows, but do we? Are we that honest with ourselves? Have we examined our own hearts and brought them to the Throne of God to have them recycled into something worthwhile, or do we leave them there in the garbage can of our lives so that they can rot and stink up our lives to the point where we have to keep moving faster so the stench won't surround us completely?

Is that why our lives keep moving faster and faster and the world seems busier and busier? Are we running from the garbage in our lives that is so offensive to the sense of who we are before God?

What would happen if we all slowed down and let that stench catch up with us? What would happen if we pulled that garbage out and saw how rotten it was and carried it into God's Throne room and asked Him for help with the stench in our lives? Would He send us away saying there's nothing I can do with that mess? Or would He ask us to simply pour it out onto His recycling table and go through it all with us, showing us how He can repair, replace, renew, refresh and refine what we have brought to Him in a way we never imagined was possible?

And then, after leaving God's throne room, we were able to go back into our daily lives covered with His scent, wanting to slow down long enough for it to fill the space around us so we could breathe Him in. We wouldn't want to rush so fast that the wind of our lives blew His scent away from the space we were in. We would want to sit with Him and enjoy the aroma of His presence. What we would find is that the rest of the world is actually where the stench is. We were just rushing through it all so fast we never noticed. We were so busy running away from the garbage in our own lives that we plunged ourselves right into the garbage of the world thinking that smell was "normal".

O Lord, I am calling to you.
Please hurry!
Accept my prayer as incense offered to you,
and my upraised hands as an evening offering.
Take control of what I say, O Lord,
and keep my lips sealed.
Don't let me lust for evil things;
don't let me participate in acts of wickedness.
Don't let me share in the delicacies
of those who do evil.
Psalm 141:1-4
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Let's not share in the wickedness of this world, thinking that the world's stench is "normal" just because it is what we are used to. Just because that's the way it's always been and it's something we can live with. Maybe we just don't notice it because we have been in it so long, if no one points it out to us, we are oblivious to it. Just like the stench in my garbage can from the sardines that Jim no longer noticed. I had to come in from the air outside to notice that there was something wrong.

Let's start our day with God, in His Throne Room, where He fills the air with a freshness we can all experience. Let's take the garbage that sat in our "can" all night long and dump it. Exposing all the ugliness and grossness of it in a place where it can be recycled into something unimaginable.

Garbage into peace.
Rubbish into joy.
Junk into treasures.
Rot into beauty.
Spoilage into glory.

Only, only, only, by the very hand of our Father in Heaven. Only by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ who sits at God's right hand, interceding for us. Only by the power of the Holy Spirit who takes what is dead in us and makes it alive in Christ. Only, only, only by God's mighty power!

I don't want to walk around like that character Pigpen in the Charlie Brown cartoon, with a cloud of dust following me wherever I go. A cloud filled with all my yesterdays that I have carried into my today and into my tomorrows. I want to leave that cloud of dust where it belongs, at the foot of the Throne, and I want to live each day in peace and joy, enjoying the beauty and wonderful treasures God has for me. Seeing His glory each day I live.

Lord, here's my garbage left over from yesterday. Thanks for making me clean and whole and fresh, to start this day with you. Not burdened down by yesterday's mistakes, but walking away from it all freely and without guilt because You have provided that for me when I bring it all to You.

On this day, atonement will be made for you,
and you will be cleansed from all your sins in the Lord's presence.
Leviticus 16:30
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Living in His peace,
Diane