January 21, 2022
While in my kitchen busy chopping onions for my favorite salmon dish, I listened to a photographer’s interview on radio.
He had gone into an odd adventure. After asking permission of dozens of folks, he took photographs of the inside of their refrigerators.
Kind of weird? Just a tad. But I changed my mind when he related his findings.
The contents of each refrigerator revealed insights about the person’s eating habits, their work, schedule, routine, health and even emotional state.
“One fridge was jammed with Styrofoam containers,” he said on the interview. “The smell was so bad, we had to keep closing it before we finished shooting pictures.”
Yuck!
But not so fast. That fridge mirrors the world today. Some things we experience and store on the shelves of our mind do cause our lives to stink: We store sadness for the loss of the freedom we once knew. Our minds store details of the nightly news. We keep a good portion of restlessness, negative thinking, and worry for the future.
Time for a deep cleaning.
The first step is to identify what smells and what we need to remove and throw out.
First, we toss out the rotten thinking that we’re facing the new year alone. We remove any trace of doubt—it’s toxic and poisonous. All doubt must go. We toss out any doubt that God is with us through these times of turmoil. We discard doubts that God is about to answer our prayers. We clean out doubts that He sees our every tear. And we drop in the trash can of life any hesitation that keeps us from believing that all wicked schemes, all evil and darkness can be defeated and obliterated by one Word from Almighty God.
Once clean from that toxic doubt, you give one more sigh and dry that last tear. With confidence that lines your heart, you embrace the new clean you who now exudes confident trust that God is with you, close by and available. He knows your anxious thoughts. He’s aware of the fear that nags even as you read these words. He observes the heartache that takes away your sleep at night. And He analyzes the details of that which keeps you on your knees.
And because He knows it all, we walk into a new transformation. We recognize what we cannot change and resolve to change what we can.
We change what we can.
We cannot change the world’s happenings, so we change what happens inside us. We can’t change the bad news on the media, so we change and take in the Good News instead. We can’t change the imposed limitations, so we tap into the limitless grace of God. We can’t change other’s thinking, so we think of ways to bring them to Christ. We can’t change the government, so we trust in He who governs our soul.
With those spiritual alterations, what we store in the refrigerator of our heart also changes.Oour belief deepens, our confidence increases and our convictions grow.
Paul and Silas knew what to store in their own hearts. After being stripped and beaten, they could have been governed by their emotions of anger and resentment. But in their hearts, they stored pure faith and solid trust instead. That’s why at midnight something happened:
After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose. (Acts 16:23-25)
We may feel as if we too were in a prison, chained by a pandemic of uncertainty and tied to endure the flogging of evil forces. But when we do what Paul and Silas did—in our hearts, we store the faith, the desire to praise God no matter what, and the longing to still sing, we will have those chains broken, that fear cast away and that anxiety removed.
That power stands today, too.
In spite of what the world offers, and since our tomorrows are in God’s hands, we can expect to inhale the aroma of His love and grace that cleans, heals and wipes the stain of pain.
Then is when what we store inside becomes spiritual food that feeds our trust. The trust to know God is lifting us from turmoil, guarding us from the world’s cruelty, and exchanging the rotten stuff for deliciously fresh beginning for 2022.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for pointing out what we need to remove from our hearts, from our lives and from our minds. We thank you for Your ways, clean, pure and trustworthy that we diligently store. In Jesus’ name we thank You.
What do you need to remove and replace with God’s truth?
Janet
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