Cleaning Day

Today is cleaning day here at the church!!! I'm just kidding. I'm not really that excited about it but I know it needs to be done. I remember a little over 6 years ago when I became the pastor here at NCC, we brought in a couple of dumpsters to get rid of all the things that had accumulated in the church. It seemed that people had used the church as a place to store their junk. That might sound a little harsh but the truth is the truth. "It not good enough for my house let's give it to the church." So we went through each room and got rid of the junk! I just remembered something that happened a few years ago and I want to share it with you. I started pastoring 10 years ago when we took over a small cogregation from another pastor who was going back to school. He took everything that was his and when he was finished we had just the bare necessities. We also had a cross-eyed statue of Moses and a lighted picture of the last supper(simular to velvet Elvis). I hate to say it but we took down the picture and ended up giving to a family who wanted to put it up in their basement. Poor ole Moses got knocked over and like Humpty Dumpty we couldn't put him back together again. Fast forward 7 years and I get a call from a lady who wants her statue and picture back!! Well it falls on my shoulders to break the terrible news to this lady. Needless to say she didn't take the news very well.
To get back to the junk. We cleaned the church completely 6 years ago and I thought we had done a good job of keeping it that way until a few weeks ago I was walking thru the church and I noticed how junkie the rooms looked again. So I decided every week I would take 1 room and work on it. It seems I've made a little progress.
I think the church is no different than our lives. We believe everything is ok in our lives but if we would just stop long enough to look we might see we have accumulated junk. In Hebrews 12, the writer tells us to "strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress". Maybe today would be a good day to clean house and I'm not talking about where sleep at night. Clean our minds, our hearts, and our souls with the blood of Jesus Christ who died for each of us!