Hosanna Restoration Church

Even the best and most useful things can become clutter if they are not kept in place. Very few people have no clutter, and most of us continue to add clutter to our lives. From time to time we clean some out to make room for more. I for one sometimes let the clutter make it hard to find the good things that I need.
So far, I have been talking about stuff, but many of you have already started seeing where I am headed with this. I want to address Christian clutter. You see most of the stuff that is clutter is actually useful if we just keep it in order and placed so we can find it and put it to use.
When it comes to Christ and the Word of God, it is all obviously useful. We are called to gather understanding and put it to use, but to be honest; if we do not stay focused we simply become gatherers of Christian clutter.
We can go to conference after conference. We can listen to teaching after teaching. We can read our Bible and take notes. We can do all of these things and keep living just the way we did before we went or read or prayed. David said, “Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you.” That is a good word. However, we need to careful that we do not hide it so carefully that it just joins the other clutter and does not change a thing.
Micah simplified it so much that it can be left in a box and forgotten. Do what is right. You know, I think that if we pay attention the Holy Spirit is always letting us know what is right. To combat that advice we quickly begin to wonder what exactly is right. How can we know for sure? Then we ask others. There is nothing wrong with asking others, unless of course we are hoping they give us an answer other than the way that God has already told us. Doing what is right insures our love of mercy and the joy of walking humbly with God.
We cannot just keeping gathering information and doing nothing with it. Just like things, it all becomes clutter. Even organized clutter is still clutter. I have some tools that I bought because I wanted them and they were a good deal; but they have never been out of the box. In the same sense, I have some notes that I have taken that I may have used only once or sadly, never.
I have journals that are more than thirty years old that I look back through and see things that God spoke to me and some I have fully processed and others are just words in a journal. Obviously, we all have things that that need to be put to work and we have things that are yet to come. We also have things that we have ignored and things that sit proudly unopened in our notes as well as things we think will just work on their own. Lord help us overcome clutter!