Uncluttering the closet

The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you. (2 Corinthians 5:19-20)

Have you ever purchased some piece of clothing, only to have it sit unworn in your closet? You thought you did a great job of finding a bargain, getting a style that is totally 'in' at the moment, but when you tried it on at home, it just didn't fit you right or you didn't have the right shirt to go with the trousers. God's 'new clothing' he provides us in grace isn't meant to just hang around unworn. It is what actually clothes us against this world's hardness and sin's tremendously tenacious pull. Leave it just 'hanging' and you go defenseless! Two things I'd like us to see from our passage today: 1) The 'new life' emerges, it doesn't just 'whammo' appear one day and all the old is magically gone - there is a little 'closet cleaning' that must be done on our part! 2) We are only capable of being ambassadors of the message of grace when we are willing to drop our differences with each other. 

While 'closet cleaning' is never an exciting job for any of us, there is something cathartic about doing the 'out with the old' and 'in with the new' thing. Some of the hardest 'closet cleaning' we will do is to settle our relationships with each other. We can 'pack away' a whole lot of 'unflattering' and 'unwanted' things in the 'closets' of our mind and heart. When God asks us to finally 'unpack' that stuff, he isn't just asking us to push it further back to make room for the new. He is asking us to actually go through the trouble and exert the energy to get those things out into the light of day, letting him show us how to 'rid ourselves' of them. You may have begun a bit of 'closet cleaning' this year, attempting to make a fresh start with some you have had relationship woes with, but it isn't going so well. That other individual wants to you cram it all back in and just deal with it on our own! When that happens, it doesn't mean we just retain possession of those things - we still let God help us rid ourselves of those thoughts and grudges.

Dropping a difference is likely not going to be at the top of our to do list today, but if God is prompting you right now about someone who you've not had the best of interactions with lately, why not allow him to help you deal with the differences in his grace and see just how freeing having an 'empty closet' can be. As we 'make room', he fills with all that will fit our frame so well. Just sayin!