Today’s post is the sixth in a series of posts about issues in our homes and hearts that may be in need of some spring cleaning. To read the first in the series, click here.
As we move from the top of the house and the attic to the bottom of the house and into the basement, I want you to picture the basement not as a finished living space, as many basements are these days, but a dirty and wet storage area.
The basement isn’t a place where you put special things. It is a place where you keep things that you aren’t ready to get rid of but things that you don’t want to show anyone. Here is where we keep the cast-offs of our excess. Here is where we can hide things.
The basement represents the deep dark places of our heart where we try to hide our secret sins. The stuff we don’t want anyone to see. The questionable magazine collections, the bottles we would never keep upstairs, the poor decisions we made in the past and the consequences of those actions.
The heart issues we need to deal with here are simple, sin and rebellion. This may be the hardest area to talk about because we all want to immediately say that we don’t have any hidden or unconfessed sin, but before we go to far, let’s remember what it says in 1 John 1:6-8:
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[a] sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
You see, when we hide our sin, we are not allowing ourselves to be cleansed from it.
So we have to go down there. We have to be faced with the contents, no matter what they are, and we have to decide what to do with them. Do we wipe things off and just put them back on the shelf? Or do we throw things away and thoroughly clean that area where they had been sitting? We have to choose whether or not we really want the basement to be cleaned out. We have to confess our sin and ask God’s forgiveness and healing into those deep, dark places in our hearts.
So True, but I have things in your basement, too. things that have meaning and things we should probably go through. Thanks for sharing your cleaning experiences. Much food for thought.