Ladies, I want to talk to you today about a subject we're probably all too familiar with... housecleaning.

I have a very good friend....she's a wonderful friend...but she is truly a lousy housekeeper.

Every where you look in her home you see piles of clothes thrown down, the clean mixed with the dirty.

You can't see the kitchen counter for the dirty dishes, and it's almost impossible to find a cup or glass to drink from. If you find one, you can't wash it so that you can drink from it, because the sink is so full that you can't turn the water on.

AND THE GARBAGE!!! It's overflowing from the trash can, and falling out of two or three garbage bags sitting around the kitchen.

The sad part is that it's not the effect this mess has on others, it's the chaos and frustration it causes in her own life.

She can never find anything when she needs it...whether it's something to put on so she can go to work, or an important document that she desperately needs.

She is always late for work, always late for any appointment, because she has to deal with searching through the mess of her home.

When the mess becomes unbearable, she will get in there, roll up her sleeves and clean up that mess. AND SHE TAKES OUT THE GARBAGE.

Well, most of it. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that she no longer needs, things that are really just getting in her way, preventing her from being organized, that she can't quite bring herself to get rid of.

She always feels so good about herself as she sits in her freshly cleaned home.

But ya' know, old habits are hard to break, and soon all that garbage has piled up again....bringing chaos, disorder, and frustrations back into her life.

Our lives are a lot like that...our Spiritual Houses.

We all have a lot of old garbage that's lying around, causing our lives to run out of control. Things like old hurts, and heartaches, scars from abuse.

All thru our lives we have occasionally taken out the garbage. Well...some of it. The most obvious garbage...the garbage that's already bagged up and the easiest to get rid of.

The husband or boyfriend that was abusing us...but we forgot to dump the hurt from that relationship.

We may have gotten rid of the friend that was just using us...but we hung on to the resentment.

And too often we keep the worst, most stinking garbage of all....FEAR.

Fear of trying to make changes...fear of failing again. Fear of losing what little "self" that we've managed to hang on to.

Ladies, it's time to TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE....to rid ourselves of the things that hold us back, weigh us down, bind us.

The MISTAKES, THE FAILURES, THE SINS OF THE PAST.

Before we can move forward, we have to deal with the past. Make no mistake...the past is our greatest problem...not the future. It's not what is before us that hinders us, it's what is behind us.

You know that friend I was talking about? By the time the mess had gotten to the point she couldn't stand living in it any longer...cleaning it up was such a big job that it was overwhelming. It was just too much for one person to do. So finally, she would take me up on the offer I had extended many times to help. She would give me a call, and I would go over to her house, and together we started cleaning up the mess. With a little help and encouragement, she could handle it.

It's the same with our Spiritual House. If we try to clean up the mess we've made in our lives alone...it's an overwhelming, almost impossible task.

But we have a friend we can call on....His name is Jesus.

And if we will just let Him give us the helping hand, the love, he has so freely offered, then the job isn't too great to handle.

Let Jesus help rid you of the past.

Let Jesus take away all the old garbage...the fear, hurts and resentments you've collected thru the years, and put them in the dumpster of forgiveness.