Monday, October 1, 2012

Hitting Rock Bottom


Hitting Rock Bottom

 


Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” – Hebrew 12:11

In my kitchen I have a drawer that we affectionately refer to as the “junk drawer”.  When you open it up you’ll find all the stuff that was left out, has no place in the house, or just really shouldn’t have been kept anyway.  There’s loose thumbtacks (beware!), rubber bands, adhesive rubber pads, crazy glue, ear plugs, ink pens, loose string, batteries, hand tools, loose change, magnets, old keys, and just about anything else you can imagine.

Once in a while I do decide to clean it up, but in order to do that, I have to first empty the whole drawer out on the kitchen table.  That makes quite a mess!  Then I can sort through all the “stuff” we’ve accumulated, figure out what needs to stay, what needs to go, and then try to put it back in the place it should have been…or in the “junk drawer”.  But until I empty it out, I can’t clean it up!  And I don’t empty it often because those thumbtacks can HURT! 

I had a revelation about this drawer one day.  Every time I clean it out, I always put those thumbtacks back in there. One day, after years of putting them back, I finally asked myself why I did.  If I know that’s why I avoid cleaning the drawer, and I know it’s a safety hazard for anyone who needs to find something in it, then why do they constantly go back in there loose?  It’s simple.  I’ve just developed a habit of doing it.

As Christians, sometimes God looks at our lives and at our hearts and decides to empty us out on the table too.  He does it for our own good, because a good Father corrects His children to make them better.  We can receive it, and grow from it, or we can go back to bad habits and endure the correction again, and again, and again.  His love is unending, and so is His correction. 

There are times when we have to be taken down to “rock bottom”.  It’s called rock bottom because you can’t get any lower than that.  It’s like the bottom of the junk drawer.  God has to get us to that point in order to sort us out, and make us take an inventory of what we’ve got inside.  The problem is, just like the pain that my junk drawer can cause me - this kind of cleaning by God is often painful too.  He can take your job, your spouse, your friends, your kids, your finances, even your church, and turn them upside down. 

It seems to me that if we understand that God has the power to turn us out onto His table, and we understand how painful that can be, we would avoid it by doing our own house cleaning first.  I don’t know about you, but rock bottom isn’t somewhere I want to be taken.  I’ve grown very use to the blessings God has given and very passionate about some of them. 

Friends, take time to do your own house cleaning.  Ask God to reveal to you the habits you have that he wants to get rid of.  Ask Him to show you the things that are hurting you.

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