My Heart’s Closet
“You can’t keep your true
self hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a
religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face
will be known.” Luke
12:2
Over the past week, we
have been talking about Robert Munger’s book,
My Heart, Christ’s Home, as we’ve
looked through the rooms of our hearts that Christ desires to come into. We
can make one of two choices:
First, we can give Him
partial access to our lives. Some people are fine to let Christ
into their home. You can go here, here and here. But you can’t go there, there and there. We want to handle things our way, but forget
God wants to handle things as well.
Second, we can give Him
full access to our lives. We learn to invite Him into all the rooms. Those include the Dining Room, Library, Living
Room, Recreation Room, Work Room, and the Bedroom of our hearts. We are
concluding by looking at the “Hall Closet.”
Most of us have to learn the hard way. Our way will fall short. God’s ways never will. Christ wants us to
give Him full Lordship in our lives.
We live in a culture of
“hiders.” Everyone is usually hiding something. In Robert Mungers booklet, He shares the last
area where He allows Christ to enter in His house. He writes in his booklet, “There
is just one more matter that I might share with you. One
day I found Him waiting for me at the door. An arresting look was in His eye.
As I entered, He said to me, "There is a peculiar odor in the house. There
is something dead around here. It's upstairs. I think it is in the hall
closet." As soon as He said this, I knew what He was talking about. Yes,
there was a small closet up there on the landing, just a few feet square, and in
that closet, behind lock and key, I had one or two little personal things that
I did not want anyone to know about and certainly I did not want Christ to see
them. I knew they were dead and rotting things left over from the old life. And
yet I loved them, and I wanted them so… for myself…f that I was afraid to admit
they were there. Reluctantly, I went up with Him, and as we mounted the stairs
the odor became stronger and stronger. He pointed at the door. "It's in
there! Some dead thing!" I was angry. That's the only way I can put it. I
had given Him access to the library, the dining room, the living room, the
workroom, the playroom, and now He was asking me about a little two-by-four
closet. I said to myself, "This is too much. I am not going to give Him the
key." "Well," He said, reading my thoughts, "if you think
I'm going to stay up here on the second floor with this odor, you are mis-taken.
I will take my bed out on the back porch. I'm certainly not going to put up with that." Then I
saw Him start down the stairs. When you have come to know and love Christ, the
worst thing that can happen is to sense His fellowship retreating from you. I
had to surrender. "I'll give You the key," I said sadly, "but
You'll have to open the closet and clean it out. I haven't the strength to do
it.""I know," He said. "I know you haven't. Just give me
the key. Just authorize me to take care of that closet and I will." So
with trembling fingers I passed the key to Him. He took it from my
hand, walked over to the door, opened it, entered it, took out all the
putrefying stuff that was rotting there, and threw it away. Then He cleaned the
closet and painted it, fixed it up, doing it all in a moment's time. Oh, what
victory and release to have that dead thing out of my life!
Every one of us has a “secret closet” where a “dead thing” dwells…if you don’t, it’s pride which is the worst dead thing of
all.
Christ will persistently approach us
in these areas or He won’t be able to reign in our hearts.
Just as each room in our heart represents something different, the hall
closet represents those hidden places in our lives. In Genesis 3
First, after Adam
sinned, we read that he runs and tries to hide behind a bush. We
refuse to admit what we have done. God and Adam seemingly are playing a game of
hide and seek. God calls out to Adam,
“Where are you?” Adam tries to remain hidden from God. Roy Hicks Jr., a friend
who has since gone to be with the Lord, said it best in, A Small
Book About God, “Where Are You?” That’s
a surprising question. God knew exactly
where Adam was- hiding behind the third bush on the left. Adam was doing what fallen man does when he
sins-he is adjusting reality. When
things aren’t going right, when we’re up against a difficult situation, when we
discover some dark spot in our character or personality, when we’re face to
face with someone we can’t get along with or who’s disappointed us, we want to
adjust reality. We will do anything we
can to hide, to cover up, or blame. Our
reaction is like breathing for us- it’s our nature…The problem was not that God
couldn’t find Adam. It was that Adam
didn’t realize he was hiding.” We do the same thing. We hide from reality. We convince ourselves
that we are OK.
Secondly, when God
confronts us about our hiding, we resort to another tactic that we hope will
keep us from being exposed.
It’s called blaming. God
was at a place where He wanted to extend His forgiveness. Immediately,
Adam starts pointing his finger at Eve. It’s an automatic response that each of
us gives.
As long as we avoid owning our sin, we
will never find forgiveness. But when we do own it, God offers it
freely. 1 John 1:9
Terry Risser
Reflections:
1) What closet in your life are you holding back
from Christ?
2) Confess that area to Him today.
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014- Terry
Risser
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