I wanted to make some changes here at the house.  My husband?  Not as much.  But once I layed out my vision and assured him it would cost next to nothing, he got on board.  Then we got to work.  We began by rearranging some furniture and purging and organizing a couple of closets.  Well, that just lit my fire.  I decided next I needed to clean out my dresser drawers and my computer/work space and our filing cabinet and our linen closet.  Three weeks later and we MAY have come to a reasonable stopping point.  I say MAY because now I see some spots on walls and baseboards that need touch up paint and so on.

 

During these three weeks, I walked into several rooms and tried to think completely outside the box about the space.  This took some imagination since we have lived in this house for 16 years now and many things sit in much the same place they did then.  Over those years we have replaced furniture and freshened bedspreads and curtains, but I can’t honestly say we gave any thought to moving things around.  And I have to tell you, some of the things we did 15 years ago, don’t make a whole lot of sense anymore.  When our daughter with special needs was small, we made some very necessary decisions to keep some things under lock and key for her safety and our sanity.  And while we still have to keep some of those considerations, by simply choosing to look at things differently we definitely streamlined and simplified our space.

 

In light of the John MacArthur/ Beth Moore kerfuffle that’s been in the media of late, I think it might be time to look at some other things, in addition to my closets, in a new light.  I don’t want to go into the whole thing here because it wasn’t glorifying to God (and didn’t make Christ followers look too good either).  You have google and can find videos and quotes and comments galore if you choose.  My point is, when it comes to matters of our faith, the stakes are too high to just maintain the status quo.  We can’t just continue to do things because that’s the way they have always been done.  And we can’t continue to believe things just because that’s what we were taught.

 

We owe it to our own faith and our witness to the Creator to constantly hold up what we are taught and what we believe against the words in God’s Holy Bible.  And as beneficial as good books and preaching can be, we can’t simply take the word of others as gold.  We have to take the time to study for ourselves.  Read the ancient scriptures and then read commentaries (here‘s one I love) and study notes and look up the words in their original language (blueletterbible.org is a great free tool to help with this).  The older we grow in our faith, the more we should grow in assurance from study and prayer.  Let’s test our faith.  We will make it stronger, and maybe find out some things need to be rearranged.

 

And that lasso?  I left it in my linen closet as a sweet reminder of my daughter’s horse themed 5th birthday party.  Not EVERYTHING needs to change.

 

² Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment,  1 Peter 2:2 NLT

 

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