Rants on Life, God, and Pastoring

Last week Shannon had a jewelry party at our house.  She invited a bunch of women over to hang out and buy jewelry.  I strategically planned Micah’s first tee ball practice on this night so I would not have to be anywhere near the house!  In preparation for the party I cleaned the house to perfection.  The floors were mopped multiple times and the carpets were vacuumed.  The bathrooms were scrubbed and the all the windows and mirrors were windexed.  I even lit candles that made everything smell good.  We keep our house pretty clean for most the part.  It stays as clean as a house with a 2 year old and a 4 1/2 year can stay.  There are some nights it looks like a tornado ran through and pulled all the toys from the kids rooms into the middle of the house, but most days it stays clean.  However, there is a difference in clean and “Company Clean”.  When new people visit the house I like it to be spotless.  Sometimes that means throwing leftover items behind closed doors and hiding them from public view.  The dirty little secret is that everything we did not want to be seen was hidden in the closets.  If anyone had opened those doors our clean house would have been exposed as a fraud.  I think in our lives we all have certain things that we hide from others.  The thoughts and actions that would embarrass us if anyone found out.  It would expose us for the fraud that we are.  Psalm 24:3-5 tells us that clean hands and pure hearts are the secret to being closer to God.  There is a difference in how God looks at our lives than how others view us.  We can fool the people around us into believing our masquerade of perfection, but God opens our closets and reveals our true person.  Matt 23:25-27 shows us that Jesus is more interested in the inside than the outside.  It is not about how many trees we plant, how much we give away, how many old ladies we help across the street, and how “green” we live our lives.  God is more concerned with your motives and your heart than your carbon foot print left on the earth.  I desire to grow closer to Him everyday.  With that comes the struggle of my selfish wants and desires and the desire to know God more intimately.  I want my life to “company clean”, not just clean enough to make people happy.  I want to live in a way that brings all the glory for everything I do (even shooting the cats) to the one that has given me life and breath…God.