A Clean House

Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part, You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Psalm 51:6-10

You are defiled by what comes out of you.

For a house to be considered clean, the inside of the house must be cleaned. “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” (Matthew 15:11). When a bird poops on the roof of the house, the rain eventually washes it away and the house is not defiled. But if a bird goes into a house and poops, the poop will attract bacteria and that will defile the house. What then comes out of the house is disease and uncleanness. It does no good to power wash and clean the outside of a house when the inside is full of uncleanness. You are only clean when the inside of you is clean.

Ignored internal feelings produce bad external decisions.

The decisions you make are like the roof and exterior of your house. They reveal to your neighbors what is most likely going on inside of your house. A clean house will not produce disease on its exterior, and an unclean house will not produce pristine cleanness on its exterior. To manage what is happening on the outside of your house, you must focus on what is happening on the inside. There aren’t “good” and “bad” feelings. Feelings just have to be put in the right rooms. Once your house is organized and cleaned, then you can work on fixing the external behaviors you want to change.

The person who wants to change will start now; the person who doesn’t want to change will start tomorrow.

If you actually want a clean house, you will start cleaning now and clean up immediately when things come up. If you continually put off cleaning till tomorrow, the uncleanness will accumulate. You will soon become overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning required and decide to give up on the idea of having a clean house. Your feelings and emotions are the inside of your life, you have to keep them organized to have a clean life. You can’t ignore your feelings when they wander out of their rooms; you have to acknowledge them and help them get to the right places. Letting the feelings run uncontrolled around the house will create an unclean chaotic house. Eventually, the uncleanness will come out of your house into your front yard for all your neighbors to see. So begin by cleaning the inside of your house and organizing your feelings before your front yard gets overrun with uncleanness.