How's your house?
Hi guys, Fred here.
A story
Our family has a little rental place in Canberra where mostly we’ve had great tenants – no damage ever, rent paid on time – win, win situation. We once had tenants from an embassy – a husband, wife and two children – who seemed to come up trumps. He turned up faithfully every month with the rent, no questions asked. We felt it was a good three years.
His posting ended and the return of the rental bond had to be negotiated, so an inspection was necessary. We went to check out the place (Yes, yes I know – pretty slack! three years!). The interior was a mess, dirty, dirty indeed. Walked in the front door and it smelt wrong. The 3 years old carpet was grotty, the windows were smudgy, the curtains unwashed. The kitchen lino was slippery, greasy in fact.
It was the stove that broke our hearts. Totally covered in greasy fat. Apparently in the family’s cultural background one didn’t clean fat away. If it built up anywhere one simply pushed it off the sides (which looked like a dripping candle had deposited it’s wax down there over a long time). Some of that fat and grease had got onto the floor and it was simply walked through the house.
There were a couple of other things. The lease said two kids, but while in Australia they’d had a third. Also, water had leaded down a wall in one bedroom and we’d never been told. And in the loo they had self-installed an adaption to the toilet plumbing which had leaked water for three years and which had got into walls and carpet as well.
The stove took two professional cleaners we employed about four hours to get back into shape! All in all it wasn’t very pretty. Not one bit. But it was largely our fault because we hadn’t done inspections. Instead we’d made assumptions and simply didn’t check. Our ‘house’ needed an overhaul.
Close to home
I thought of this on Saturday while reflecting on a sermon our former Bishop, Dr Les Grope, once preached to Pastors. His text was “What did they see in your house?” taken from 2 Kings 20: 15. Dr Grope admitted he was misusing this text, as I am here, but the question is good to consider. Imagine a prophet coming to you and asking about the visitors: “What did they see in your house?”
All of us are good at creating impressions – either deliberately covering up what is unsavoury in the house of our hearts or deluding ourselves about the infection and corruption eating away at our interior life.
I reckon all of us know that there is shameful stuff – and often it nags away at the edge of our consciousness or perhaps even in the sub-conscious. Something, maybe many things, we have said and done that we stuff inside and bury. A frequent tape in our head is “I never look back at the past – I look to the future – that’s my philosophy”.
The truth is, shameful things don’t just “go away”. They sit inside and fester. Such things distort the shape of our spiritual heart. They cause us to misread or misunderstand situations, to over-react or under react, to deaden ourselves or to rage at anyone who unwittingly threatens to expose us.
Oh, to be clean!
We are not locked into our shame or any consequent denial or despair. Listen! Listen! Listen! Yes, you! Have you got a moment? What God is on about, (and what I’m on about), is that he does his Jesus thing – the Good Friday thing and the Easter thing – not because he wants to condemn. No, No, No! He sets it up so he can have mercy and clean us up – clean to be with him, in his presence!
That sharp old Isaiah had it right 600 years or so before Jesus came. He ‘saw’ what would be happening – he ‘saw’ Good Friday. And mused in his heart, and from his pen, “Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows – he was wounded for our sin - …for his sake, the Lord says, I will forgive them” (Isaiah 53).
Simple you know! He takes the guilt and shame and gives us the clean life, the holy and blameless life of Jesus. Now that’s freedom!
So?
Come to Jesus! That’s life.
- Pastor Fred
A story
Our family has a little rental place in Canberra where mostly we’ve had great tenants – no damage ever, rent paid on time – win, win situation. We once had tenants from an embassy – a husband, wife and two children – who seemed to come up trumps. He turned up faithfully every month with the rent, no questions asked. We felt it was a good three years.
His posting ended and the return of the rental bond had to be negotiated, so an inspection was necessary. We went to check out the place (Yes, yes I know – pretty slack! three years!). The interior was a mess, dirty, dirty indeed. Walked in the front door and it smelt wrong. The 3 years old carpet was grotty, the windows were smudgy, the curtains unwashed. The kitchen lino was slippery, greasy in fact.
It was the stove that broke our hearts. Totally covered in greasy fat. Apparently in the family’s cultural background one didn’t clean fat away. If it built up anywhere one simply pushed it off the sides (which looked like a dripping candle had deposited it’s wax down there over a long time). Some of that fat and grease had got onto the floor and it was simply walked through the house.
There were a couple of other things. The lease said two kids, but while in Australia they’d had a third. Also, water had leaded down a wall in one bedroom and we’d never been told. And in the loo they had self-installed an adaption to the toilet plumbing which had leaked water for three years and which had got into walls and carpet as well.
The stove took two professional cleaners we employed about four hours to get back into shape! All in all it wasn’t very pretty. Not one bit. But it was largely our fault because we hadn’t done inspections. Instead we’d made assumptions and simply didn’t check. Our ‘house’ needed an overhaul.
Close to home
I thought of this on Saturday while reflecting on a sermon our former Bishop, Dr Les Grope, once preached to Pastors. His text was “What did they see in your house?” taken from 2 Kings 20: 15. Dr Grope admitted he was misusing this text, as I am here, but the question is good to consider. Imagine a prophet coming to you and asking about the visitors: “What did they see in your house?”
All of us are good at creating impressions – either deliberately covering up what is unsavoury in the house of our hearts or deluding ourselves about the infection and corruption eating away at our interior life.
I reckon all of us know that there is shameful stuff – and often it nags away at the edge of our consciousness or perhaps even in the sub-conscious. Something, maybe many things, we have said and done that we stuff inside and bury. A frequent tape in our head is “I never look back at the past – I look to the future – that’s my philosophy”.
The truth is, shameful things don’t just “go away”. They sit inside and fester. Such things distort the shape of our spiritual heart. They cause us to misread or misunderstand situations, to over-react or under react, to deaden ourselves or to rage at anyone who unwittingly threatens to expose us.
Oh, to be clean!
We are not locked into our shame or any consequent denial or despair. Listen! Listen! Listen! Yes, you! Have you got a moment? What God is on about, (and what I’m on about), is that he does his Jesus thing – the Good Friday thing and the Easter thing – not because he wants to condemn. No, No, No! He sets it up so he can have mercy and clean us up – clean to be with him, in his presence!
That sharp old Isaiah had it right 600 years or so before Jesus came. He ‘saw’ what would be happening – he ‘saw’ Good Friday. And mused in his heart, and from his pen, “Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows – he was wounded for our sin - …for his sake, the Lord says, I will forgive them” (Isaiah 53).
Simple you know! He takes the guilt and shame and gives us the clean life, the holy and blameless life of Jesus. Now that’s freedom!
So?
Come to Jesus! That’s life.
- Pastor Fred
posted by Boomerexy at 10:34 PM
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