Time for spring cleaning!

     Have you done your spring cleaning yet?  Opened the windows, wash the walls, clean out the closets, get rid of unnecessary things that you no longer use... like that bridesmaids dress from ten years.  The concept of spring cleaning is nothing new, just take a look at at 

Exodus 12: 17-20

        “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.  For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel.  Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.  

        Every year around the world Jewish women would clean out all their cupboards of everything that had leaven in it, (yeast), all the breads, cakes, donuts, and Twinkies.  They would bag it up and give it to their Gentile neighbor.  Then they would scrub down everything.  They did this so that their homes would be ready for the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. Why all this fuss about leaven?  Well according to the Bible leaven (or yeast) was quite often refereed to as sin. 

1 Corinthians 5:8
Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

     In order for Lord to come and dwell within, we need to get rid of all the leaven (sin) within our hearts.

This can only come when we first accept Him as our Savior, but then step two is to continue to make sure we keep our house (our bodies) clean by confessing any sins that may enter in. 

 1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

      Step three is to be in the Word of God.  With all the propaganda out their, we need to have God's truth wash our minds and scrub us clean.

Ephesians 5:26
... to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.

         So this spring...clean out the closet of your soul and allow the Lord to wash you with His word.  You may find a few thing you need to get rid of through confession, but in the end you will feel squeaky clean!