Cleaning House

"'Cinderelly, Cinderelly', night and day its 'Cinderelly, wash the dishes, do the laundry', they always keep her hopping, til she goes around in circles, and she's very very dizzy, still they holler 'you get busy, Cinderelly.'"  This is what the mice sing in "Cinderella".

Cinderella has two sides.....

One is an optimistic girl who is enslaved in her own home.

The other is the princess we all dream we could be.

I have to be honest, most days I feel more like Cinderella the workhorse than Cinderella the princess.
(We are all princesses though...we are daughters of the Most High King, much better than any fairy tale.)

However, we live in this world and in this world we have work to do.  If you are like me, it seems like I have just cleaned the house and when I look around a couple of days later, it doesn't even look like I cleaned!  It is truly unbelievable!  How does that happen?!

Going to switch gears for a moment to explain a conversation I had with my 8 year old son, Joe, recently.  I promise I will get back to the cleaning and Cinderella story.  : )

Joe had disobeyed me and we were going through the correcting that needed to be done and the restoration process.  (Restoration between us and between him and the Lord.)

During this process, he was just crying saying "It's no use, I will just mess up again, I will sin again, It's just no use."  He was so discouraged, bless his heart. 

This moment reminded me of what Paul said. "For what I am doing, I do not understand.  For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, that I do."  Romans 7:15

How encouraging for us that even Paul dealt with this contradiction. (As my son would say, "That doesn't make any sense!"--it is his favorite phrase at the moment and we hear it A LOT)  ; )

I wanted so much to comfort Joe, to encourage him, I thought, "What should I say".........and then the Lord gave me a great analogy.

I said, "Joe, you know how mommy cleans the house every week.  I do that because it gets dirty.  What would happen if I never cleaned the house because it is just going to get dirty again anyway? It would get really messy, dirty, and yucky wouldn't it?  After a while, we wouldn't even realize it was dirty because we would just get use to the dirt and yuck. It would become normal to us."

"That is how sin is in our hearts.  Yes, we are going to sin, but that is why we need to go to the Lord and ask Him to forgive us and cleanse our hearts.  We need to go to the Lord so our hearts don't stay yucky.  If we sin and keep the yuck in our hearts, after a while, we don't even realize how dirty our hearts are and we just think the sin is normal."

At the end of this conversation, Joe was smiling and he understood why he needed to go to the Lord even though he will sin again.  He left feeling encouraged instead of discouraged at his flawed humanity.  He left knowing that even though he messes up, God is always there to clean his heart and give him a new start.

Now, of course, that doesn't give him or any of us a license to sin.

"Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not!" Romans 6:1-2

However, it encouraged him to know the reason we continually go to the Lord.  Only the Lord can cleanse our hearts.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, 

And renew a right spirit within me."  Psalms 51:10

Now, back to Cinderella and housework..... the good news is that we don't have to work for this type of cleaning and we don't have to be enslaved to sin!  (Romans 6:14) We get to just be the princess God intended for us to be!  You are His daughter! Jesus did all the work required for our hearts to be clean, and He conquered sin and death on the cross!  All we have to do is accept His gift. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

 Hallelujah!!!!!  We don't have to clean this house!


If you have never asked Jesus to come cleanse your heart or live in you, I encourage you to invite him into your life and heart today.  The blood of Jesus shed on the cross covers all of our sins.  You don't have to live in a mess anymore.  He wants to come in and cleanse your heart and your life.  He makes all things new.  Or if you have let sin (dirt) become the norm in your life, I pray you would ask the Lord to cleanse your heart and renew a right spirit within you.  He has a good life for you, let him clean your house today.  I love you.