Clean It Up

Blog by Kristen Hicks

So, I have decided to take a couple days off from my normal routine and just spend some time with Jesus, letting Him do some things in me. I am extremely thankful that He has given me freedom with a job and with a life that I can do this type of thing. So I wanted to share just a little about some things that He is doing and showing me in these three days, because I think they are most definitely in relation to the “Invincible Summer.”

Well today was very interesting to say the least. Any time I ever go after some breakthrough with Jesus there is always a time that I have to spend just getting through mess. I have to clean stuff up, if you will. Normally, by this point my heart, head, soul, or whatever you want to call it is not the only thing that is a wreck. Most of the time my room, my car, my refrigerator, my trash can (because let’s be honest, I’m a girl and I hate taking out the trash), pretty much everything is a mess.

So today, as I spent time with Jesus, I also spent time doing laundry, dishes, cleaning out the fridge, taking out the trash and just cleaning really. But I also, spent time outside journaling, worshiping, crying, confronting fears and lies, and just asking the Lord to shine light on everything that is within me that is not of Him or that shouldn’t be there.

I listened to a teaching today by Melissa Helser called, “Sustainability.” It was really, really good. (Look it up.) She talked about how to sustain yourself by being thankful, seeing yourself in the delight of the Father’s eyes, and seeing yourself as having worth. You are valuable. She used an interesting example. Recycling.

She said,

“Love has to drive your daily rhythms of loving Jesus. Duty cannot drive your love for God. The goal of sustainability has to go beyond these passion-filled causes. It has to be a changed mindset. The Father wants to change your mindset, so that you can be driven to do things beyond what you ever thought, because love is pulling you… the choices that you make every day make a difference. You have to begin to see beyond yourself….Recycling is a beautiful example of you holding the plastic bottle, and you can either throw it in the trash or you can throw it in the recycling bin. In that moment you have a choice, and depending on your mindset is what you’ll do. If you believe that you are valuable and that you make a difference in every choice you make, and every day makes a difference, you will put it in a recycling bin. But if you don’t have the mindset of value, you won’t….the Father wants to shift our mindsets.”

I know for me, I don’t recycle. Not that I really think that that was her point at its core. But I think that her point was that in order to truly be sustainable in this journey, we have to let the Father change us.  We have to let Him change the way we think. We have to let Him shine light on areas that we may or may not want to deal with. He doesn’t want our lives to get so messy that it takes an entire day to clean it up. He wants us to see ourselves as valuable in the light of the smallest choices that we make and to see and understand that every choice we make needs to be driven by love. Whether those choices have to do with our job, our home, our family, our friends, our church, our community. The smallest things usually make the biggest difference.

So today was no wasted day. Today, in the beauty of making the summer within truly invincible, I learned to take a risk inwardly. I learned that I need to see myself in the delight of the Father’s eyes. To see myself as valuable. And that if I see myself as valuable then I can believe that every choice I make, big or small, can make a difference in the Kingdom. I learned that to truly sustain myself, I need to choose things that are driven by my love for God daily, not my duty to Him or anyone else, including myself. I learned that I need to call things out as they come, always placing things before Jesus, and filtering them based on His word not my own understanding. I learned that I need to let the Father shift my mindset so that I can see Him for who He truly is in ALL things and that I can see myself for all He created me to be.