Good Riddance!

This past week a friend posted the following personal quote. It was such a perfect addition to what we have been discussing the past few weeks while cleaning out our heart’s closets, that I asked her if I could use it.  She graciously agreed and was thrilled to be ‘famous’!  Thanks, Ruby!

“Let’s stop rearranging junk: say good riddance to bad rubbish!”

That is exactly what we have had in mind when we used such terms as annihilate, burn, destroy, and exterminate!  Don’t store those old, frayed, and filthy ‘outfits’ in a corner, get rid of them! Good riddance!

Now, back to Colossians 3! We have already discussed how we should put off the actions, attitudes, and lifestyle of our past life outside of Christ. According to Colossians 3:10-11, there are no excuses. Our status, culture, position, gender, or rank doesn’t matter. God expects everyone who is now a new person in Christ to clean out their ‘closet’. 

We talked about throwing away the stinky, ugly, old faded and frayed sweater. But we can’t stop there—we must replace what we have thrown out with something new!

But before we head to the 'put-on' store, we must first realize that we can’t just go get whatever it may be that WE want to add to the wardrobe of our heart’s closet. Paul provides some very specific guidelines in Colossians 3:12ff. 

 To put it another way, as Wiersbe states in his Colossians study, Be Comforted,  Paul “exhorted his readers to put off the ‘grave clothes’ of sin and the old life and to put on the ‘grace clothes’ of holiness and the new life in Christ.”

The previous cleaning out section may have been more difficult for some than it was for others. This next section was the area with which I had to come to grips. I was blessed to find Christ at an early age and the things in the put off list hadn’t become deeply engrained in me. So, throwing away the old sweater wasn’t that difficult for me.  However, I wasn’t careful enough to put on the ‘outfits’ we will discuss next week. I hadn’t made this new list a part of me.  I had taken off the stinky, ugly, old faded and frayed sweater, but had neglected to put on a new one. As a result, my ‘wardrobe’ didn’t match my new life in Christ.

As mentioned in the first segment of this series, a friend had experienced a heart-breaking family situation and called me several nights in a row in tears-just wanting to know someone was on the other end of the line to listen. Then one night, she called full of excitement. Although the situation had not changed, and sadness and hurt were still present, she had discovered something from God’s Word that had encouraged her to make some changes in her life.

She had discovered Colossians 3:12-15. She read to me and I ‘heard’ that passage like I have never heard it before. (BTW, God’s Word does that. Sometimes it speaks to you in ways you have never heard-when you need it. There are times I find myself saying, “Where did that verse come from? ~ when I had heard it all my life!) Anyway, her excitement about how this passage had blessed her ended up blessing me. A lot of things about me changed after that conversation-and I was supposed to be the teacher/counselor during this tough time in her life!  

We will look at that section of Colossians 3 next week.

Good riddance to the ‘grave clothes’~bring on the ‘grace clothes’!

Debbie