One privilege I enjoyed when I lived in Ohio was having someone come once and sometimes twice a month to help us clean our home. With me working full-time as a pastor and Lindsey working part time 12 hour shifts (and some weeks fulltime) and having two young kids in the house it could quite often leave our home looking like something that would be described in cop drama shows as, “There appears to have been a struggle here”. Our friend and house cleaner would come for 2 or 3 hours and help clean some areas that we did not always find the time to get to and it was such a blessing. Even when we did clean it usually would only take our kids a few minutes to make it look like we didn’t…anyone who has kids knows exactly what I am talking about.

Early on I remember feeling this desire to try to pick up and clean some before the house cleaner arrived…yes you heard that right I would try to clean before the house cleaner arrived. I didn’t want her to see exactly how dirty or messy our house was. Honestly, it is ridiculous but think of how many times when we know that company is going to come over and we spend several hours cleaning and organizing the house and then when the company arrives we say, “excuse the mess.” We like to portray the idea that what people are seeing when they walk through the door is the “mess” when in reality there was a lot of work that went into making it look that good.

Now, think about how often we are tempted to do this with our spiritual lives. When it comes to personal struggles we are often told to keep those quiet, don’t share too much, don’t look vulnerable. Unfortunately this often filtrates its way into our Christian faith as well. So, when it comes time to share failures or struggles we tend to go for the safe ones like, “I didn’t pray enough this week” or “I need to read my Bible more”, or we may even venture into the riskier yet vague, “I need to have more patience than I did last week”.

This can even translate to how we relate to God. We can begin thinking that we need to “clean up” before we come to God. We may think we need to do some work in our own lives even before walking into the Church. Yet, this mentality is exactly what Jesus doesn’t want. He tells us in Mark 2:17 that he came for those who are sick, NOT those who already think they are well. In John 9 after Jesus healed the Blind man he taught about spiritual blindness by saying it is those who know they cannot see that their eyes will be opened, and those who think they can already see they will remain blind. When the Pharisees heard this they said, “Surely we are not blind are we?” To which Jesus replied, “Because you think you already see, your sin remains.” This means God doesn’t want us to pretend, to try to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and then come to God, but instead in the midst of all your faults, failures, shortcomings and sins to come to him. No need to say, “Excuse the Mess” because God already knows and loves us!

To hear more about this come join us at Newcastle UMC in Newcastle, California on Sunday at 10 a.m. (PST) or join us online on our YouTube channel.