In December, God blessed me with a house. It has been about 4 years since I have had the responsibilities of running a household. It was going to be a challenge again to discipline myself in upkeep and maintain the house. As I moved in and started to arrange and decorate my new home, I realized. “I have accumulated a lot of stuff!”
A brother in Christ who helped me with the move made a comment that never really sunk in till last week. “Which is your stuff and which is trash?” A normal question that at first I took literally which was the way he meant it. But last week, I took it personally! In a good way of course.
In my life as a Christian man, what stuff is ‘stuff’ and what stuff is ‘trash’? How about you, have you ever asked this question of yourself? Read on…
Our lives, our time, and our minds–all get filled with more and more stuff. Some of it is good. But not all of it! A life is lot like a house. If you keep bringing stuff in without throwing something out, eventually it gets so cluttered that even the good stuff gets lost.
1 Thessalonians 5:21,22 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.
This passage calls for making decisions, keeping the right stuff and tossing the trash. That’s always good advice. The words “prove all things” mean: test everything. In the early scriptural times they used that expression to test gold or precious metals. Knowing the difference between fool’s gold and the real gold matters (ya think?). Also in this sense, spiritual discerning between spiritual truth and counterfeit religion. The same principle applies to ALL areas of life.
I hope you don’t believe everything you hear, especially spiritual stuff. It is not bad to have a certain kind of skeptical mindset. Be smart about what you believe and accept. Test everything. Don’t accept everything. If you do, you will end with a life and soul as cluttered as my house used to be.
“Prove all things and hold fast that which is good.” “Hold fast” means to be glued to, stuck on, crazy glued, nailed tight, stuck fast, inseparable, attached, conjoined, entwined, inseverable, yada, yada, yada, I think you get the point!. Some things are worth holding on to. But not everything. Knowing the difference is what counts.
Philippians 1:9- 11 “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”
I hope that you learn to test everything that comes your way in the future and that you hold on to the good stuff. Prove all things. Hold fast to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil. We ought to be so repulsed by evil that the very sight of it turns us away.
Romans 12:9 “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”
There’s a lot of trash out there. I hope you know it when you see it. I hope you can smell it. I pray that you are smart enough not to fill your life with it. But if you do, don’t let it just pile up. It will just get deeper and deeper.
Pretty soon, you can’t tell the good stuff from the trash. Bad memories, bad friends, bad habits, bad thinking, and misplaced priorities—that’s all trash that can mess up your life. Don’t start collecting that junk. If you do, clean it out. Get rid of it. If you need help, ask for it.
We all have seasons in our lives. The likelihood of your reaching the next, the one after that, and ultimately the end of a long, well-lived, happy life depends on whether you “Prove all things. Hold fast to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil.”
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