Clutter—Is it Paralyzing Your Life?
Dear Judy, Help please…..I have stuff everywhere in my home. It gets bigger and bigger day by day and I cannot get myself to approach it when it gets like this. I think clutter isn’t only overwhelming, it’s also paralyzing. Sometimes I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even care and I do forget about it…until I start getting “Final Notice” in the mail, and phone calls threatening to stop service because I have not opened my mail. I quickly paw through papers for those bills to pay. And I usually find them, just in the nick of time. This is surely no way to live. Actually, I haven’t always been this way. It just came over me through time and now is covering me! Someone rightly said that nothing will change until the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of changing. I hope I’m there. I know I have to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to help me with this change. Only time will tell.
Dear Overwhelmed,
Change only comes when a person applies what I call the 4 D’s of God to their life.
- They must first decide to change,
- they have to be determined to change by setting godly priorities and boundaries,
- disciplined for change which is the hard one because we don’t like discipline,
- and diligence to change by continuing day in and day out to change.
If these 4 Ds are not followed, then the other 4 D’s will come. I call them dismay, disappointment, discouragement, and depression! The child of God can choose which 4 D’s they want to rule their life.
To remove clutter from our lives, a person has to rethink their priorities and when this is done, put boundaries up around yourself. For a child of God the number one priority must be the Lord Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:18 says, “And He (Jesus) is the head of the body the church, who is the beginning the firstborn from the dead, that in ALL things He may have the preeminence.” Think for a moment about Jesus being the head. In the head are our mind, eyes, ears, and mouth. When we put Him first in all things, we are thinking how He would think, seeing how He would see, hearing how He would hear, and speaking what He would speak!
The Bible says that the natural comes and then the spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:46). Usually when a person is cluttered in the natural, they are cluttered in the spiritual. Do we really believe that Jesus would have clutter in His life either in the natural or spiritual? I don’t think so. As we seek Him first, He will help us decide to apply determination, discipline, and diligence to our daily life leading to a life that is full of organization and excellence!
Clutter does not become clutter overnight as you said. So organization and excellence are not going to come overnight! How do you start? Get a pencil and paper and write down all that needs to be done for change. Take one thing at a time and DO IT, and then cross it off your list. Learn to say NO to things that take you away from the priorities and boundaries you have set for yourself, and experience a life free from the things that trip you up, including clutter!
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