Spring Clean Your Heart And Live The Resurrected Life With Christ

“Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too…”~ Colossians 3:1 (TPT)

Spring is here, and it brings with it promises of new life, new hope and new dreams. It’s also the time of year we “spring clean” our homes. As we approach the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, our Lord, it’s a good time to spring clean your heart so that you can live the resurrected life with Him.

Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too (Colossians 3:1)!

On the first day of Spring, during my quiet time with Jesus, I heard the words, “Spring Cleaning.” I sat in silence and asked the Lord for more understanding. Suddenly my thoughts went to a “Hearing Exercise: Transformation Prayer” exercise that I recently learned in a Sunday School class. As part of this exercise our teacher asked us to get comfortable, take some deep breaths and relax. We then were to imagine a safe place and to write down, in detail, what we saw and felt. After this, we were to ask Jesus to come meet us, and imagine Him coming and approaching us. We wrote down how we felt, and what Jesus had to say to us.

It was a beautiful experience. In the middle of the exercise our teacher challenged us to ask the Lord what “big lie” we are believing. He said there is a big lie that each one of us deep down, unknowingly, believes about God’s love for us personally. The big lie instills doubt and robs us of faith in a loving God, and may even prevent us to move into our callings.

Spring Cleaning our hearts requires recognizing and replacing the lies we are believing with the absolute truth of who God is.

This exercise changed my life. I learned some valuable lessons about my perspective on God’s love for me. I also became aware of the healing my heart needed. For me, there are two “big lies” I subconsciously believe. The first is that God is a disciplinarian and, therefore, withholds blessings from me. And the second lie I am believing is that I am waiting for the other shoe to fall off. In other words, I’m living my life in angst, embracing myself for the next trauma to hit. I know these beliefs come from having been raised in a dysfunctional home where I faced one disappointment after another.

The truth is deep inside of me I know that I still haven’t fully embraced God’s love for me personally.

I still live my life believing some untruths about the Father’s love for me. Unfortunately, I live in a “worst-case scenario” mindset. It’s very subtle, but at the core of this thinking, I am not believing in God’s goodness for my life. I may say that Psalm 27:13 is one of my favorite verses, but do I truly believe with my whole heart that I will see “how good the Lord is!” and that “I will know his love while I still live in this world”?

How about you? What are some lies that you are believing about God’s love for you personally? I encourage you to take some time in Listening Prayer and/or in the Transformation Prayer above, and ask the Lord to show you what big lies are in your heart that prevent you from receiving all that God has for you. As you seek the Lord to help you spring clean your heart, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What obstacles are in your heart that stop you from living as God’s heir?

Romans 8:17 tells us, “And if we are [His] children, then we are [His] heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ [sharing His inheritance with Him]. . . ” Be honest with yourself-do you live like an heir? What’s the lies you are believing about God’s love for you personally? How freely do you receive God’s love for you?

2. Do you have a Kingdom mentality?

When we live as heirs we will live differently. We will be more focused on eternity. I love how the Message Translation explains a kingdom mindset in Colossians 3:1-2: “So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.”

Put your sights above. Your treasure is in heaven, and your heart will always pursue what you esteem as your treasure (Matthew 6:21). So pursue Christ and His deep affection for you. Our time here on earth is but a passage of time. (Click here to read some beautiful Scriptures on a godly perspective).

The Lord wants to remove every obstacle, every lie that is in the way of us living the “resurrected life” with His son, Jesus Christ. Spring clean your heart to rebuke these lies, and speak the truth about God’s love for you instead. Once we have complete understanding of His love for us personally, only then can we reach a lost world. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love each other because He loved us first.”

We can only love others well once we know the love of Christ for ourselves.

The truth is God is a loving God that desires to lavish His love on His beloved children (Ephesians 3:18-19). He is a God that will never withhold any good thing from us (Psalm 84:11). He is a good good Father and He adores us.

But He needs our hearts to be completely healed so that we can love Him, ourselves and others authentically. This Resurrection Day, put a stake of faith in the ground to work diligently to spring clean your heart. Own your woundedness, but don’t let them own you. Give the lies to Jesus and be willing to receive His grace and love. His promises are written for you! Believe in the God of love and healing, and be determined to live the Resurrected Life that Jesus went to the cross for you to live.

“So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it…”~ Colossians 3:1 (MSG)