If you do a Google search on “spring cleaning,” you get over 24 million results. Lifestyle websites have checklists and advice for how to clean your home so it is ready for the summer months. Most of us don’t really like cleaning. It’s a lot of work, it’s tiring, and it never seems to be done. But don’t you love the feeling after you have swept the floors and cleaned out your closet and scrubbed the bathtub? You can smell the freshness in the house, and everything just seems a little more hopeful.

Sometimes our lives need a spring cleaning. After the dark months of winter, where we have hidden ourselves away, it’s time to get everything out into the light. We need to be honest about the dirt in our lives, and start identifying bad habits and ways we have fallen into sin. We should look at how we spend our time, and consider if Jesus would be pleased with what we watch, say, and do. We must evaluate whether our responses to others show we are faithful followers of Christ. Then, when we have finished collecting the dirty laundry of our lives, we should ask God to wash it and make us clean again. We should say, like David did in the Psalms, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Once we do so, we will be renewed and refreshed, showing the world what a relationship with Christ looks like: clean and joyful. 

This is Luis Palau.