I was watching TV the other day and happened upon a preacher who was talking about accepting the "Gift", the Holy Spirit, who is the one who can teach, help, fix us better than anything. But, we do have to open the gift box and look inside and take it out and use it!
Then he said: It's like a vacuum cleaner salesman who comes knocking on your door. He won't come in unless you invite him in. Then when you open the door and say yes, I'll see what you have to offer, he comes in. The salesman proceeds to dump all this garbage on the rug and vacuums it up. Good job. Puts his vacuum back in the bag and walks out the door???? No, no. He will usually say - do you want to buy it? You can say yes or no. Your choice. If you accept his product you can continue to clean your house with it. If you turn him down and say no, then your means for clean-up walks out the door, too.
This demonstrates that we have a "choice" to accept the Holy Spirit,and all he offers, to clean up the mess we are, or we can reject Him and keep trying on our own, never accomplishing the task. In Rev 3:20, Jesus says:"I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me, open the door and let me in"! The picture of this shows Jesus at the door knocking, but there is no door knob to open the door on the outside of the door. It has to be opened from the inside. We must OPEN the door ourselves, and invite Him to come in, for the Lord to come into our hearts. Once there, He offers us the "gift" of the Holy Spirit. Will we allow Him in? Will we accept His gift?
{I had heard this BEFORE Brian sent out His "What I Learned as a vacuum cleaner salesman" e-mail yesterday. That is a confirmation of a lesson for us to hear and act on! A song we sang at prayer meeting a lot again is in my head. Here are the words: "How great is our God, How great is His name. How great is our God - forever the same! He rolls back the waters of the mighty Red Sea, and He says I'll never leave you, put your trust in Me."}
3 comments:
Awesome teaching! Thank you.
This is great, Mom. You have a wonderful gift of sharing your insights and teachings to us. The vacuum cleaner salesman analogy is the perfect lead-in to opening our heart to Jesus and allowing him to cleanse our soul.
Yes, our Lord is the best cleaning person ever! However, usually He will clean a room at a time. And most times it's very painful getting all that dirt out of us. But when he's finished with that room, you know it. Feels so good! Then He moves on to the next. However - we do have to "go away" by ourselves and ask Him to show us the "dirt", and then ask Him to clean it up! He does that. I can think of many rooms He has cleaned up in me. First thing was He took away my "curiosity" with Jean Dixon, who I thought was absolutely "IT" as far as predicting the future. Then I noticed I wasn't at all interested any more in horoscopes. That was not a painful cleaning there. My desire for it was just gone. Then He began working on my self-esteem. Boy, was that a big job for Him - and Me! It took a very long time for me to realize I have gifts and talents and that I am a child of the King of Kings - I am royalty! So, I work on that still. Every now and then I have to be "vacuumed and dusted" again, but the main scraping and scrubbing is gone. Unless I quite working on it, and let it build up again.
Can you think of any ways that Jesus is "cleaning" your house?
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