I’ve been sharing about the journey that led us to the spiritual cleansing of our home. If you missed those posts you can find them all listed here: Spiritually Clean Home.
In this post I’ll share about the experiences we had while “unoccupying” our home.
Ryan and I knew we wanted our home to be a sanctuary. Not just a place of peace and joy for us but for all who enter here. The bible tells us that our homes are where the church meets to teach, fellowship, and share in meals together so we knew we wanted to welcome the presence of God here. We wanted it to be physically and spiritually obvious when others entered that God was present in our home.
Have you ever walked into a church, gathering, or home and just KNEW God’s presence was there? That is what we wanted so we sought Him in prayer and study to find out how to achieve that.
During the course of our prayer we discovered several scriptures that tell us we should not possess or own things that are displeasing to God. There were a couple of no-brainers for us like a couple of violent video games, a book that was sent to me for review and that I knew did not line up with God’s word, and some magazines I had bought while my grandma was in the hospital. All of those items burned in our back yard. We decided not to pass them on to someone else since we knew it contained things that grieved the Holy Spirit.
Other things in our home weren’t so easy to figure out. Take this box for instance:
I bought it from someone in a Facebook resale group. I thought the box was cute, could be painted to match my decor, and was the perfect size to fit on my mantle and hold our remotes. When I went to pick it up the lady told me it was previously owned by Governor Edwin Edwards. If you aren’t familiar with him, don’t Google it. To read the long list of things he has done wrong will take up half your day.
Anyway, whenever I would pray for God to show me things that we needed to get rid of this box would always come to mind. I kept reasoning that it was just a box. It had no evil symbols, wasn’t used in pagan religions (that I know of), or anything else I could think of but it seemed to bother my spirit greatly. So we burned it too. I’d like to tell you that I had some great relief or that angels sang when we burned it but the truth is we just knew we did the right thing.
Over the last few months we’ve removed other things too like a Mexican rain stick, some comic books my husband has had since his childhood, and a decorative photo that had what appeared to be a swampy fog scene but in reality, when I looked closely, it was an apparition of a person. Creepy! What is even more creepy is that I didn’t notice it for months. All were burned.
In the next post I’ll talk about some other things that we were prompted to get rid of for different reasons.
Have you gone through your house and got rid of things? If so, what kind of stuff. Share your experience with us.
Thank you so much for this. I am a first generation Christian and only recently due to some wonderful godly friends have I heard about this. I have NEVER heard this spoken of until they mentioned it to me. You talked about there being another post to follow this…. I can’t seem to find it. Could you please share it with me.
I am also curious about annointing…. they suggest I go through my house, pray over each room, cleanse it with prayer and then annoint it. Can you share what you know about this as well? Do you do this after your cleansing?
I am LOOOOOVING this series of posts, and all the comments left by your readers!!! Thank you so much!!!
Thank you! I am in search of the simple life and one that glorifies God. I am so distracted by all the stuff around me, and I don’t even have a cluttered house! I let the stuff get in the way and distract me from doing what I know to be God’s will. I am inspired by your destroying the things that you wouldn’t want to be a distraction for anyone else. Thank you, again, for sharing your journey.
My husband used to preach about getting rid of (more specifically, burning) objects that we as Christians shouldn’t be messing with. I was surprised how many Ouji boards, horoscope books, etc that people had in their homes. Many people thought we were nuts and didn’t do it. I look back on some of their lives and wonder how different it might have been for them if they had even asked the Lord if they needed to get rid of anything. Thank you for being bold and blogging about this. The church has become so complacent about evil and its influence that I applaud you for taking a stand.
For the new year back in 2008 I burned everything I had from past relationships and even things that reminded me of the past mistakes I had made. Recently I have been working on breaking soul-ties and family curses. By you posting about this I have courage to move forward and really, completely clean my house. Why in the world would I hang on to things that are hindering the Holy Spirit from moving on my behalf? Silly, really!
Thank you for sharing this post with us, Amy. People think we’re weird when we are very cautious about buying things second-hand, like at yard sales or the Goodwill. I’m not saying it’s “bad” or “evil” to buy things there, Lord knows we need to since we are a one-income family. It’s the spirits that are sometimes attached to them. We’ve seen first-hand how the spiritual atmosphere changes in our home when we bring something in that we either shouldn’t have, or that just prompts us to think on things that do not edify the Lord God Almighty. You are a blessing, and I am excited to read the rest on this series!
When I was in my 20′s (a LONG time ago), the Lord led me to do a cleansing of things in my house that didn’t glority Him. One of them was music. My roommate came in while I was “purging” and found me breaking record albums into pieces in the middle of the living room floor. She was freaked out and crying and thought I was nuts. The music itself wasn’t even really the problem, it was the importance I placed on that music in my life. Even though no one else understood what happened, God blessed it because I was obedient to His prompting.
We did the same thing years ago but somehow, over time we lost site of this and started accumulating things again that we didn’t need or should have. I have a music story too. I will be sharing it tomorrow.
Oh wow Amy – boy I have been struggling, in the teeth clenched sense since August. I started with doing my 39 Things challenge ( http://www.gindivincent.com/2012/39-things/ ) which ended w/me cleaning out a WHOLE lot more than 39 Things and now in the middle of Jen Hatmaker’s 7 I am doing it again with just massive fighting of all I have accumulated. It can be it’s own warfare – this post hit me just in the middle of that battle.
You know, we have probably donated two truck loads of stuff in the last 3-4 years and had we not done that I do not believe we could have gotten to the spiritual cleaning place. We didn’t know WHAT we even had before because there was so much stuff. I understand your position. We can sure accumulate some stuff, can’t we? Praying for you, girl!
Just your blog entry was inspiring. I’ll keep discerning with my eyes and spirit as I declutter and clean the house.
Praying for you as you go through the house cleaning, Angie.
We too desire our home to be a place where the Spirit of God is welcome and evident. In our quest to welcome Him, a purge was necessary. We have gotten rid of some books, magazines, movies. Though most of what we got rid of I wouldn’t consider “evil” …. for us they were distractions that got in the way of things that mattered most. There are plenty of GOOD options out there for our enjoyment and entertainment. We desire what is BEST not only for fun, but for spiritual growth and well being. We are enjoying the journey to have MORE of GOD in our every day lives.
For us too most of the stuff wasn’t evil. It just prompted emotions, thoughts, or something else in us. And yes, He is a jealous God. He does not like when we put things before Him. LOVE taking this journey with you, friend.