How can I clean my “kitchen”?

It’s about the heart. Or the kitchen.

Our external actions don’t always expose where our heart, our beliefs and motives and longings our true feelings are. We can mask where we really are, what we really are.

Jesus exposes one mans heart in a very gentle and loving way in Matthew 19.

“16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

18 “Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[c] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]”

20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

27 Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife[e] or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

Would we eat at a restaurant that stored poison next to food prep areas? If you didn’t know about it you might. The front of the restaurant may be clean and inviting, the service excellent, the prices good, the food very tasty but the buying public doesn’t see the kitchen.

God sees our kitchen. We may never kill anyone but we have a long list of people that we hate. We have already murdered them in our heart.

We may never commit adultery but we cherish our fantasies, we have done the deed in our heart.

The front of the restaurant doesn’t determine the safety of the food. It’s in the kitchen. The public part of our life, no matter how squeaky clean it is can still be hiding a very dirty and perverse and dangerously poisonous heart.

God sees into our “kitchen”. God sees our heart. AND he loves us anyway.

In Romans Paul tells us this about God’s heart for us:

“6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

And later in Romans he says this:

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Jesus loves us. Even me. Have you seen my kitchen? Sometimes it’s a mess, (not my literal kitchen, it’s very clean) but the kitchen of my heart mind and soul. Yet Jesus loves me. Jesus loves even me, even you.

Today will you ask him to forgive your mess and take you into his family? I did.

And he did. I have been accepted into his family and he has forgiven my “kitchen mess” and has promised to help me clean up my “kitchen”, my heart and mind and soul. Will you allow him to help you too?