Maintenance – here’s a word that keeps us busy every day that we live! Maintenance means to repair, keep up, look after. Think of all the maintenance that your outside of your house requires:
- Mowing the lawn
- Raking the leaves
- Washing the windows
- Sweeping away spider webs from the doorways
- Weeding the flowerbeds
- Cleaning out the gutters
How about the inside of your house? Consider:
- Painting the walls occasionally
- Cleaning out the refrigerator
- Scrubbing the floors
- Changing the filters in the heat and AC
- Clearing away piles
- Doing something with all the mail
- Keeping the dishwasher emptied
- Cleaning the oven and stovetop
Then, of course, you and I require maintenance too.
- Doctor and Dentist check-ups
- Fingernails trimmed and perhaps painted
- Hair cut, styled (and colored?)
- Exercise (oh yeah, I had to bring that up, huh?)
Sometimes we forget about things that need our attention until there’s a malfunction. If we haven’t had our teeth cleaned and checked in a while we may wake up one morning with a toothache. Then we call the dentist. We ignore the oily mess in the bottom of the oven, then when we go to bake a cake the kitchen fills with smoke. Then get out the rubber gloves and start scrubbing! Think of what a sorry mess all of those things would be in if we fail to maintain them. It’s called neglect.
There is another area of our lives that requires Daily Maintenance that too often gets put off until there’s a malfunction. An illness touches our lives, someone we love dies, we’re in the midst of a financial crisis or need, and suddenly we need God. But when we call out to Him in prayer, or seek comfort in His Word we find that the heavens seem shut up, and God seems very far away. There’s a malfunction in our spiritual lives because there hasn’t been daily attention given to it. Oh, we may have attended church, perhaps even read our “devotions”, but there hasn’t been a seeking for Him.
Proverbs 8:34 says, Blessed is the man (or woman)that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. When we wait for Him each day we will find Him. The maintenance that needs to be done on our hearts will be tended to. It will accomplish more than fulfilling an obligation, it will fill our hearts and draw us to our God. It will reveal sin that needs to be confessed and forsaken. It will point to the areas of our lives that are drawing us away from our Savior.
Maintenance is necessary in our practical lives, but it should be longed for in our spiritual lives. Without it, we are a spiritual malfunction waiting to happen! Spend time with Him today in His Word and in pouring your heart out to Him. We all need a spiritual “Fall cleaning”!
RefreshHer 