My Heart--Christ's Home: by Robert Boyd Munger

Author:Robert Boyd Munger [Munger, Robert Boyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830863693
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Hall Closet

There’s one more matter of crucial consequence I would like to share with you. One day I found him waiting for me at the front door. An arresting look was in his eye. As I entered, he said to me, “There’s a peculiar odor in the house. Something must be dead around here. It’s upstairs. I think it is in the hall closet.”

As soon as he said this I knew what he was talking about. Indeed there was a small closet up there on the hall landing, just a few feet square. In that closet, behind lock and key, I had one or two little, personal things I did not want anybody to know about. Certainly I did not want Christ to see them. They were dead and rotting things left over from the old life—not wicked, but not right and good to have in a Christian life. Yet I loved them. I wanted them so much for myself I was really afraid to admit they were there. Reluctantly I went up the stairs with him. As we mounted, the odor became stronger and stronger. He pointed at the door and said, “It’s in there! Some dead thing!”

It made me angry! That’s the only way I can put it. I had given him access to the study, the dining room, the living room, the workroom, the rec room and the bedroom, and now he was asking me about a little two-by-four closet. I said to myself, “This is too much! I am not going to give him the key.”

“Well,” he responded, reading my thoughts, “if you think I am going to stay up here on the second floor with this smell, you are mistaken. I will take my bed out on the back porch or somewhere else. I’m certainly not going to stay around that.” And I saw him start down the stairs.

When you have come to know and love Jesus Christ, one of the worst things that can happen is to sense him withdrawing his face and fellowship. I had to give in. “I’ll give you the key,” I said sadly, “but you’ll have to open the closet and clean it out. I haven’t the strength to do it.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you haven’t. Just give me the key. Just authorize me to handle that closet and I will.” So, with trembling fingers, I passed the key over to him. He took it from my hand, walked over to the door, opened it, entered it, took out the putrefying stuff that was rotting there and threw it all away. Then he cleansed the closet, painted it and fixed it up all in a moment’s time. Immediately a fresh, fragrant breeze swept through the house. The whole atmosphere changed. What a release and victory to have that dead thing out of my life! No matter what sin or what pain there might be in my past, Jesus is ready to forgive, to heal and to make whole.

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