Destruction as Clearing

This time last year, a man came into my kitchen with a hammer & started destroying walls, cupboards, & countertops...

We often say to God, "add to me". It might sound like: build me; create me; develop me; grow me; make me fruitful. However it sounds, the cry is the same. Prepare me. It isn't a bad prayer by any means. Yet we miss that for the new to be done, the old must go. What many don't realise is that the root word of "prepare" originally meant "to prune".

It takes guts to pray the "to prune" prayer: the "search me & remove anything in me that You will to even if it's good" prayer. It hurts & yet it's Godly.

In order for God to build, the area has to be cleared.

Back to the events in my kitchen. The man wielding the hammer was in fact a builder. The destruction had been authorised. It was making space for something else.

Perspective.

As soon as we know that the destruction is authorised, it moves from "destruction" to "clearing"; from fear of what's lost, to hope at what is to come.

God's promise isn't that He will revamp the old us, add some improvements & send us on our way. His promise is that those who know Jesus will be made band new.

2 Cor 5:17 says "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (NIV)

Let this promise fuel your prayers. Move from "Lord, add to me, don't clear anything, save my building" to "Lord, clear the space & make something new!"

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right & stopping the leaks in the roof & so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing & so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably & does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." C S Lewis