A Plan of Replacement

We all have moved something around in our house or cleaned out an area of our home just to make things a little different. We may have wanted to get rid of something. We may have wanted to add something to the room so we had to shift some other things around. Or we may have wanted to get a new and fresh look. For whatever reason, after we do this, we feel a little better about the new look and enjoy the fruits of our good labor.

James 1:21 “So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.”

It may be a good idea to look inside our own lives and see what things we need to change. There may be filth and evil disguised as something else. There may be things we need to get rid of. There may be things we need to add to our lives. And there may be things we just need to rearrange to keep routine things a little more exciting.

Looking first at the things we need to get rid of, we need to look in all areas of our lives. These are things we may not want to get rid of but we feel God is telling us they no longer need to be a part of our lives. These are things we have held on to because they bring us comfort but they do no real good to what our purpose in life for God is.

If we first look in the area of our health, we may see there are some activities we need to stop doing. Looking at relationships, we may see there are some people we need to visit less frequently or stop seeing altogether. When we look at our careers, we may see we need to cut back on our working hours. Looking at our finances, we may need to spend less money on the pleasures of the world.

After we remove these things from our lives, we need to ask God to help us keep them out of our lives. Removing things and people who will keep us from doing God’s will is not as easy as taking out an old piece of furniture and throwing it away. The furniture can’t come back but the temptations to do what we used to do and see the people we used to associate with will come back. Before these temptations return, we need to have a plan of replacement.

This is a good time to see what we can add to our lives to replace the things we got rid of. The things we need to add to our lives are the things of God. We can spend more time reading His word. We can look for organizations to join to help others. We can look at more opportunities to help in the church or community. We can look at when the temptations are the strongest and fill them with good works from God.

When we honestly take a look at the things in our lives God wants us to get rid of and ask Him to help us remove them permanently from our lives, we will see more opportunities to do His will and to help others. When we ask God to help us replace our worldly desires with a giving attitude and His love and mercy, we will see when temptation comes again, we will be ready and we can make a difference.
2 Corinthians 5:17 “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”