What Are You Hiding in the Corners of Your Closet?

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” -Psalm 19:14

Some of the darkest areas of any house are in the closets, especially, a corner of the closet underneath the stairs. The kids love to play in the closet underneath the stairs. It is a secret place, dark, even cozy for some, a place to hide or get away from it all and a place to hide our most precious valuables.

In our spiritual life, think about the darkest corners of your life. What closet is it that holds the ugly smelly skeletons of our life we want no one to know about? I mean, most of us walk through life and especially, our prayer life with a closet or two that we do not want God to go into. We allow him in every other area of our life to clean up and make holy, but these dark, dusty, smelly corners of a particular closet we say…”God don’t go in that area, it belongs to me and I will take care of the corners of that closet.” Of course we do not verbally say that, but if we are really honest, that is exactly what our hearts and minds are saying to God each time we pray, “O Father, holy is Your name.”

We are talking with our heavenly Father, calling Him “Holy or Hallowed” yet we hold back certain areas of our life from Him when we pray. Think for a moment about certain areas that you really have not handed over to God for Him to make holy in your life. It could be a career move, your sex life (hey it is so good now, please don’t try to make my sex life holy that might be weird), money, serving in church, your “things”, your children, your friends and so on. You can name a hundred other areas that could be withheld from the holiness of God making us all hypocrites when we pray “O Father, holy is Your name.”

To pray, “O Father, holy is Your name” is really saying in all honesty, “May the whole of my life be a source of delight to You and may it be an honor to the name which I bear, which is Your name.” The quote above from Psalm 19:14 from David sums this up nicely. It is saying “may we be pleasing to God when we pray, because we have opened up every closet, pulled out every stinking skeleton from those closet’s to be laid out before a holy God, every oozing sin carcass left to rot in the far dark corners of that closet underneath our stairs”. As we go before such a holy Father, we must come to Him leaving nothing behind, holding nothing back, and not hiding anything in any closet. Coming to God and calling Him “holy” is allowing Him to examine every single aspect of your being. Let Him into the tiniest corners of your heart and mind in order to clean it all up. You are allowing Him to create within you a clean and holy life. Is this a perfect life? Absolutely not! However, we are to strive to be a holy vessel before a loving and holy God.

Until we really mean “O Father, holy is Your name” from a stand point of total commitment, total honesty, complete openness…we cannot and will not have any real contact with God, any real touch of the power of His Majesty, any genuine sincere experience of His glorious fragrance and wonder of Him at work in our life. We must place it all out before Him and desire the holiness of God in complete devotion to Him by allowing Him access to all of our lives not just parts of it. This is a cry of helpless trust in God. The focus is off ourselves and placed on a holy God as it should be.

Stand still at this moment in your daily prayer life. Be quiet for a moment after saying “O Father, holy is Your name”. Allow God this moment without rushing to get the prayer over and done with as someone would do a chore. Your prayer time should not be a chore…it should be an honor to even speak to such a holy God and further, to call Him “Father”. This is a moment that we are placing God first in our lives…we are not presenting our problems, our desires first…we are honoring Him first by bowing before Him in holiness.

When we pray with an attitude of total submission to our heavenly Father, we will come to understand that God will enter the darkest corners of our life, the places the stink from our sin is so bad we do not even want to go there and clean it up and our Lord, our heavenly holy Father will clean those areas out and make us a holy vessel He can now use. We could pray something like this:

“Father, there is no area of my life that I hide from You. Search me; illuminate the darkest corners of my life. Reveal to me the flaws and sin in my relationships, my social life, my sex life, my thought life, my business life, my school life, my recreation and vacation time, my ________ (you name the others).

This is getting brutally honest about our sin and our desire before God that we want to be holy, too. In 1 John 1:7, John tell us, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” Well, to walk in the light means that we are willing to walk honestly and openly before God, so that the light of His truth can illuminate or light us up and clean the darkest of the dark corners of our lives.

So, when you pray next time, think about this small beginning in your prayer time. Open up to God by being honest. Let Him into those darkest parts of your heart and mind. Let Him clean those up for you. I think we will all see tremendous changes in our prayer lives and our daily lives we live for Him.