Modern middle class America Christians can justify anything they want as part of maintaining a “good testimony,” and they do not even need to espouse the prosperity gospel to do it. We think we “need” late model cars, 4500+ square foot homes, 65 linear feet of closet space (per person), and internally-wired surround sound entertainment rooms all “for the ministry.” Why? These things all 1) prove God provides abundantly for His children, 2) allows believers to “open” their home and entertain for the Lord by watching football or inspiring stories, and 3) makes it possible for believers to look their best.
Too often the reality is that the car rarely picks up anyone for church (and sometimes is even too busy to go at all). The big house is never used for Bible Study, prayer, counseling, or housing missionaries. The sagging clothes rod is more about exalting the public self than appearing physically clean, spiritually and morally modest, activity appropriate, and gender embracing before the world. The entertainment system rarely hosts preaching, since little preaching is on the sports channels.
When any and every desire can be twisted into a “need” for the “Cause,” or to make our “testimony” more engaging to the world and nicer for fellow believers, we must pull back and build some guards to sift those desires that fill bigger and bigger homes with more and more things that take greater and greater amounts of time, energy, and money to steward.
The time to clean, maintain, service, dispose, and care for all this “stuff” is time not spent one-on-one with preschoolers or teenagers. The time cannot be given to the Lord. The time cannot be invested in personal projects or analyzing a home process. Closets, garages, and attics become more and more full with things we will not recycle or pass along, further increasing our need-to-care-for-this-quotient.
Honestly, how tangled up is your testimony with bigger and better things? Clean Cup Cleaning requires asking the dreaded contentment question, “If this were the best it would ever be, would I be content?” over and over again.
Clean Cup Cleaning can be a game of caring for and making do with what you have been handed, sometimes far longer than anyone could ever imagine, or grand experiment of making the most of the little available, but only for someone who answers that pesky contentment question positively even when a change for the better is just about to happen. The creative input to develop systems that will effectively reorganize and revamp without extensive purchases is only operational when not buying our way out of an issue is the only option.
Priority Stewardship 