I’m about to set you a little free. Get ready. Here it is: That drawer with all the random cords? You can let that whole thing go. The whole drawer-full. Do you even still have the devices, appliances, and various machineries that go with those cords? I didn’t think so. If you happened to actually need one of them, you know what you’d do. You would search on the internet, not in the drawer. You would order a new one, right?
Most of us would do just about anything to not have to sort through that tangled disaster of a drawer. So really. Go ahead and free yourself. Empty that thing.
I realize some of you are worried you’ll be haunted by the feeling you’ll wake up and need that one rogue cord. Wouldn’t it be interesting if tonight you were visited by the Ghost of Devices Past? I feel like it would say something like, “Where did you get that? You never even owned that blender. Let it go and move on.”
Letting go of clutter in our spiritual life is an even better way to move forward. It’s the way to live joyfully and to become the best kind of free. It’s how we live untangled. There’s hardly a day we don’t encounter a dozen ways to tangle up and weigh down our spirit. Difficulties, failures, guilt, neediness, weakness. But at each tangle, there’s a beautiful opportunity for a discovery of a new depth of God’s grace. His deep grace is the key to living untangled. Those weaknesses? He turns them into kingdom power.
I have to pull out 2 Corinthians 12 regularly for untangly inspiration. The Lord’s words to Paul are life-altering. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness” (vs. 9).
Weakness becomes strength at His gracious untangle. Beyond the drawer—beyond time and space—there’s simply no limit to that grace. It brought Jesus all the way to the cross to seal our pardon. Especially those times you’re haunted by and tangled up in the guilt of sin, find sweet freedom in remembering Jesus paid for all of it. You can let that whole thing go. Every sin.
By that same grace, we’re able to walk out our faith. He works powerfully in and through us. As Paul continued in the 2 Corinthians passage, “Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (vv. 9-10). There is strength not just to merely endure, though that’s certainly there, but strength to thrive. Strength to become a blessing to someone else to boot. What power! Power for anything and everything. “I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).
Plug in to the grace of God and you plug into His power. No cord required. But speaking of those cords. While you’re doing your cord-purging, might as well get after that drawer with the random info/instruction booklets. Your fax machine is gone. Toss that instruction book. You probably don’t speak Portuguese anyway.