Good morning, this morning I woke up with this word in mind, "spiritual housekeeping", which I'm sure has existed for sometime, we'll get into that later. But, this morning I woke up with it in my mind.

Last night, I took the opportunity for a nice long leisurely bath and some deep intimate word and worship time with my Saviour, because I knew I wouldn't be able to do it today, what with it being a public holiday and all...

The Lord again took me to 1 Peter 2:4 - which in my mind feels like a sidenote in the middle of the paragraph - I didn't really see how it fit into the paragraph or where the relevance was to the rest of the verses, till I said, Lord, what are You trying to show me here... uhuh! Gotya!

1 Peter 2:4 "If you have tasted that the Lord is good" - mmmhhmm now what the next verse speaks of, "as you come to Him as a living stone" - clearly starting a new thought pattern, then I noticed, this verse is the last part of the previous sentence, it's not a complete sentence in and of itself, so now I have to start at the beginning of this sentence....uhuh!

Here is the spiritual housekeeping! I may have mentioned for 80days of this year I did a course of detoxing the body, soul and spirit... now I did the body part, lost a full 11kg's - was horrified that I needed to loose 20, but taking a break now for my body to settle down and then will look at the rest when the Lord leads me... it's really good and feels amazing to be my old usual size again... I digress, but I would recommend it for anyone who feels slow, sluggish, unable to achieve what you need - it's really that good!

The soul detox, I figured, we're doing that daily by not allowing the filth of the world in, but it's amazing how much of your stuff comes up when you want to loose weight. You didn't think an extra 11kg's has anything to do with emotions, comfort, past hurt and unfinished business. So, while I didn't have to eliminate music, movies etc that are inappropriate because I try to limit my exposure to those things as they would be a spiritual hinderance in my line of work, I had all these real life revelations of what's happening inside of me that I haven't dealt with...thank God I have Him - I have also been through my spiritual counselling and know how to process these things if needs be and have the relevant help too! Thank You Jesus for Your body working together!

The spirit detox, well, I just tried to get myself back on the bandwagon of reading, praying, worshipping and writing. While all these other things were going on, this was all I could actually focus on, anymore and I wouldn't have been able to manage. I just took it one day at a time and allowed the Lord to lead me. As soon as something came up from the other 2 areas I would go into prayer and say, (my biggest problem is my comfort zone) I would say, "Lord, please forgive me for the way I have dealt with my need for comfort up until now, please help me to rely on You for my internal comfort and to stay busy with what You have called me to, and not get involved in anything else.

Back to today's message, after this long amount of time I wasn't ready to start processing a whole bunch of new info, so I felt the Lord saying to me to just take a break. I took a break from all detoxing. Now, the last week or so, the Lord keeps sending me back to this 1 Peter 2:3 "If you have tasted that the Lord is good." It's not a question, have you tasted that the Lord is good, it's at the end of the sentence, so, I went back to the beginning...

"Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, ² as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow ^[a]thereby, ³ if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious."

So, if I have tasted that the Lord is good, I will trust Him to lead me in growth by allowing Him to address these areas in my life... wow...

Uhuh - I see now, the Lord is ready for me to do some serious spiritual housekeeping... can you tell...

Let's start with laying aside:

I looked it up and Merriam-webster dictionary describes it as:

Dictionary.com - Also, lay away ; lay by . Set apart for a reason, save for the future,

I love this second one, as it says "Set apart for a reason"

We know the reason - our spiritual closeness to Jesus, with that as my target and aim, everything, absolutely everything can be set aside, as He leads me...

So, if everything is up for grabs then I have to read this piece carefully noting every detail to scrub my heart of things I need to "set aside for a reason"

Let me just preface this with I am always humbled, when I ask the Lord to show me my own heart. I'll be thinking, oh well, mine's not that bad is it Lord, show me what I have of these so I can quickly run through them... haha... jokes on me usually... no quickly about it, girl, you're in the mix with the worst of them, scrub-a-dub-a-dub... that heart needs the full works to get it cleaned up... so, I'm definitely not coming from an angle of I got this... follow me... I'm coming from the angle of I've made all of these mistakes, keep yourself from falling into my traps💖

The Jewish people have a feast, where they take a feather duster into their homes and symbolically go and remove any traces of yeast in their homes, it's called the feast of unleavened bread. Of course the yeast is symbolic of all sin in our lives, we're effectively doing the same thing here.

I'm going to list these with their definition, it would be exceptionally good for your spiritual housekeeping if you would go into prayer and ask the Lord, "Lord, please show me if I am hiding any portion of this in my heart, then also pray for your family members, that the Lord would lead them in purity in these things, it helps if we cover everyone. Not everyone will know that we need to do these or how to do them, so we can pray that the Lord will lead them to it...

This is the list: "all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,"

Malice - 

Deceit -

the action or practice of deceiving 

someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth. (notice it's also mis-representing, if it's not the whole truth, it's not the truth, be careful not to excuse yourself here for some reason, I did and had to go back and start again with this point.)

Hypocrisy - 

Envy - 

Evil speaking - 

1. slander.

   "it is a sin to speak evil of the king" - (this definition is from my most commonly used definition source listed below)

Speaking evil of an absent person: relating something evil, which was really done or said by one that is not present when it is related - This is an Ai definition

All the definitions used here were found under the dictionary from Oxford Languages which I use most commonly, unless otherwise noted. https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ 

Taking this to the Lord and allowing it to affect you now is a really good idea, so that we go into our next season the Lord has prepared for us with much less baggage... I hope this has helped you as it helped me... I may do more on it as the Lord leads...

If you find it beneficial in anyway please share testimonies, so appreciate that, but also, if you feel we can do a more intensive you can mail me and we can set up a course. Not major, we cover over 7 days, with 3 days in visual contact, where the Lord can cause us to delve into this and show us prophetically what's happening. Of course He could show you those things yourself and you don't need assistance, sometimes it's good to do it in groups... let me know... chat soon!

By the way don't be fooled by the image attached here, it's not a light easy thing, these people take out the leaven, make huge fires, burn every trace of it... this is serious business. God doesn't take this lightly, neither should we...