Necessary Upkeep

I was walking around in my yard to see if the ants were in the air conditioner again when I noticed a part of the eave needs to be replaced. There are boards in the fence that need to be fixed. Everything is going to need to be repainted soon. A house requires continual upkeep. You can't maintain some kind of status quo; your choices are regular maintenance or deterioration. The same is true of your soul.

There are many things that attack your house. The sun's UV beating down year after year takes a toll. Storms come, and the wind lashes your roof, not to mention what hail can do. Pests like termites, ants, and squirrels literally chew their way into your house and tear things up.

A soul is like a house; it requires continual upkeep. The world, the flesh, and the devil are like UV, termites, and storms.

The world just beats on us. There is a constant pressure to conform, which is why Paul gave us a binary: We will be conformed to the pattern of this world or we will be transformed (Rom 12:2); there are no other options. The world constantly catechizes us. It tells us how we should think, what we should want. A lot of it we're watching for, but sometimes it catches us completely off-guard: Did anyone foresee the negative effects of smart phones? Try though we might, it's going to get some good hits in now and then. We have to make regular assessments to see where we've lost ground and take steps to win that ground back.

The flesh just eats at us. We can't get away from it in this life; we're chained to it. It hates any kind of limits. Whenever I see a sign that says "don't touch", I find I've never wanted to touch something more in my life! The flesh hates limits, and God has placed many limits on us for our protection. The flesh constantly strains against those, like a child who wants to be "free" to play in traffic. Anything destructive to the soul it loves.

Like storms, I don't think the devil attacks us constantly. The world and the flesh do a pretty good job on their own. But when the devil turns his attention to you, he huffs and puffs and does his best to blow your house down. Even if he doesn't get the whole house, he can do some damage. Damaged relationships and damaged reputations can be costly to fix, whether you did anything wrong or not. And sometimes we are tempted above and beyond the normal levels to do just spectacularly dumb sins, especially the one you said, "I'll never do that."

It's not if but when. We are going to find places where we've made compromises we shouldn't have made, taken on worldviews that are untrue, or done things we knew better than to do. That's why we need to regularly inspect the house.

Let us examine our ways and test them,
   and let us return to the LORD. (Lam 3:40)

We need to spend some time examining ourselves. Then, as necessary, return to the Lord. Repent. Make right what you can. "Do the things you did at first" (Rev 2:5).

How do we examine ourselves? Scripture. But it's so easy to let it become just a box you check off. Don't just move your eyes across the page. Wrestle with it. Apply it to yourself. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom 12:2). And the more we do that, the better our odds of preventing the damage in the first place. Answer the world's lies. Remind yourself that God's limits are good and for your good. And answer the devil with scripture, just like the Lord.

One day we're going to sell this house and get a better one, one that isn't damaged by sun, storms, and pests. Until that day, take care of the house you have, so the sun, storms, and pests don't get you.


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