heart cleaning - the library

All the cleaning I’ve been doing lately has reminded me of another kind of cleaning – heart cleaning. I remember a little book I once read about that called “My Heart Christ’s Home.” When I looked for it the other day – sure enough I found it (I have a great many things still squirreled away, even after these many days of cleaning!) I’m going to post bits of that book in the next few days. It fits with my frame of mind.

The book starts out with a little intro. I’ll begin with that and then go on to the first room of the heart that gets a cleaning – the Library. So here is “My Heart Christ’s Home” by Robert Boyd Munger.

...The body of the believer would be the temple of the living God and the human heart would be the home of Jesus Christ. It is difficult for me to think of a higher privilege than to make for Christ a home in my heart, than to welcome, to serve, to please, to fellowship with Him there.

One evening that I shall never forget, I invited Him into my heart. What an entrance He made! It was not a spectacular emotional thing, but very real. It was at the very center of my life. He came into the darkness of my heart and turned on the light. He built a fire in the cold hearth and banished the chill. He started music where there had been stillness and He filled the emptiness with His own loving, wonderful fellowship. I have never regretted opening the door to Christ...

After Christ entered my heart and in the joy of that new-found relationship, I said to Him, “Lord, I want this heart of mine to be Yours. I want to have You settle down here and be perfectly at home. Everything I have belongs to You. Let me show you around and introduce You to the various features of the home that You may be more comfortable and that we may have fuller fellowship together.”

He was very glad to come, of course and happier still to be given a place in the heart.

The Library

The first room was the study – the Library. Let us call it the study of the mind. Now in my home this room of the mind is a very small room with very thick walls. But it is an important room. In a sense, it is the control room of the house. He entered with me and looked around at the books in the bookcase, the magazines upon the table, the pictures on the wall.

As I followed His gaze I became uncomfortable. Strangely enough, I had not felt bad about this before, but now that He was there looking at these things I was embarrassed. There were some books there that His eyes were too pure to behold. There was a lot of trash and literature on the table that a Christian had no business to read and as for the pictures on the wall – the imaginations and thoughts of my mind – these were shameful.

I turned to Him and said, “Master, I know that this room needs a radical alteration. Will You help me make it what it ought to be – to bring every thought into captivity to Thee?”

“Surely!” He said. “Gladly will I help you. That is one reason I am here. First of all, take all the things that you are reading and seeing which are not helpful, pure, good and true and throw them out! Now put on the empty shelves the books of the Bible. Fill the library with Scriptures and meditate on them day and night. As for the pictures on the wall, you will have difficulty controlling these images, but here is an aid.” He gave me a full-sized portrait of Himself. “Hang this centrally,” He said, “on the wall of the mind.”

I did and I have discovered through the years that when my thoughts are centered upon Christ Himself, His purity and power cause impure imaginations to retreat. So He has helped me to bring my thoughts into captivity.

May I suggest to you if you have difficulty with this little room of the mind, that you bring Christ in there. Pack it full with the Word of God, meditate upon it, and keep before it ever the immediate presence of the Lord Jesus.