Jump Start # 643

Ephesians 4:31 “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”

Our Jump Starts return to this verse again. I have written about these six attitudes not long ago. Today, I am looking at another expression here—”put away.”

This is trash day at our house. All the waste baskets are emptied and the trash cans are rolled down to the curb. The trash truck rolls by, very early and very loudly, and all the trash is taken away. It goes to a landfill and we give it no more thought. The trash is gone, the house looks better and everything is fine. Next week, we’ll repeat the process. The dumping of the trash today, doesn’t end all the trash in our house. There’s always more. When I’m out of town, I remind the kids to get the trash cans down to the curb.

I tend to think that’s how our verse works. There are things that cause a person to be angry and that connects and leads to these other five problems, and once a person dumps the anger in a Biblical manner, he’s not done for the rest of his life. That would be nice. There will be more things and more anger. A person has to take the anger and all these other things connected with it out to the curb of his heart and get rid of it. But he knows there will be more next week. We get upset with many things—most of which are connected to other people. The way people drive, the way people speak to us, the service, or the lack of service that they provide, the bills they charge us, the way some dress, the attitudes of some—all of these can move the needle in our hearts to the red area and look out after that!

The putting away of these things is a continual process. You may have done that very well last week, but this week has already accumulated much more trash in your heart. It too, has to go out.

Our hearts are very interesting—not the organ in our chest, but the spiritual heart. When it is filled with righteousness, the ugly stuff is pushed out. When wicked things take over, the good stuff gets suppressed. It’s like a constant battle. Dumping the spiritual trash is a key to winning the battle.

The active part in putting away these evil attitudes is self. We have to do that. For that to happen, we must walk through the rooms of our heart and gather up what we’ve saved and collected and dump the stuff that’s not good. It’s just like trash day! When we get rid of anger and wrath and slander, we look and feel so much better. Those wicked things make us wicked. We become sour, hateful and mean. If you don’t take the trash out the whole place begins to smell. That’s true with real trash and that’s true with spiritual trash. Trash has a away of increasing without us realizing this. Toss an empty bag to the back of your car and then another and before long the whole floor board is filled with empty cans, papers and trash. One of my kid’s car actually looked like that. It was so disgusting that I threatened to take their keys if they didn’t clean it out. I was fearful that they’d be killed by flying debris. When they took my words seriously, they cleaned the car out—happened to be on trash day. The guys in the trash truck got out of the truck to watch. They enjoyed it. They made the comment that there was more trash in the back of the car than what they had in their truck. It was a lot of work getting that car cleaned out. Had a certain child of mine been cleaning it out on a regular basis there would be nothing to it. Are we much different? Not with our cars but with our hearts?

We wait until it’s nearly overflowing with stuff before we start to toss things. By then it is a major job. It’s hard. The anger has grown into wrath and slander. There is a lot of cleaning to do now. There are people we have to go apologize to know. What could have been a simple job is now very messy and very hard and often involves many people. The trash in our hearts, unlike the trash in the back of a car, hurts other people. Some times the damage we cause can be lasting. Just saying, “I’m sorry,” seems like a band aid to the severe wounds we’ve caused by our words, attitudes and actions. We get that way because we do not dump the junk in our hearts. Put away are Paul’s words. Trash day is another way of saying it.

Work on this. It’s hard and messy and not easy. But once the trash is taken out, it’ll make you feel so much better. Holding on to these things isn’t good. We dump the trash with the help of the Lord. Grace, forgiveness and love are the key. Without those, the trash remains.

Time of me to get the trash cans—wish the trash men would take them away, but I know I will need them. Unfortunately, I always need them. The same is true of our hearts.

Roger