The Junk Room - Inspire A Fire - Christy Bass Adams

A Bigger Mess

The junk room.

The one space in the house where random items hide.

Memories. Baskets. Sports equipment. Odd pieces of flooring.

Picture frames. Newspaper clippings. Kids’ drawings.

Some special items. Lots of plain ole junk. And everything must be sifted.

Sin or Freedom?

Secret sin has a way of motivating us for a season. As long as no one knows, I’m good. We keep the lies consistent and our tracks covered. Our outside edges are tight and crisp. Life is the play, and we are the actors.

Until it can no longer be hidden.

Sometimes we get caught, while other times we are confronted. Or maybe we reach a point where the person staring back in the mirror is unrecognizable. No matter how we get to this spot, there comes a time where, as southerners say, we must pee or get off the pot. Either we are all-in with our sin or all-in with our freedom. There can be no more duplicity.

Admitting Defeat

Rock bottom looks different in each life. For me, rock bottom meant getting caught and confronted. At that point, I despised the face staring back at me in the mirror. The masks I wore exhausted me. And shame kept me locked in a prison.

I was dying inside.

Like Matthew talked about.

Dead man’s bones inside a whitewashed tomb.

My insides were rotting with decay as I kept my outside polished and pretty.

Death seeped into every area of my life and no longer hid.

The day my friend confronted me was the beginning of my true freedom. It marks the moment when I admitted defeat. When I acknowledged that I could not beat the pervasive sin in my life. The day I exchanged my broken life for hope.

Hope

Secrets make us sick. They starve out joy. And they blind us to love. In secrecy, we become self-focused. And we feed the lie until it overrides all truth.

The sexually explicit shows. Bottles of wine. Skipped meals. Hidden purchases. Self-beratement. Secret meet-ups. Hushed arguing.

But when the secret is no longer confined, an amazing newness enters the scene.

Hope.

We can become a better person.

Hope.

That self-control might work.

Hope.

We have not gone too far for God’s grace.

Hope.

That tomorrow is a new day.

A fresh start.

An open door.

Honesty

Secret sin is sustained through lies. The greatest change that evolves after hope is honesty. Sometimes this honesty seems blunt or hostile, but to the recovering sinner, it’s a freedom we haven’t tasted in years, or maybe even in a lifetime. To say what needs to be said with no sugarcoating or finagling creates peace inside that overwhelms the senses.

When the lies are unearthed and the darkness is exposed to the light, healing becomes an achievable goal. And desperation drives us to fight harder than we’ve ever fought.

The Junk Room Inside Us

Once we begin the process, our eyes see all the junk we’ve allowed in the hidden room of our heart. Boxes of emotions tossed about haphazardly. Stacks of lies piled on top of leaning piles of anxieties and fears. A display holding masks for all occasions sits in front. And on a shelf behind heaps of hidden heartaches, is our Jesus box.

The one we need now. The one that all other items must be placed inside. For too long, our foundation has been secrets and lies, and now, everything must change.

Everything changes or nothing changes.

We must open every box, look through all the stacks, and search each corner. We might find some treasures or plain ole junk. Everything must be sifted.

A Brand-New Space

I purged our junk room last week, threw out tons of items, and reorganized all that was salvageable into appropriate boxes. Honestly, the room looked worse while I was sorting than it did when I started. But the big mess quickly became an organized space once it was all relocated in an orderly fashion.

The same happens inside us. We purge the hidden space in our heart. Tons of items get thrown away, but all the good stuff is kept in an orderly fashion. At times, it can seem like a bigger mess than when we started, but day by day, our hard work pays off and our space becomes brand-new and usable.

God never intended for us to live a life trapped in habitual sin. That’s why he sent Jesus—the bridge between life and death. We live because he died. He died for the sins we committed and keep committing.

Jesus: Redeemer. Healer. Way maker.

Savior.

The WHO that takes our biggest mess and turns it into HIS greater message.

What a God!

Need a scripture on cleaning your heart up? Psalm 51

More reading on junk: My Junk vs. Jesus – Inspire A Fire

Christy Bass Adams

Christy Bass Adams, is the Outreach and Connections Coordinator at Fellowship Baptist Church in Madison, Florida. She is also a writer and had her first devotional book published in summer of 2022 (Big Lessons from Little People) followed by a middle grade novel (Imagination Checkers) in 2023, and the sequel (The Secret Door) in 2024. More recently she has published a Bible study entitled, Called to Christ. Her most important role, however, is with her family as a wife of 21 years and mother to two country boys. She worked in education for over 18 years at both the elementary and collegiate levels. Her favorite pastimes are fishing and sitting around a fire. For more from Christy, visit her blog at christybassadams.com.