Anne

     How do you keep your heart as tidy as your mom always nagged you to keep your room?
     My brother was  so messy, we invented a term in his honour: Slobovian! When I was a little girl, I walked past his room, clicking my tongue, my little sandy curls bobbing sternly.  On his floor were usually two heaps of clothing: dirty and clean.  The clean were usually scattered haphazardly somewhere between his desk and his closet.  His dirty clothes, piled about 3 feet high, staggered up against the wall behind his bed.  His room always smelled fascinating: like a mixture of dust, paper, erasers, dirty shoes, dirty clothing and popcorn.  A boy’s room.  It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to clean.  He did a splendid job at cleaning!  He just hated to keep his room clean.  Did he have things to hide? Often.  Sometimes I’d play detective in his room and find lots of things: letters from girls, algebra papers due three weeks ago, addresses from friends I didn’t know he had, advertisements that I was a bit shocked he’d own, gum wrappers, and sometimes a cigarette package.  (We never smoked in our family.)
     “Daniel, you get in there and clean up your room!” Mom yelled very often. 
     “Yeah, Mom,” he bellowed vaguely, busy on the computer.
     More than once I remember scenarios like this: “Mom, I can’t find my — and I’ve got to meet my friend in five minutes! AHHHH!  Oh, no, I think I twisted my ankle!  Ouch, ow!”
     It’s a humorous illustration of my topic, but I think it’s appropriate.
     Mingling with people in the public, I meet up with all kinds.  Like Martin. Tattoos, missing teeth, deep Southern accent, hadn’t bathed in days and cigarette smoke melding with his dirty speech, he’d been to jail several times for drugs. Or maybe Joe-Joe, ex-gang leader, Somalia battle veteran, Civil Rights activist, lives at home to take care of his mom (and stay out of trouble), he has a heart of pure gold, but talk that could curl your hair. Then there’s people like Ryan, self-acclaimed “professional on the job and professional at the party and behind closed doors.”  And Joseph Vino, practicing Jewish, broad Italian-New York accent, quick-tempered but very generous to everyone; and one of the shrewdest businessmen you ever met.
     The one who topped the week for me, though, was Star.  The woman is an in-home care nurse.  Raised in primitive conditions with no running water, she experienced a lot of abuse as a child. The other day my sister and I were visiting her patient and she stopped us to chat.  “It all started when I just wanted to spend the 4th of July weekend with an old school friend, Dave.  But he drugged my drink and…” she chuckled.  “He got what he wanted, anyway.  Well, I didn’t tell my husband and he didn’t tell his daughter.  We just decided that I’d come again later so we could patch things up.  Well, then his daughter needed help because she was going to have her baby too early…” and Star went on from there. At the end of the story, she confessed that her husband was furious and wanted to separate after a 20 year-old common law marriage, and the man shecalled ’Dave’ asked her to marry him.
     What’s wrong with this picture?
     The problem didn’t start with this ‘Dave’; or Star’s abusive home.  The problem started with Star.  She could have walked away, even if she was afraid; but she didn’t want to.  She liked her sin too much. 
     It started way before she allowed herself to be used. It started with something no one could see but God: in her heart, with a little wicked, poisonous seed called Lust.
Lust comes into the mind and starts eating away silently like cancer.  Not only does it change your thought processes, it also changes your understanding of right and wrong, and even affects whether or not you think there’s a God.
     Eve’s first sin dealt with a form of lust.  She wanted to know everything God knew, which wasn’t for her to know.  She also coveted something beautiful, that might make her so beautiful and wise that Adam and all the animals in Eden would be under her influence simply by her glance.
     Adam’s sin was also related to lust.  When his beautiful wife came up to him holding out that forbidden fruit, suddenly he experienced a feeling he’d never had before.  We all understand that feeling.  It was this burning thing inside him that made him want to get that forbidden fruit and consume it, conquer it, and own it, even though God told him that it would destroy him.
     “How great a matter a little fire kindleth!” cried James (ch. 3.5).  Children always get a little bit of DNA from each of their parents; and unfortunately, we all got a double-dose of that thought-corroder Lust.
     But guess what—Lust comes in many different “brands”. Desire for something your cellmate has that you don’t have.  Drugs and cigarettes create a chemical reaction in your body that entices you to commit the sin of Lust.  Viewing pornography triggers that craving in your brain and kicks your body into the lust-problem. 
     The body and the heart are very intricately interwoven, and the connection is your brain.  Whatever goes into your brain, by some invisible wire immediately telegraphs to your heart, by so many chemical and physical reactions. 
     Your body is run by hormones.  The hormone that creates physical bonding comes in two forms: the female form is oxytocin; the male form is vasopressin.  These hormones are like a chemical that sends messages to your brain.  If the hormone is not properly contained, and is manipulated, it can send the wrong messages to your brain in rapid time. This eventually warps the nerve paths so that the brain is no longer able to interpret the messages properly. That is what happens when people indulge in sins such as dissipation, selfishness, irreverence, larceny, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other sins listed in the Bible. (Galatians 5.19; Romans 1; Revelation 18.)
     Just as I told Star, once you get on a downward spiral with regard to your thought life, you will just keep going around and around until you die.  Reforms only do a little bit of good to the part of your life people see—NOT to the very root of the problem.  See how important it is to “keep under your body” as Paul said? (See 1 Cor. 9.27) “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
     So of course, the question is, how do you keep your heart as tidy as your mom always nagged you to keep your room?
     Here are a few Scriptures to study.  I hope you’ll read and pray about them, and that the Holy Spirit will minister to you. He can and does repair broken bodies and minds, as we have a repentant teachable heart. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth...For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's...Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
Colossians 3; 1 Corinthians 6.15-20; 2 Corinthians 10.5; Matthew 6.19-34; Mark 13.10-12; Luke 9.40-50; Acts 8.15-25; 1 Corinthians 13.10-12.              
—Anne