March 3, 2008

 Terrible Reminders After Situations Happen (TRASH)

Co-written by Cheryl Nance and Angela Willingham

Cheryl is a sister in the Lord, who has been blessed to have the opportunity to share with women inmates at one of our local prison facilities. For those who don’t know many of the men and women populating our prison system are people just like us. People with past issues and upsets, that for some reason were unable or unwilling to let that stuff go until it reached a point where it had control of them and affected them in a very negative way.

Cheryl was sharing with me that they were doing a series with the women at the prison dealing with TRASH and getting rid of it. I thought it was pretty interesting and asked her to put something together for the website.

The series they were going through was called “Taking Out The Trash,” which addresses the problem we have with holding on to our spiritual “trash” aka garbage. Interestingly, Cheryl and her team dealt with this as spiritual trash, but we all have some baggage that we have held on to, maybe it was spiritual, but it could have been physical, emotional or relational as well.

Some of the trash Cheryl identified was loneliness, worry, pain, resentment, regret, revenge, failure, sexual abuse, addictions and un-forgiveness. Each of them has the ability to destroy you if you leave it unattended for too long.

Here are Cheryl’s own words. “When you think about a trash can filled with garbage and you consider the act of emptying it your experience can be one of several depending on the type of garbage you are throwing out. If you have paper trash, you will find that it is pretty easy to dispose of, because paper will just fall out of the receptacle unless you force it down-aka stuffing when dealing with our emotional pain. With paper you might find some trash sticking to the bottom of the trash can, which might require you to reach in and loosen it before you can dispose of it.

YUK! You may encounter decaying garbage that stinks, so it is very unpleasant when you dump it and you may have to even use a disinfectant to remove any unpleasant odors even after the garbage has been dumped. You really won’t want to dispose of liquid garbage because when you go to dump it out, it can splash and get all over everything else that is near it. Then you would have another mess to clean up. However, if you’ve experienced this type of garbage before, you might have learned to just throw the whole container away to avoid any chance of further contamination.

If we are honest prisoners are not the only ones that have to deal with trash. We all do or have had to deal with the Trash in our lives. Some of us had less to deal with, some of us dealt with it quickly so we could move on.

Cheryl suggested we learn to let God be our “trash handler,” our “sanitation engineer” by giving up our trash to Him (all of it.) We cannot hold on to any of it if we want the smell to go away and we want to avoid the cross contamination or drawing swarming flies to our immediate vicinity.

Anybody who knows anything about garbage knows that it draws flies and pretty soon you will be unable to hide it. It will come out in behavior (outbursts of temper or rage), smell (alcohol on the breathe, failure to take care of yourself) or maybe even a bad attitude (un-forgiveness and unwillingness to let others close to you). Matthew 11:28-30, says, 28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

You may not be in a physical prison where you cannot come and go as you choose to, but if you are still holding on to your trash or picking and choosing when to let it go, the prison you are in is much worse than a physical one. We encourage you to take some time today to ask God to search you and show you anything in you that is not of Him, anything from the past that should have been thrown out already, because it is stinking or has become a clutter. He is waiting to do it, but He will not do it without your permission.

Weekly Scripture:

Matthew 11:28-30:28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

We just worked out spiritually. If you have not worked out your physical temple get up and join us in the:

New Beginnings 2008 Workout Focus
10,000/steps per day or 70,000/steps per week Walking Program*

This is the fitness opportunity that New Beginnings is promoting for 2008. It is simple and easy and almost everyone can participate at whatever level of fitness they are at. All you need is a good pair of walking shoes, comfortable clothing, a pedometer, and you're all set.

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