I don’t know about you but when I sneeze, I sneeze. No hiding it. It’s loud. And, it usually takes me a while to work up to a sneeze. My husband used to tell me, “quit trying not to sneeze”. I wasn’t. Most of the time it just takes it’s time coming out. People sometimes think I’m having an attack of some kind when all I’m doing is simply working up to a sneeze – a loud one! Embarrassing but I’m used to it. One of my sisters sneezes really dainty like. Not me. I sneeze like you’d think a truck driver would sneeze. Oh well. Nothing I can do about that. A lot of different things make us sneeze. Sometimes it’s allergies, sometimes colds, sometimes dust or an itchy nose.

In the movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sneezy was always either sneezing, looking like he had just sneezed or was about to sneeze. Poor guy. He looked miserable. Maybe it was dust making him sneeze. They probably had dust in their mine and we saw that they had an abundance of dust in their cottage. Yikes! I thought I let dust go too long. They had spiders in cobwebs that may have been there for generations. They had apparently lived that way for so long they didn’t even notice or realize how bad it was. The dishes were piled high and dirt and dust were everywhere. Then Snow White came. Along with help from her animal friends, they got that place spotless. They worked and worked but did you notice that it didn’t seem like work to them? They were happy in their work and working together they had that house ship shape before the dwarfs got home from the mine.

Along with physical cleaning, our bodies must be swept clean spiritually as well. We are not only told to renew our minds with God’s Word, look what it says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

It’s not honoring if we don’t take care of our bodies (physically or spiritually). Just going about our days, we can fool ourselves into thinking we are “clean” but we do have a way of knowing. All we have to do is seek God in prayer and allow Him to show us the “dirty things” that need swept away. Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

After we have allowed God to “sweep us clean” we have to make sure to fill that void that was once occupied by other things with Godly things. Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Just like with physical dirt or an evil spirit or practice, if we don’t replace it with something, it will just keep coming back. Matthew 12:43-45 “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left. ‘When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

Another aid in knowing when we’ve allowed “dirt/sin” to reside within us is to have a trusted friend who will hold us accountable and also encourage us to goodness. Do you have someone in your life like that? If not, I encourage you to ask God to send someone. It’s an immeasurable blessing (thank you PJS)!

Lessons I learned from Sneezy:  The next time I sneeze (and subsequent times), I hope to think about this message God gave me and search within (with God’s help) for any dirt that needs swept clean. How about you?