Proverbs 23:26(NLT)
“O my son, give me your heart. May your eyes take delight in following my ways.”
A skeleton is the remains of a human body once it is drained of all life. Skeletons remind us of death, and if we were to hide one in our closet, it means we are probably trying to hide it for troubling reasons. The term, “a skeleton hiding in your closest”, is used to describe something about a person that they don’t want disclosed. They don’t want anyone to know about it because it would cause embarrassment or worse. Whether they are of the severe or mild kind, most of us in fact do have some skeletons in our closets, and we’ve been hiding underneath our shame for these things for a very long time. God gives us the absolute best way to handle these skeletons. We should never try to revive them, but we should put them to rest by surrendering them totally to Him.
In biblical days, there was a drastic form of punishment that was especially gruesome. A prisoner would be chained to the body of a dead man, and he would be forced to drag the decaying corpse with him wherever he went. In Romans 7, the Apostle Paul talked about the war between the flesh and the mind. This is a war that we all know too well, because we constantly wrestle to abstain from temptation as we renew our minds to God’s Word. Paul called himself a “slave to sin”, and if we continue to hide skeletons, this is our condition today. We have to train our minds to fight the good fight of faith so that we can triumph over anything that holds us back and walk in the victory of Christ.
Paul said that he always wanted to do what is right and good, and that he didn’t want to do wrong, but he did it anyway. He did the things he knew that God did not want him to do, and we do this as well. In Romans 7:24(NKJV), he said, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” This statement that Paul made reminds us of the gruesome punishment of walking around with the weight of a dead corpse. Our Heavenly Father sent Jesus Christ to free us from the weight of sin and death. Now we are new creations in Christ! We are free, and we are no longer bound by sin. However, some of us are still struggling to lay those sinful things down.
Not only do we carry the shame of some of our skeletons, but we pick them up and carry them around with us. We still indulge those old and toxic behaviors and attitudes, and therefore, we’re putting more and more links on the chains of oppression. This weighs us down and keeps us stuck to pieces of our past that need to be crucified and buried. God doesn’t want us to keep going back to old dead things. He doesn’t want us to be weighed down with old baggage, and through the Lord Jesus Christ, God offers us the way to rid ourselves of heavy baggage so we can travel light through life.
When our lives are not turning out the way we expect, and we feel helpless to do anything about it, we expect God to work miracles without our participation. We don’t want to change; we just want our situation to change. That’s not a mark of spiritual maturity. There’s no question that our powerful Heavenly Father is in the miracle-working business. He does exceedingly abundantly above anything we could ask or think, but sometimes we forget that order is a key element to His power. He is a God of order. We expect Him to move the obstacle out of our way when sometimes we’re our biggest enemy. The stuff we’re holding onto is most often our greatest obstacle. God doesn’t leave us in a lurch. He gives us an order to follow so that we can be delivered and blessed.
In Matthew 11:28-30(NLT), our Master Jesus tells us, “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.” A relationship is always a two-way street. Genesis 1:26 tells us straightforwardly that we are made in God’s image. He created us in His likeness and did so to facilitate a mutual fellowship and communion between Him and us. This isn’t a one-sided deal. We have a part to play as well. When we come to Jesus Christ with all our burdens and surrender them to him, he will take them on and give us rest. He then tells us to use our time of rest wisely and learn about him. He will teach us through the indwelling Holy Spirit if we are willing to learn. So, our responsibility to Christ is to give him our burdens and then learn more about him.
The psalmist prayed in Psalms 51:10 (ESV), “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” This is the level of humility and attitude of surrender that every born-again believer must have. We can’t make ourselves holy. God is the One who does this work through the Spirit of Christ working inside of us. And again, this isn’t a one-sided equation. God created us in such a way that we can and should partner with Him by having faith in our minds and hearts. We must acknowledge the skeletons, the dead things that we allow to still operate in us. We must pray, “Father, I give you full permission to come in and clean me up!” It’s not enough to think it, we must open our mouths and speak to God with honor, reverence, and faith in His power and sovereignty.
If we think about all the power and authority our Heavenly Father holds, we can very well know that if He wanted to intervene in our lives without our permission, He could do that; but that’s not who He is. God is a God of order and perfect love. 1Corinthians 13:5(NLT) tells us that the love of God in Christ “does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.” This is who God is. He’s not going to force us to surrender our skeletons and live a life of love, but He desires that every living person will do this willingly and seek His help. We must be convinced that surrendering to Him through Jesus Christ is the greatest thing we can do for our lives. We just need to come to Him with a humbled heart and a mind that is eager to know and put on more of Christ.■
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Surrender Your Skeletons”, written by KLizzie, edited by Reverend Fran Mack, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2022. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.