During the month of March, I am forming a bouquet of blog posts using a variety of “roses” that will be formed with these petals from the basket : (1) a quotation, (2) a daily verse, (3) a devotional thought, (4) a book dealing with that day’s topic, and (5) an idea to put into practice!

Petal 1: “We cannot make headway in seeking God without first tearing down the accumulated junk in our souls; rationalizing has to cease. We have to start seeing the sinful debris we hadn’t noticed before, which is what holds back the blessing of God.” —Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire

Petal 2: “Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He removed the foreign altars and the high places, smashed the sacred stones, and cut down the Asherah poles.” (2 Chronicles 14:2-3, NIV)

Petal 3: This past Saturday, I sliced some fat off of a piece of meat and accidentally dropped it down the opening into the garbage disposal, but because I was busy stirring something, I completely forgot about it—until I noticed a horrid smell coming from the sink this morning! Even though the offending piece of meat was out of sight, I had not discarded it completely. The same is true of our lives when we hold on to the debris of sin: our spiritual lives “stink” until we—like Asa did with the altars—remove the sin completely from our lives so that we can rejoice in the complete cleansing that God offers!

Petal 4: Though I recommended another of his books yesterday, I also highly recommend the very convicting and life-changing book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire: What Happens when God’s Spirit Invades the Hearts of His People, by Jim Cymbala.

Petal 5: This is a great day not only to purge our lives of the known sins we are clinging to but to also purge our closets. Set a timer for 15 minutes and rid your closet of any winter clothes you didn’t wear this past winter; then, bag them up and toss them, donate them, or sell them!