I awoke this morning having experienced a dream that was a bit unusual. Without going into all the details, I was in a very dated place. The buildings looked like something out of a 1930’s movie. People were attired in fashions from eighty years ago. The style, methods of communication and personal interaction did not fit into our contemporary life. What I saw in the dream was the norm back in the day, but it was frustrating for me as a dream-visitor. 

In the dream, I was a composite image of a person, both within the Church and culture, who wanted to move forward with God into the next epoch of revival and reformation. The frustration I felt was because in the dream I realized this dated way of thinking and interacting with culture would be unable to keep up with the current realities of life or engage people in a way that could most effectively communicate the Gospel.

After rising this morning, I forgot the dream and headed to my computer to begin my morning writing ritual. A few minutes into my first cup of coffee, I began to sense a stirring about a coming move of God – a significant and life-altering change in our current reality. 

To engage in what is coming, we must be willing to change and become a people who can bring solutions and options not currently on the table. This will require that each of us be willing to unclutter our faith. If not, those with whom we interact will begin to feel like I felt in this dream when encountering an expression of faith that is encumbered and no longer able to carry the substance of Spirit-empowered change.

Clutter can begin to accumulate when we feel overwhelmed by life and stop pressing in for something more because we can barely handle the stress of the moment. It comes when we think our opinions are the only valid opinions in the larger conversations taking place in culture. When religious clutter is stored and stacked in the halls of our mind, we can appear to the world like an isolated hoarder fearful that the “good ole days” will be lost if we don’t hang on to everything from our past that no longer works.

It is time to unclutter our faith. Once we start removing the clutter, we can begin mopping the halls of our thinking. Uncluttering our faith is part of an on-going and never-ending spiritual process. It is the evidence of a mind being renewed for the glory of God.