The farm house on our Iowa farm had a cellar under part of it. I wouldn’t call it a basement; it was a cellar. In my estimation a cellar is a significant step down from a basement — even a bad basement — and this was a cellar. I remember going down the creaky wooden steps, stooped over so that my head wouldn’t hit the beams above me. Darkness and dampness surrounded me like a musty, suffocating blanket. Even a light bulb seemed unable to chase away the darkness: shadows stubbornly clung in the corners and in the nooks and crannies. The block walls were deteriorated and dirty, making it difficult to determine where the cellar ended and the earth began. Spiders called it home. I always wondered how many mice lurked there — and maybe even rats. It was a scary place; if the boogeyman had a birthplace, that cellar on our Iowa farm was quite likely it. Needless to say, no one but our family ever went down there, and we didn’t go there very often.

Basements are better than cellars, but even basements can be messy, dangerous places. Basements are where we stash things that we don’t want other people to see. It’s the last place we try to clean up; when we hear that company’s coming we usually don’t say, “Quick, straighten up the basement!”

There can be dangerous flammable things in a basement, not to mention the mice! There’s usually a lot of stuff that should be cleaned out and thrown away, but often it just accumulates down there. There may also be boxes of memories and memorabilia that prompt both good and bad memories. However, we usually must go to the basement when something goes wrong. If the furnace goes out or the hot water tank stops working, you go down to the basement.

When people are looking for a house to buy they check out the basement in great detail. It’s the foundation of the house, and the plumbing, heating, and electrical box are usually there. It’s important to check out the basement.

There’s a hidden-away area of our lives that has many of the characteristics of a basement or cellar. In this sermon series we’re talking about the battles we face in life. The reality is that a significant portion of what makes our lives difficult lies hidden away and out of sight. We have deep-seated, painful memories and experiences and also memories of past sin or the struggle with current sin that we’re managing to keep hidden. The way we handle our lives is significantly determined by the way we deal with our hidden places.

As the cellar or basement is the base of a house, so our souls are the base of us. The much-respected Christian author Dallas Willard wrote, “To refer to someone’s soul is to say something about the ultimate depths of his being. . . . The soul is the most basic level of the individual.” (Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice, p.139)

JESUS AND HIDDEN PLACES
Jesus had some harsh words for some of the religious leaders of His day, who didn’t tend to the hidden areas of their lives — their souls. He said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Matthew 23:25-28) Obviously the inside of us that people can’t see is very important to Jesus!

Dallas Willard observed, “One of the greatest obstacles to effective spiritual formation in Christ today is our failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of the human situation. We must start from where we really are.” (Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice, p.34)

It’s always easier to see the faults in others than in ourselves, but ironically, we can’t change other people; we can only change ourselves. That’s why the reminder from George MacDonald, a writer of a couple of generations ago, makes so much sense. (You have to get past the old-style English, but the message is worth grasping.) “Foolish is the man, and there are many such men, who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort by setting the world right, by waging war on the evils around him, while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, his first business — namely his own character and conduct.” (quoted in A Resilient Life, by Gordon MacDonald, p.63)

THE EXAMPLE OF KING DAVID
King David was a great example of a man who was willing to look at himself honestly. He had done some things that were really wrong. He was the king and he had a harem of wives, but he had an adulterous relationship with the wife of one of the men in his military. The woman’s name was Bathsheba, and her husband was Uriah; Bathsheba became pregnant with David’s child. To make a long story short, David made sure that Uriah was put at the front of the battle lines where he would be killed. After Uriah’s death David was free to marry Bathsheba.

Nathan the prophet came to King David and told him a story about two men: one was wealthy and one was poor. The wealthy man had many sheep, but when he needed to entertain a guest he had the only lamb of his poor neighbor killed and prepared for the meal. Nathan asked David’s opinion of this. Of course David was angry; how could the wealthy man take the poor man’s pet lamb that his children adored?

Then Nathan drove home the point: “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:7) He proceeded to remind David that the king had everything, including many wives, yet he took the one and only wife of one of his soldiers and then made sure that the life of the soldier was taken!

Normally it’s not wise to call a king on the carpet as Nathan did. We can imagine that he must have had a tense moment as David considered Nathan’s statement: “You are the man!” David could have ordered Nathan’s execution. However, “Then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’” (2 Samuel 12:13) David was willing to go to the deepest place of his heart and see that there was sin there. He had the courage and honesty to see himself as he really was. David later wrote his psalm of confession, Psalm 51, in which he prayed, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, . . .” (Psalm 51:10)

As despicable as David’s sin was, God honored the fact that he was willing to see himself as he really was. In fact, the Bible records God’s affirmation of David, which was said about no other person. God said that he was “a man after my own heart.” (Acts 13:22)

God is interested in our interior lives. When we invite Him to live within us, He doesn’t want to dwell in the guest room that’s made up specially and nicely for company. He moves into the basement! That’s where He wants to live: where we need the most changing, the most cleaning up from sins of thought and attitude, and the most healing of bad memories. Those things in the basements of who we are can rise like carbon monoxide fumes from a broken furnace that infiltrate the whole house.

God looks the most at our hearts and minds, the interiors or basements of our lives. On a positive note, this is also where He can find His greatest pleasure with us! That was true with King David, as is shown in another story about him.

King David was one of the world’s greatest military leaders and one of the world’s greatest kings, yet at the end of his life he was deeply disappointed that he hadn’t been able to accomplish his greatest dream: to build a magnificent house of worship for God. However, it wasn’t meant to be: his son Solomon would carry out the dream. At the end of his life King David held a grand celebration to mark the transition of the kingdom to his son Solomon. In the presence of everyone David said to his son, “And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. . . . Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary. Be strong and do the work.” (1 Chronicles 28:9-10) David wanted his son to show wholehearted devotion to the Lord, and we should aim for that in our own lives.


Later Solomon reminisced about his father David: “But the Lord said to my father David, ‘Because it was in your heart to build a temple for my Name, you did well to have this in your heart.’” (1 Kings 8:18) David didn’t get to build the temple for the Lord; however, because it was in his heart, in the eyes of God it was as good as if he had built it!

As a young man David was overlooked as the likely candidate to be king by Samuel, who was sent to the sons of Jesse to anoint the new king. Samuel checked out all the other sons, but none of them had God’s confirmation. The new king was young David! The Lord said to Samuel, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

David’s life from start to finish shows that God is captivated by a person’s heart. God is most interested in our interiors: the basements of the houses of our lives!

LORD, TRANSFORM MY DARK PLACE!
The Lord wants to dwell and do His work at the hidden centers of our lives, that part of us where our deep pain and hurt of the past is packed away, where we hide our favorite sins, that part of us that ultimately causes us our greatest grief. God wants to clean house in that part of us, tossing things out and making things livable.

We’ve all seen “before and after” pictures of basements. They’re remarkable, aren’t they? What was before a trashy, embarrassing, and not-good-for-much-of-anything part of the house is transformed into something beautiful and livable! That’s what the Lord wants to do with us!

The things that are often important to us, and which we perceive as important to others, aren’t that important to God. We want to succeed; we want a nice house, a great job, a good-looking body, or success at some ministry. We want to feel that we’ve accomplished something. David didn’t get the temple built for the Lord but the Lord was as pleased with him as if he had, because his heart was in the right place! Outward results aren’t nearly as important to God as the inward reality.

Our inward reality is far from perfect, so we’d rather not go to the basements of our lives. We’re afraid to look at ourselves honestly for fear we’ll see things that are despicable — because they are! However, God is willing to forgive us! David experienced this, and he prayed in that famous Psalm 51 prayer of confession “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)

In the battle of life the real enemy, the ultimate boogeyman, is lurking in the basement! Invite Jesus down there! Pull out the ugly sin and hand it to Him — and because you humbly hand it to Him, He’ll haul it out. Show Him the box of hurting memories; He’ll look at them with you and explain how He can use them for His glory and your good. Show Him the dreams that never happened, and He’ll pat you on the back and tell you that it was the thought that counts: you were called to be faithful, not necessarily successful. He’ll take some freshly-placed object down there and say, “Let’s get rid of this before it becomes a permanent fixture.” He’ll look around and say, “I have some ideas about how we can make this livable.” Invite Jesus into the darkest area of where you live, and He’ll begin His amazing process of transforming it!