Cleansing the house (part 1)

In the past, due to my limited understanding, I did not see the need to cleanse the house (or temple). By cleansing the house, I am generally referring to getting rid of things, items or objects that do not please God from the house that could be due to idolatary images or objects being an open door for the demonic realm to enter. Due to an incident two days ago (which will be elaborated below), I would like to share some experiences of cleansing the house that took place in the recent months (which I could still remember): -

(1) On one Sunday service meeting, a well-intentioned sister from the church my family used to attend brought a bag of toys for my daughter. They are mostly used toys but they were all in good condition. The variety of toys included soft toys and a Barbie doll. Shortly after, my wife informed me that she began to have unpleasant dreams. We prayed about it and repented of any sins but the dreams kept coming. Then, one night my wife received a revelation that most of the toys in the bag should be thrown away. We prayed and concurred that the source of the evil dreams are somewhat related to and can be traced to those toys. So, we rebuked and bound the demonic spirit and removed those toys and items from our house.

(2) On another ocassion, my wife was attacked by unclean dreams again in her sleep for a few nights. This really puzzled us as we prayed and repented should there be anything in our lives that caused the enemy to launch it's attack but the dreams continued. Then, out of the blue, God spoke to my wife, telling her to get rid of a set of clothings that was given to her by a sister (who has worn those clothings before) due to the presence of unclean spirits in the sister's life. After my wife obeyed, the unclean dreams stopped.

The incident that actually initiated further house cleansing activities two days ago was when my wife and myself overheard my daughter's (2 years 9 months) baby talk. She was playing with a new pair of sandals which we have just purchased for her. Out of the blue, she uttered "I don't want to follow Jesus. I want to follow me." We were shocked! My wife asked her, "Who said that?" She pointed to the "hello Kitty" character painted on the sandals. Immediately, we rebuked and bound the evil spirit to leave in Jesus' mighty Name and threw away the new pair of sandals together with two other hello Kitty dolls and a hello Kitty balloon.

We felt that God wanted us to continue some house cleansing activities. On the same day, we did the following, as led by the Spirit of God: -

(a) We tore and threw away some of our honeymoon photos, especially all of those taken in the famed Grand Palace, Bangkok as we found there were many figurines of idols in those photos. A few months ago, my wife said she was prompted to throw those photos but I said proudly, there's no such need (as I was unwilling to part with those photos taken during such memorable times). I repented and as we threw away those photos, we bound the demonic spirits in Jesus' Name and rebuked them to leave.

(b)Then, we were led to get rid of some books. Interestingly, all these books appeared harmless per se but with the leading of the Holy Spirit, we threw away (1) my daughter's storybook titled "Puss in the boots"; (2) a thick Christian book which contained a few pages of images of idols, etc. (3) a few cooking books (in Chinese) which contained a lot of images of Thai-inspired images.

In short, the 2 simple lessons learnt: -
(1) not to simply accept items from people (despite the good intentions of people); and
(2) not to simply purchase things without asking God.

Hallelujah! God is so kind to reveal these things to us. This is in line with His heart's desire to have a Bride that is pure, spotless and without wrinkle. Not only is cleansing the house a prophetic act, God is setting forth His standards of holiness amongst His people. Let's be sensitive to His leading and obey His promptings.

(to be continued)