Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Tanya Wilmuth.

So today I just titled this episode at the top when I was working on it, Cleaning House.

That made me think of one of my favorite novels that I read

whenever I was younger and then I used to teach it when I was a teacher. Bear with me, I promise

this is only like 30 seconds this part. If you don't like novels, just stay. We're not going to

sit in this very long. But maybe you have experienced or read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

In that, there's a character. Oh, maybe you've watched the movie. There we go. See? Okay, so

great expectations. There's a character named Miss Havisham, and she lives in what was a once

beautiful mansion called Sat's House. But after her heartbreak, she shuts herself away, and the clocks in the mansion

are stopped, the furniture is draped in cobwebs, the wedding feast sits rotting on the table,

and it's untouched for decades. What should have been a place of life and celebration becomes

like a museum of decay, because it was just neglected, left untouched. In the same way,

busyness, heartache, success, even just the passage of time, these are all outside happenings

that can leave our hearts unattended, kind of like Satas House, like that mansion.

These outside factors impact the attention we give to the conditions of our own hearts,

and ultimately, our relationship with God. Left and attended for me looks like missing out on

corporate worship. It looks like missing out on time in my Bible.

My eyes get less in tune with God's mercies in my life. My heart grows more critical and

self-righteous. My mind grows more comfortable living out my own story. Left and attended, our

hearts can resemble Ms. Havasam's house.'s house neglect leaves a mark it's not neutral but we don't need a fresh coat of paint we need the deep renewal that only god's spirit can bring today we're talking about a neglected temple and this is the image that we see in secondnd King's Chapter 12. King Joash looks at the temple

of the Lord and he finds that it's in complete disrepair. The place that was meant for God's

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