Light Removes Darkness

Matthew 12:44 Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.

Jesus is teaching here referring to an evil spirit leaving a man.  In the end the evil spirit returns and brings seven others with it, making the condition of the man worse off than he was. Immediately my reaction is, "What am I filling my life with? Am I simply attempting to remove, sweep clean and put in order my own life, without recognizing the need to replace those things with something that will keep my life full?" Here's the thing, when we attempt to rid ourselves of our bad parts, we are not capable of replacing those parts with good parts to keep the bad parts away.  We may look tidy and even feel pretty good about ourselves for a while, but inevitably the bad parts always seem to return.  If we want to remove bad parts permanently, we must turn those bad parts over to God and let the Holy Spirit infiltrate every part of our darkness. We cannot simply remove the darkness from our lives and expect it to be gone.  We have to let Jesus, the Light, remove our darkness and allow the fullness of the God to live in us through the work of the Holy Spirit.  God in, around, and through us; that is the goal.