Clean Heart

Create in me a clean heart. I ran across this verse yesterday and thought, I know God can do any thing and all things, but that clean heart deal would take a lot of work. I have such a tendency to hold on to thoughts that are generated from my heart that don't fall anywhere near the "clean" category about situations and even worse, some folks. I compare it to trying to clean those baked on dishes that I have to scrub and scrub and keep on scrubbing to get the baked on residue to be released. Success requires true and continued effort from me. I can work with the dishes but I am convinced that the heart scrubbing is not possible without God's intervention.

When I see things that are happening and people behaving in a manner that does not line up with the truth and the Godly integrity that I have been taught, I submit to thinking in ways that I know are not seeped in God's ways either. For I am flawed just like the rest. My errors are just baked in a different oven. But it made me think, do I accept living within the bounds of what I know is wrong? Do I try to ignore the very presence of evil? Am I living about it but trying to not live within it? Do I disregard the fact that being in the very midst of it is tainting my thinking/behavior? Or do I ask God to keep scrubbing my heart and recondition me to stay within the bounds of his ways in spite of situations and people who are before me or surround me?

God's way is that of truth and love, there is no escaping that fact. But it is sure is hard to stay focused on that when the heat is turned up and baked frustrations and anger continue to mount in argumentative dispute brought on by distorted applications of what is required of us as Christians. We tend to embrace our natural inclination to please ourselves instead of God. We knowingly make the call to submit to self in spite of consequences that are bound to be generated through our choices, and we are asking for
trouble time and time again. And what we often do not take into account is that our choices so many times effect many more people that ourselves.

So this begs the question, "how do I get freed up from this pattern of self motivated submission?" And though the answer is simple; ask God for forgiveness for your grievances and sins and then ask him to give you the strength and courage to dismantle your desires and substitute them for His". It is a continued process that has to be consistent, for it to be effective. This "good for a few days" commitment holds no chance for God's change or transformation. For God is a God of long tern, long standing commitment. And isn't that what I am looking for, a long lasting change and a created new heart. Before you go on, think on this a minute. I had to, and I had to ask myself: Do I really desire to change? Or am I content to stew in my own baked own rubbish that I have cooked up? For the heart is the springboard for thoughts and thoughts the springboard for actions. True transformation begins with a clean heart.

Now back to dirty dishes for a minute. Sometimes instead of scrubbing, I just squirt in the soap, splash it about a bit in the water, let them soak and after a while the residue is softened and the dish is easily able to be cleaned. Guessing that maybe that is the same way God works with us. When we soak in his word, and accept the fact that we are filled with the cleansing agent of the blood of his son, it is then that we are tendered to be cleansed by the Holy Spirit. If we truly desire for our hearts to be transformed, and we ask God, in sober humility, to be forgiven for our sins, he will faithfully lead us to embrace his ways, and renew within us a new and right spirit.

Psalm 51:10
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Dear Lord, I am so like that baked on dish. I need to soak in your word and seek your forgiveness on all fronts; my thinking, my actions, my judgments etc. Please create in me a clean heart and put a new and right spirit within me. Amen

Praise God wherever you are and whatever situation He has allowed you to be in . . . His glory will shine through!

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