Psalm 51:10
When you desire truth in your innermost being, it will require some cleaning. As hard and as unpleasant as this may be, it is a necessary component to ensure that all unwanted contamination, impurities, and toxic waste can be eradicated completely. A heart that has had a thorough cleansing, a washing if you will, so that you are left feeling sparklingly fresh and ready to move on.
It’s take a concentrated effort to deal with “some of the stuff” of our past; unfortunately, there is not a handbook to guide us along the way. Nothing to keep us from consciously or unconsciously making the same learned mistakes of the past; stuff that hinders us from moving forward so that a healing process can begin. Yes, I am speaking of the heart. It can and does harbor, so many feelings that honestly, we may have thought we’ve dealt with but things arise that will prick our memory, an act, an occurrence, a conversation and we realize we are not yet free from that particular yoke of bondage.
David, in this passage knew he had an unclean heart, knew that he needed help to improve his state of mind; because he had resolved within himself that he couldn’t do it and was so upset that he literally begs God to fix it and to create in him a clean heart and most importantly the move on, to renew a right spirit within him; this is crucial because what’s the point of asking the Lord for a new and clean heart if we don’t get the right attitude to accompany it. It’s fruitless and we’ll find ourselves right back where we were in a state of needing to be cleansed.
Again, if we truly want to be free, we have to ask the Lord to look at us and the stuff that clogs up the heart, help us to see if we are harboring feelings of hurt and pain, bitterness, resentment, anger or animosity from our past, from someone in the church, someone in our family, and someone on the job, and so many other reasons. We will have to release it, and not revisit the circumstance again. We cannot allow it to continue to have power over us, otherwise, we are still bound and we are not yet free. If we are still bound by these things, we are not helping ourselves and we are not healthy, emotionally, physically and most definitely, not spiritually. We want God to renew, restore, refresh, and rejuvenate our heart; take out anything that is not like Him, remove the things we know about and the things that we thought were gone, help us to move forward so that we can effectively be a help to someone else. Moving into a place of joy and freedom where there is rest for our soul.
I was singing "won't He make you clean inside" when I woke up this morning. I've not heard that song in quite some time, but realized the Lord was going somewhere with this and of course, this scripture came to mine. I find myself quoting this passage regularly during prayer times because I want the Lord to cleanse me and see only the best in me, as I come before Him and honestly, you can’t be your best without first doing a self examination of what’s in need of being cleansed in our lives. Thank God for His mercies which are new and available to us every morning, which is food for thought today. Asking the Lord to create in me a clean heart and renew the right spirit in me… Amen?
Until the morning, be blessed,
Cynde