Thursday, October
5, 2017
How can I know all the sins lurking in my
heart? Cleanse me from these hidden
faults. Keep your servant from
deliberate sins! Don’t let them control
me. Then I will be free of guilt and
innocent of great sin. May the words of
my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my
rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:12-14(NLT)
Words and
thoughts do matter. It is from the heart
that all the weighty matters of life issue.
What’s down in the heart eventually comes to the surface – for good or
evil. And most often, that which divides
and separates us as brothers and sisters in humanity can be linked back to the “words”
swirling around deep in our souls.
For instance,
in the Black Lives Matter
movement the premise is that white persons, particularly those wearing blue,
persecute innocent
persons of color. Such an assumption
breaks down with the word innocent. In the same way, the knee-jerk movement of Blue Lives Matter wobbles on
the false assumption that the hearts and inner thoughts of white (or any) law
enforcement persons are somehow innocent.
What does
our Creator say about our hearts?
“The human
heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Jeremiah 17:9(NLT)
As the
Scriptures say, “No one is righteous— not even one. Romans 3:10(NLT)
The
Psalmist, King David, understood himself.
As a human who was well-connected to his Creator, the shepherd boy-turned-king of Israel,
understood his life was out of control.
Above all else, wealth, fame, power, and personal strength (David’s God
had given him all that and more) David craved innocence. And so he prayed not for justice or freedom…David
prayed for cleansing. In this psalm he
prayed that God would so cleanse him that the words of his mouth and the very
thoughts of his inner being would match up and be pleasing; he wanted the God
of holiness and righteousness to give him clean words and thoughts that really
mattered.
Many people
in our culture do not understand this as the most prescient need in our culture
today. Our biggest void in the battle
for humans living together in peace, harmony and fairness is not more laws,
regulation or stricter enforcement. The
biggest battle is the eternal, internal struggle for righteousness in the human
heart. Because once the inner person is
freed from his lust, anger, greed, haughtiness, envy, pride and gluttony he is
not only fit to live with…he is then fit to love.
For You Today
Your words
do matter. And they matter first and
foremost when they’re uttered to God, honestly, without agenda. And when God cleans up those words and inner
thoughts, they will do the most good in loving your neighbor as yourself[2].
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