March 6
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.” (Psalm 139:23-24)
Yesterday we spoke of the sad state of not wanting to know about our sins and not wanting to repent of our sins. I know I have certainly been guilty many times of wanting to cover up, minimize, discount, and deny my sins; and looking back I think that this was true of me for years without me even being conscious of the fact that I was doing so. Don’t get me wrong, I was going to church and trying to serve the Lord the best I knew how, but I didn’t want to fully give up all of my sins. Just some of the more obvious ones. But there were some I didn’t want to fully give up, and others I was not even aware of .
It is a natural reaction to try to justify ourselves and deny wrong doing. Adam tried to blame both Eve and God when he was confronted with his sins, and we do the same today. I think it takes a more mature Christian (or at least a humble and submissive Christian) to really want to be completely transparent with God and cry out to Him to expose and remove all sinful, hurtful ways from them. It takes guts and fortitude to be willing to truly face our sins. Our anxieties, our insecurities, our offensiveness, our uncontrolled angry outbursts, our ungracious and critical thoughts and comments about others, our dark and negative outlook on life, our lack of faith in God, our lust and greed, our worldliness, our contentiousness, our laziness, our indifference to the suffering of others, our lack of love for God and others, our complete and utter selfishness at times, our sense of entitlement, and many, many more sins could be named. These are hard to face and even harder to eliminate from our character. It is much easier to simply wish them away and make excuses for them when they become too obvious to ignore any longer.
When I really take time to reflect and ask the Lord, “What sins do You see that I should confess and forsake?” I end up going deeper, sometimes a lot deeper, than I might want to. When I pray this prayer, something usually always comes to mind that is not right, something I need to confess and ask the Lord to help me correct. I strongly urge everyone reading this to make it a regular habit, at least weekly, to ask the Lord to show you your sins and hurtful ways. It can be scary and difficult to get to the point of really wanting the Lord to show us every sin and take all of our sins away. But so happy is the person who makes this their single heart goal. No sin, period. No exceptions.
If we really want to have a completely clear conscience before God and repent of ALL of our sins, not just the sins we want to give up but all the sins that God wants us to give up, we must develop the habit of honestly and carefully allowing the Lord to examine us and convict us of sin. That is one of the wonderful roles of the Holy Spirit, our Wonderful Counselor. We must develop the habit and mindset of asking Him to show us our sin and remove any hurtful way from us. We must ask Him to show us not only the sins to confess but how we ought to repent from them. Our repentance can be so feeble at times, and the flesh, no matter how sincere we are, is weak. We have to have His help and grace to see our sins and repent of them. Even the desire to do so is a gift from Him, I believe, and one that we should seek in prayer regularly.