A Clean Heart
Daily Old Testament Reading: Psalm 17, 35; 1 Samuel 27
Daily Focus Passage: Psalm 17
Believers must seek to approach the Lord with a clean heart. Each of us lives under the influence of the flesh and battle temptation and sin. As a result, we struggle to follow the Lord and often fall into a sinful life. Our hearts are stained before the Lord when our lives are marked by sin. As a result, we must seek the Lord for forgiveness and approach him with a clean heart. In Psalm 17, David speaks of needing a clean heart before the Lord.
WE MUST RECOGNIZE OUR DIRTY HEARTS
David cried out to the Lord to pay attention to his words. David asks that the Lord listen because his lips are “free from deceit.” David’s declaration means that he has dealt with the sin in his life and sought to be clean when approaching the Lord. The ability to be “free from deceit” happens because David first recognized his sin. Recognizing sin allows David to deal with the sin in his life and not allow it to continue to serve as a barrier between him and the Lord.
Likewise, we must recognize the sin that keeps us from being clean before the Lord. When we fail to evaluate our lives and neglect to deal with sin, we approach the Lord without a clean heart. This becomes an issue because sin is a separator before the Lord. Thus, we must strive to honestly assess our lives and identify the presence of sin to make the needed movement to be clean before the Lord.
WE MUST CONFESS OUR FILTHY SIN
David dealt with his sin by means of confession. Confession occurs when David owns his condition and makes the condition known before the Lord. Confession means that David did not neglect to deal with his sin. David did not attempt to justify his sin or ignore the presence of his sinfulness. Instead, the moment of confession acknowledges the presence of sin in David’s life and takes ownership of it.
We must seek to confess known sin. We must battle against neglecting sin by justifying or ignoring our sinful state. We must come to the place of owning the sin in our lives and confessing that sin before the Lord. We must confess this before the Lord because our sin ultimately goes against the Lord and his kingdom. Thus, we must seek to come before the Lord with a clean heart with the act of confession.
WE MUST SEEK FORGIVENESS
David not only would confess his sin, but David would ask the Lord for forgiveness. The Lord extends forgiveness because of his love, mercy, and grace. When genuine forgiveness is sought, the Lord grants forgiveness, providing David with the forgiveness he does not deserve and withholds the punishment he does deserve. The forgiveness provides a cleaning of the heart that allows David to approach the Lord in purity.
We must confess and ask for forgiveness. Once we own our sin through confession, we must come before the Lord and seek forgiveness. We ask the Lord to extend our forgiveness because of his deep love for us, mercy, and grace. When we ask for forgiveness, we seek the Lord to extend his mercy to us, the holding back of the judgment we deserve, and his grace to us, providing us with the forgiveness we do not deserve. This provides the avenue to approach the Lord with a clean heart.
We must desire to approach the Lord with a clean heart. This approach occurs as we recognize the presence of sin in our lives and our desire to deal with this sin through confession and forgiveness. When we honestly assess our lives, we find that sin plagues us. As we identify this sin, do we attempt to justify and ignore it, or do we seek to deal with it?
