About DCD

We all make plans. I make plans. I had the next ten years of my life worked out. It seems, however, that God is taking me on a slightly different journey than I would ever have expected. So this blog is not about my dreams, but it is about the milestone moments that work together to shape me into the person God has called me to be. Join me on this Journey.

Sunday 4 January 2015

Purity Hurts

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
Psalm 51:10-11

     Right now you will be seeing many "Happy New Year" blog entries with resolutions and encouragement and optimism for the year to come. I suppose in a way this is one of those. I recently heard a pastor say that we all begin a new year by looking backward for wisdom, and forward in hope for our future. There is something exciting about a fresh start with new goals and new aspirations. Many times, if you are a follower of Christ, we use this time to commit to a more diligent effort in reading the Word of God or spending time in prayer, or telling people about our faith. These are all good goals to have. Yet somehow, the vast majority of us reach the middle of the year and look back at the past six months, and then we feel shattered because we started strong, yet we are at that moment perhaps the furthest from God that we feel we have ever been. Can you relate to that hopeless feeling?
     I'm going to throw an idea out there. I believe the reason we end up at this hopeless point is because we started without taking care of our hearts first. It is so easy to make big plans to advance our Faith, yet we often forget to do the simplest thing - and that is to ask God to purify our hearts. 
     How many times have we quoted Psalm 51, and yet our words are empty? How often do we really ask God to cleanse our hearts? To truly make us pure and holy, blameless before Him? I think the big problem is that we know the consequence of asking such a thing. We know that when we ask God to create in us clean hearts, He is faithful to do just that, and that means knocking down our pride, refining us, melting us, shaping us, dredging up all the ugliness of our human disposition and cutting it away. Psalm 51 even addresses this: "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, That the bones You have broken may rejoice." The cleansing hurts. It crushes us, grinds us down, it lays our pride shamelessly on the ground and we are renewed, our spirits are made right before God. 
     Now I would propose a question. Are you willing to go through that cleansing, that painful but freeing process where God Himself purges our iniquities from within us?
     My prayer this year is that God would purify my heart, and that that would overflow into my daily interactions with people. Once again in Psalm 51 it says: "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You." This is not something I can do. It is only by God's grace and might that my heart will be cleansed, and even then He will continue to uphold me and speak through me to those who are unaware of His incredible mercy. Would you join with me, brothers and sisters, and ask our Heavenly Father to purify our hearts, to purge us of our transgressions so that we are not tempted to walk this walk in our own strength? It is only by God's unending power that we can make it through our earthly journey before we meet with Him in our true home.

"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin."
Psalm 51:1-2