Daniel 7 / 1 John 1 / Psalm 119:153-176 / Proverbs 28:23-24
I’ve been pondering the difficulty of being open and honest with others. I’m not saying it’s difficult to be truthful and not to lie; I’m talking about being willing to be vulnerable. It’s a scary thought for another human to know who we are deep on the inside. Sometimes we don’t even know the depths of what hides in our hearts; only God knows that darkness.
Even those of us, who try to live a life that pleases God, are painfully aware of our shortcomings. All of us have areas where we miss it, blow it, or honestly sin, according to scripture. Lying, cheating, stealing, anger, and many other things can lie hidden in our hearts without us being fully aware. Yes, even little white lies are sins. Usually, anything we do to protect ourselves and to hide from others gets us into trouble.
What if we lived in a world where everyone lived honestly? That sounds like a great idea until we consider that we could not fathom the things we would hear and know about those around us. If the honesty of others was toward positive traits, that would be great, but if we had to hear about the evil in the hearts of others it would be overwhelming.
There is One who sees every piece of our hearts, even the ones of which we are unaware, and He loves us perfectly despite our weaknesses. He sees that we lie to make ourselves look better to others. He sees that we cheat on our taxes, or that we secretly hate others. He sees that we avoid our responsibilities because we are either too lazy or too tired.
What if we began by being willing to be honest with God? He won’t reject us. As a matter of fact, we will receive forgiveness and healing for the terrible things hidden in our hearts. As usual, I have a few verses that have sparked my thinking in this direction.
1 John 1:8-10: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.” The New Living Translation, (NLT).
These three verses, using very direct speech, may seem harsh or scary to us. But if we’ll accept them as truth: there is freedom hidden in these words. What would it look like to live in the truth? What would it feel like to have our sins forgiven? What would it feel like to be cleansed from all wickedness?
I guess it would be a little like going through a car wash for the soul. We would be all squeaky and shiny! I want that! I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself that this sounds great, that is until the next day when you stumble into sin yet again. What then? Rinse and repeat and become that shiny new person all over again.
Even if we must come to God daily (which we should) to ask Him to search our hearts to find the areas of sin, I believe it is worth the effort so that we can live feeling guilt-free. We can’t shock or surprise God with our thoughts and actions. He experienced all our sin on the cross and He gave His life to pay the cost of what we have done and will do.
Let’s simply receive that payment as a gift and ask God to daily put us through that car wash of the soul!
