Clean to the Core
From Psalm 51 – 9 Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
E. Stanley Jones in In Search of Guidance draws an important distinction. "The voice of the subconscious argues with you," he says, "tries to convince you; but the inner voice of God does not argue, does not try to convince you. It just speaks and is self-authenticating."
He, then, is the Source of the steadfast spirit David craves in Psalm 51:10. Surface solutions won't do. We can be argued toward the right, convinced of the wrong. The persuasion of the conscience is only a temporary stopgap.
David himself is inspired to write of the insufficiency of merely dealing with the outgrowth or overflow of the sin nature. He can plead his way, he reasons, toward God hiding His face from iniquities. He might even convince the Almighty to exercise that might in a cleanup effort directed toward sin's consequences.
But even a cleanup effort with that knowledge and power behind is not enough. David presses in still further, pleads for still more, both abjectly humble and admirably audacious. Go back to the source of the problem, Lord, he reduces his gigantic ask to in Psalm 51:10. If I can ask you to overlook, he reasons, if I can ask you to clean me up, he builds momentum, I can ask You Who created the heart in the first place to make me a new one.
Do we persist in prayer to that point, or are we always and only presenting symptoms? Are we like King Saul, rather than addressing blood guilt before God, grasps Samuel's outward authority to help him keep up appearances before people? Do we, before an Almighty Audience, ask for just enough that is clean, just enough that is new, to fool people for a while in our string of disposable relationships?
Those empty relationships, writes Amy Layne Litzelman, are where an empty religion will betray itself. It's and how we interact with the people we see day after day, those who know us on our good days and are bad ones, at the height of our energy and when it crashes, that the STEADFAST spirit David wants will be in evidence. Because we don't have that in and of ourselves, anytime people notice a life fuel that doesn't burn hot and then sputter, we can attest to the complete newness, by grace, of God's work.
E. Stanley Jones in In Search of Guidance draws an important distinction. "The voice of the subconscious argues with you," he says, "tries to convince you; but the inner voice of God does not argue, does not try to convince you. It just speaks and is self-authenticating."
He, then, is the Source of the steadfast spirit David craves in Psalm 51:10. Surface solutions won't do. We can be argued toward the right, convinced of the wrong. The persuasion of the conscience is only a temporary stopgap.
David himself is inspired to write of the insufficiency of merely dealing with the outgrowth or overflow of the sin nature. He can plead his way, he reasons, toward God hiding His face from iniquities. He might even convince the Almighty to exercise that might in a cleanup effort directed toward sin's consequences.
But even a cleanup effort with that knowledge and power behind is not enough. David presses in still further, pleads for still more, both abjectly humble and admirably audacious. Go back to the source of the problem, Lord, he reduces his gigantic ask to in Psalm 51:10. If I can ask you to overlook, he reasons, if I can ask you to clean me up, he builds momentum, I can ask You Who created the heart in the first place to make me a new one.
Do we persist in prayer to that point, or are we always and only presenting symptoms? Are we like King Saul, rather than addressing blood guilt before God, grasps Samuel's outward authority to help him keep up appearances before people? Do we, before an Almighty Audience, ask for just enough that is clean, just enough that is new, to fool people for a while in our string of disposable relationships?
Those empty relationships, writes Amy Layne Litzelman, are where an empty religion will betray itself. It's and how we interact with the people we see day after day, those who know us on our good days and are bad ones, at the height of our energy and when it crashes, that the STEADFAST spirit David wants will be in evidence. Because we don't have that in and of ourselves, anytime people notice a life fuel that doesn't burn hot and then sputter, we can attest to the complete newness, by grace, of God's work.
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