Create in me a clean heart, O God,and renew a right spirit within me. – Psa.51:10

I dislike coming up with journal and blog entry titles until after I am done writing. I never seem to know what I am going to write until after I have written it. I may start out with an idea or an impression but very rarely will my writing go in that direction and end there.

More often than not, when I sit down to write in my prayer journal or pray aloud, in the end I find myself in an unexpected place, examining a chamber of my heart that I forgotten about or had no intention of returning to but somehow the Lord leads me there and gently turns on the lights. He reveals to me what we are really studying and addressing this morning or evening. Before we can go any further in the direction I was intending to go in our conversation, we need to address this particular fear first, this worry, this bitterness, this misunderstanding, this anger, this heartache, this sin.

In many ways I am still such a child. I still have a tendency to hide things, to deny things, to pretend and color things up just a little bit.   Left to myself, I am afraid you would find me procrastinating, avoiding conflict,  shoving things under the bed and into the closet out of sight, straightening up only what another’s eye could see, surface stuff. I use to do that as a child, I hate seeing that I still do that as an adult, that I still need the accountability of an authority figure standing lovingly beside me in order to motivate me to clean my room entirely instead of merely rearranging and wiping only what can be seen.

And so like a child I sit beneath His light, as He reveals things I had buried, pushed aside or left alone hoping thy would simply resolve themselves given enough time and neglect and simply go away on their own,which never happens but I keep hoping it will.

I’m thankful for Jesus. I’m thankful for his presence and patience towards me when its time to do a little house cleaning. He doesn’t chide me about my heart being in this condition in the first place. He doesn’t criticize me about how I should be more mature and disciplined by now…and I probably should be in some areas. He doesn’t count and remind me of how many times we have practiced this routine already. He doesn’t sigh. He doesn’t get angry, frustrated or impatient with me. Instead He simply takes my hand leads me back and encourages me. He stays with me, silently watching as I begin pulling every thing out, re-examining it under his light trying to figure out where it really goes and what I need to do with it in order to put it away where it belongs and quiet often He allows others to assist me, my husband, my family, my friends.

Here is a little of what it looks like for me.

Confession. What’s really been bothering me lately? What do I have no peace over that my conscience keeps bringing to my attention as unresolved? Did I act righteously in this? Do I need to confess any sin, anger, or fear to someone? Do I need to ask for forgiveness? Did I injure someone by my words or actions? Am I avoiding something? Am I hiding something I need to confess and bring out to the light? (1 John 1:7) Why do I feel as if I need to hide this? Why do I not want anyone to see or know about  it? How can I bring it out to the light to be dealt with?

Confrontation. Am I holding a grudge, bitterness, resentment or unforgiveness against anyone? Do I need to go to my brother or sister and confess how badly they have grieved and offended me by their thoughtless or careless words and actions, or even their well intended ones?  What needs to be done to reach true peace, honesty and reconciliation to the best of my ability? Do I need to ask for forgiveness or give forgiveness?

I hate confrontation and will naturally avoid it if I can get away with it. These problems I most commonly shove under the carpet hoping they will disappear on their own… Jesus knows it and his eyes direct mine towards it. Deal with it now.

Crying. Some things just need to be brought out in order to be properly mourned over instead of burying. Some injuries, offences that can’t be righted just need to be cried over any time they begin to seep through. Nothing else will clean these reappearing stains but our tears. Not hiding, not burying, not drinking, not laughing, not numbing, not forgetting. Honest grief is the only proper response that is holy and righteous. Abuse. Loss. Separation. Abandonment. Injury.  Some things are meant to be cried over.

I don’t know why I hate crying so much and I have to confess I cry all the time; ask anyone who knows me. But I always fight against it, trying to appear strong,  unmoved or uncaring. But I often think, if I allow myself to cry over stupid things, how much more so should I cry over things that are worthy of tears? It shames me sometimes the things I do cry over vs.. the things I see and hear happening around me that I don’t cry over. How hard is my heart? I can only ask the Lord to continue to soften it and give me a heart of flesh to replace this heart of stone.

Prayer.  There are always some things when you are cleaning up, that you just don’t know what to do with. You can’t get rid of them. You know you need to deal with these issues, but you don’t know how and they don’t  seem to go away.  They end up in the problem time and time again. You hate to shove these problems to the side again but there isn’t any other place for them and you have no resolution for them. What do you do with these types of issues in your heart? Just shove them to the side again?

There is only one thing that can be done, once you have finished crying again and that is prayer.  Every time this item, this hurt, this grief,  this disappointment comes to your attention again, pray about it before you place it back down in your unresolved problem pile and then wait. Praying about it is dealing with it. Sometimes waiting is acting. Sometimes God brings such things that seem so absolutely unresolvable and hopeless to the surface just so we might pray again. It’s all we can do. Lord, make this go away. Lord, if you can’t make this go away then give me  the strength and the wisdom to deal with it. Lord, this is beyond me, I  really don’t know how to handle this. Lord, help. Lord heal me, please.

This truth came to me while I was at work. I have a stack of papers on the corner of my desk that I call my problem pile. Everything else has a home to go to. These are the issues I don’t know how to deal with, don’t have time to deal  with or simply don’t want to deal with.  Sitting in my problem pile, is their place; their temporary home. They have a tendency to stack up over time as I continue to shove these items to the side and work on the easier stuff. So about once a week, I have to discipline myself to sort through them, because  I never really want to and won’t unless I force myself to. I separate the ones I now have time to work on, resolve the ones that I  received my answers to in the past week  if I  hadn’t pulled them out already, and the rest… the rest that I still don’t know what to do with, and I don’t know how deal with, I pick them up and carry them to my bosses office and go over them with him.  I really don’t have any problems at this point, he does.

If I have any problem’s at work it’s only because I haven’t brought them to his attention yet and handed them over. Praying is much like this, we do what we can, we resolve the problems we  can, with the wisdom and strength God has so graciously provided to us and the ones we can’t, the ones that are too big for us we simply bring back to God.

In prayer, we talk them over with him, we lay our problems and issues down before Him. He  will then either gives us wisdom to deal with them, or ask us to wait while He steps in and deals with them.  When this is our answer, we wait. We can follow up periodically as needed by praying about it again and again, “Lord, I know this is in your hands and you are working on this according to your will, but this is causing me some real problems right now or I’m having trouble dealing with other stuff because of it. I really need an answer if you are able to provide me with one yet. I’ll keep waiting if that is what you want me to do. I thank you that you are handling this for me and that this your problem not mine.”  We don’t take the issues back from God’s desk as if He is inept and try to fix them ourselves.  That is insulting, mistrustful and only makes a bigger mess. They are now His problems and no longer ours. We have to let go, leave them with Him, until He brings them to our attention again or if we need to talk about it some more with him.  Then we start over again, pray again and see what He says, see if we still must wait or if a clear answer has come to us.  Prayer is the only way we can deal with problems we don’t know how to deal with.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “God spares from all eyes but his own that awful sight, a human heart. And could you and I but see our heart we should be driven mad so horrible would be the sight.” I believe that. I am often ashamed at the thoughts, affections and deeds that I have found in my heart while cleaning it. Old stuff. Ugly stuff.  It’s not easy cleaning a heart, without Christ it is completely impossible for it is the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all our sins. (1 John 1:7)  But oh the peace, the joy that comes afterwards! Fears, anxieties, lies, deceptions that once ruled it are driven far away as homeless and restless spirits seeking a new place to dwell now that they can find no resting place behind, no hiding place  within us. God’s light keeps them from returning. Sin is much like mold, it flourishes in the dark.  We must learn to walk in the light and not to hide things, not to seek refuge in a lie but only in the truth.

“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.  (Psa. 51:6 KJV) By confessing the truth of what is in our hearts, even though we don’t like how it appears, dealing with it through confrontation, crying and praying,  we can maintain a clean and healthy strong heart before God and others.