Preparing My Heart and Mind
Psalm 51:9-17 Amplified Bible (AMP)
9 Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my guilt and iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right, persevering, and steadfast spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from Your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13 Then will I teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted and return to You. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness and death, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness (Your rightness and Your justice). 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. 16 For You delight not in sacrifice, or else would I give it; You find no pleasure in burnt offering. 17 My sacrifice [the sacrifice acceptable] to God is a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart [broken down with sorrow for sin and humbly and thoroughly penitent], such, O God, You will not despise.
One of the blessings and curses of being who I am is that I will replay any situation that I am in good or bad over in my mind to see if I acted or said anything inappropriate or if I brought shame upon my Heavenly Father. My mother says I am hardest on myself, which I would have to agree with. I have a tendency even when I know I was perfectly within my right to say something, evaluate a situation or even feel a certain way, I am always asking did I do it in a way that God would be pleased with or not, were my words seasoned with grace, and mercy instead of anger and malice? Were my actions, ones that identified my relationship with Christ because I acted not in maturity and integrity or did my actions cause those who encountered me to question that relationship because of immaturity, malice and anger? Did I ultimately attract or repel people? I understand and have long come to understand that not everyone will like me, and I have come to be okay with that because, I am uniquely who God made me, not who I made me or situations and circumstances have created me to be and they are uniquely who they are, but I always want to be in a place or posture where I do not, cause them to think that I disrespected them as a creation of God, or I have intentional belittled, hurt, disregarded their concerns or damaged them. I have learned we will not like everyone because of their attitudes, behaviors, habits and methods of communicating but everyone we are instructed and commanded to love by God. Hence my evaluation of my words, actions, and behaviors, and my need to ensure that I have not given an appearance that is shameful or contrary to my relationship and rights standing with God my Father
I have learned a necessary part of my living is asking God to create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit. Our emotions can often get the best of us and lead us to be way out of God’s will and way out of His way. I find that by evaluating my words, behaviors and actions and not being in a place of condemnation it keeps me broken before the Almighty and He ultimately is the one that I must please, and be in right relationship with. I understand that no matter what I say and do in the presence of some individuals, they will always respond in a place of anger, resentment, hostility and judgment because of their own internal issues and often lack of a love relationship with God, but we have to understand that no matter how they react or respond we have a responsibility to be in a place with God that sends a message that our heart and mind are ready for Him to inspect, ready for Him to reside in and ready for Him to send us into arenas that others will never go. As with David, God’s ability to move Him into the palace from the fields was based upon David’s humility and desire to be right with God. David was not perfect, and he had his issues, and made his mistakes, but his ultimate desire was always to get back in connection with God and to be right with Him and to have his life be worship towards God.
Interesting enough, many people will never identify that their life is worship and a service to God that will deploy them into service to others, as I had not, always done. But it is when we come into the knowledge that truly our life is not our own, we get to enjoy it, but it is really not about anything else but about service to God, and abiding in His will, we will do more preparation of our heart and mind, to ensure that wherever we find ourselves we are doing it the way God asks us to, we are treating people that way that God wants us to, and we are talking to people in a way that pleases God, and not our right to be right or our emotions. Preparing our heart and mind only benefits us and gives us the advantage that others lack when it comes to be in right standing with God!
No comments:
Post a Comment