“let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in
full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a
guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10:22
This past month, the Lord has been doing a major
work of cleansing my heart. When I
received Jesus into my heart many years ago, I became a new creation according
to 2 Corinthians 5:17. On that Sunday
morning of October 21st 1995, things became new and the old was
gone. When bible says the old is gone
and behold all things have become new, what does that actually mean? Does it mean that all of a sudden I have now
been completely cleansed/sanctified? I
don’t think so. What happened was
justification (I received a right standing with God) but the work of
sanctification had just begun. As I was
thinking about it, the Lord gave me a picture of a house whose old tenant moves
out and a new tenant comes in. Jesus
became the new tenant of my heart but he had a lot of cleaning to do. When I first moved into the house I live in
right now, I did some major cleaning but even at this point there still areas I
am yet to clean. When it comes to
cleaning a house, there are areas we clean almost every day like the
kitchen. Then there are others we clean
maybe once or twice a week. Then things
like windows get cleaned only after so many months. And depending on how much dust there is
around, some areas get dirty as soon as they are cleaned. That is the same with our hearts.
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| At the National Museum of the Royal Kingdom of Cambodia |
Salvation
(justification, sanctification and glorification) is a work of grace. It is not by works lest any of us should
boast. Yet Paul tells in Philippians
2:12 to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Then he goes on to add that it is God who
works in us to will and act according to his good purpose. That for me has meant that I yield my heart
to the Holy Spirit to do the work of cleansing (sanctification). As I was praying the above scripture this
past month, the Lord did more than I had imagined. He did more than cleanse me from a guilty
conscience but went deeper into the recesses of my heart and shed light on
things I needed to deal with in his presence – things I would have never
thought of on my own. Here I was
concerned about gaining more language vocabulary and learning more about the
Khmer culture and never anticipating that the Lord will do a thorough ‘work’ in
my heart. There are issues and burdens
and attitudes and hurts and hidden faults, some of which I had carried from
childhood, which I had to lay before the Lord.
I know the Lord is not finished with me and I am so humbled even as I
write this because I know this could not happen apart from his grace. I am reminded of David’s prayer in Psalm
51:10-13 where David was praying for a clean heart and in verse 13 he says
‘then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to
you.’ David knew that before he could
teach transgressors the ways of the Lord, he needed his heart to be clean and
his mind to be made pure and his joy of salvation to be restored.
- Pray that God will continue to equip me mentally, spiritually, linguistically, physically and emotionally for that work he has called me to in Cambodia.
- Pray for the Cambodia. Pray for rain. They are predicting a drought this year. Also, pray for the rain of the Holy Spirit, that the knowledge of Lord will cover Cambodia even as the waters cover the sea.
