Create In Me a Clean Heart

“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 21^st 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.

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 I will continue to let the water of his word to cleanse me.  Pray that God himself, the God of peace, will sanctify me through and through. That my whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thes 5:23)

• 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.