Laid Bare!

Laid Bare!

Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart; Test me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way. PSALM 139:23‭-‬24 AMP

To search a heart thoroughly is to examine it intimately. It is like an invasion of privacy, but where is the privacy when it is the owner and creator of the heart that is doing the search? Unless I plan on deceiving my own self, it is clear that hiding anything will not work. Sounds a bit funny that a mortal man is giving an immortal God permission over His own creation but that is how God has always worked. He won't force you to give anything up, but you have got to do it by yourself.

The heart is the seat of all I am- it is the seat of understanding; the place where allegiances are formed and from where all other pursuits and priorities flow out; to test a man is to investigate him, to try him to see what is in him, to examine thoroughly. What has been made clear in today's extract is God is able to show me who I am because He is the only one who knows who I am, but I have got to come to Him by myself. Sin has been the one and only barrier to all that God wants to do in and through me, and until He deals with the root and fruit of sin in me, there is a limit to what He can do in and through me.

If I will be honest with myself, can my life and heart stand up to God's intimate search in this manner? Unfortunately, it is the only way I can be fit for His use and worthy of eternity at the end of this present earthly life. If God cannot trust my heart, how does He entrust treasures into my hands? If sin has not been fatally dealt with in me, how does God entrust the eternal into my hands? As He is an eternal God, his eye is always on the eternal and all He does now is working towards that eternal end. I cannot afford not to key into the eternal plans of God, if my life is to make impact this side of eternity.

As always, the choice of surrender is mine to make, while I am still on this side. The time comes when the decision of eternity will be taken away from me, and will be based on my prior surrender to Jesus. What is your present status? His time of favour is here.