Create In Me A Clean Heart

Create in me a Clean Heart

By

Bishop Melvin L. Maughmer, Jr.

OPENING: - Luke 2:40 says “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him”. God desires for us to mature and become wise in Him. As we grow spiritually grow spiritually and mature in Christ, we gain wisdom for with maturity come wisdom. Wisdom I would say Biblically is the ability to discern what is true right and enduring and the understanding to apply that in our everyday life going deeper and far beyond mere intellect but encompasses a deep understanding and reverence for God, His ways, and His principles.

In the Original Glorious Church in Chillicothe Ohio, the church my father Pastored for many years and now my youngest brother is Pastor and the church I attended until I started Pastoring, there was a Senior Deacon named Deacon Doy McCrary. I remember about 25 years ago he made this statement “I repent everyday”. In my spiritually immature mind, I was how and why do you repent every day because like so many people I believed repentance is limited to something we do to receive salvation instead of an expression of who I am. We get stuck so often on repentance is the beginning process of salvation because Acts 2:38 says “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost”, so we think repentance starts us on the road of salvation, when in actuality true repentance is a characteristic of salvation more than and act or process.

WATCH THIS: - Romans 5:8 “ But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. That is salvation offered which produces within us the characteristic of repentance. Because of what He did for me I desire to turn from my wicked ways and follow Him. Repentance means changing your mind, soul, spirit, and our heart which is the seat of our will, intellect, and emotions so that our views, values, goals, ways, and thoughts are changed, and we live life differently.

It is through repentance that we agree and align with God and are determined to live in obedience and pleasing to God. The Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9-10 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings”. It is this reason that repentance is not just an act done once but a characteristic of who we are in God.

David said in Psalms 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me”.

Create in me a Clean Heart.

PRAYER

SCRIPTURE: - Psalms 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me”.

TRADITIONALLY: - There are 7 Psalms known as Penitential or Psalms of Repentance they are 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. These Psalms reflect the cry of deliverance, yes from sin but even more so a deliverance from the heavy, depressive, oppressive, and destructive guilt that comes from sin. So often the enemy is not out there in the world but is present inside, deep in the depths of our being where our emotions are rooted. We have all done, said, or thought something then had to deal with the guilt that followed, although the act may have been forgiven the guilt must still be dealt with.

Psalms 51 is a cry from that very place of guilt, a position that is caused by a self-broken relationship with God. It is a prayer of repentance that confesses not a few simple sins like I lied, or I slipped, but focuses on the sinful nature, o wretched man that I am[p . It brings understanding to the fact that the condition of sinful self is not just in need of forgiveness for a wrong done, but deliverance from myself. Deacon McCrary understood that fact, he understood that all that is in the world is the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life and it is these struggles we face literally from within and is the reason we must repent every day.

UNDERSTAND: - This struggles from within and the reason we must repent daily is not a salvation issue, we are not repenting to receive salvation, that we did already, this repentance is because we are in the flesh. Paul said in Romans 7:15, 19-21, 24&25 “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin”.