circumstances and sin

"Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom." - Ps 51:6

I have continued on this journey through the inmost chambers of my heart and I must say, things are not looking pretty. After last Tuesday's message, I have been stirred and the Lord, through a series of dreams and circumstances, He has shown me how truly wicked my heart's ways are, but that in that darkness, He still desires me and He will complete the work He has started in me.

"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain it."

-Ps 139:6

Often times, we justify our sin by our pain and our hurt. We convince ourselves that He knows our hearts and knows what has happened to us, therefore, He understands why we're unforgiving and bitter, why we drown ourselves in drugs and alcohol or romance and sex. He knows why... He understands... He sees our heart.

This is a fact. God does see our heart. Actually, God sees the whole picture. He has "searched us and known us" (Ps. 139:1). "He has understood our thoughts from afar." (Ps. 139:2). In fact, He is "intimately acquainted with all our ways." (Ps. 139:3)

• (def) intimate: very private; closely personal. detailed; deep. inmost, deep within. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the inmost or essential nature; intristic.

Yeah, I'd say He knows our heart pretty well. But the time has come for us to stop blaming our circumstances for our sin. In His mercy, though He knows our heart, our circumstances, our pain in a very private, closely personal, detailed and deep way, He still shows us our sin that we may be like Him and reflect His glory. So that, "we all with unveiled faces, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, [can be] transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18)

We must have unveiled faces and hearts before the Lord and ourselves to be able to behold His glory, and be transformed into His likeness. He desires that we may be cleansed from the inside out, instead of cleaning just the outside of our earthen vessels, like the Pharisees in Luke 11:39-42. The Pharisees had the outward manipulation and show of "pure and undefiled religion" yet had hardened hearts who did not recognize the time of their visitation.

This is my time of visitation. This is when the Lord is teaching me the beginning of wisdom. It is in this painful time, when I'm seeing the depths of darkness within me that I know He is God and He is good. I pray that I may be the good soil, which "hears the Word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with persevarance." (Luke 8:15)