Devotionals

Search Me Lord

Psalm 139:23-24
NKJV
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.

We need to make it a daily prayer to ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts, mind and motives.

God cares so much more about how we are on the inside than the outside. God loves cleaning us, sanctifying and shaping us from the inside out. If we for us on working on our outside (how we appear to others), we will be like the Pharisees, appearing close to God when we aren't.

God cares about the heart and purifies our hearts, minds, intentions, and motives. He desires to fill us up with the fruit of the spirit of love.

We can serve God but without love, it's all in vain (1 Corinthians 13). If we do great things but inside we don't bear any fruit, we are fooling ourselves. Let's ask God to help us have pure hearts and intentions and for him to do his work within us so we can honour Him from the inside out.

We all have a weakness. We all have something that the enemy attacks often because he desires to see us fall but we also have many hidden weaknesses that we don't even know we have.

Someone once said that if God reveals to them that they will steal one day, they'll believe it. Why because God sees everything.

God sees you right now. You in 5 years. You in 10 years. You when you're single and you when you're married. You when you're working and you when you've graduated.

God sees it all so everything God says isn't from a place of ignorance but incredible wisdom. He sees past, future and presents all at once and His thoughts and ways are beyond our understanding (Isaiah 55:8-9).

Everything God says, we need to believe. God knows that though you're humble now that in 5 years when you have more money and that humility will fade and pride will increase. God knows that you're faith and dependency on Him is somewhat strong now but once you're married you'll fall into idolatry. God knows you're faithful now but wait 3 more years and you're backsliding.

But those things aren't just there but are often hidden.  Someone once said how there are hidden seeds in our hearts that won't reveal themselves until certain situations.

We can believe we have forgiven someone but when you meet that person who hurt you years ago, you'll notice that anger is still there. That bitterness is still there yet before you never knew you were still upset. You'll realise that unforgiveness was always there but you just never dealt with it.

This is the same for any other sin. If someone hasn't dealt with that gossiping habit, though they may not gossip because they haven't been placed in such a situation so they believe they aren't gossiped about but put them in a room filled with slanders and immediately that can't help but gossip.

There can be hidden things in our hearts that need healing, need uprooting, need rejecting and need surrending that we don't even realise are there.

There can be insecurity in you that you don't realise is there because you haven't been put in a situation to deal with it yet. This is why sometimes God allows us to go through wilderness seasons and times of trouble so He can purify break, and heal the areas in our lives so we can be all He has called us to be.

So for today, I want you to go before God in prayer. Get on your knees and pray that God searches you. Ask God to look deeply into you. To look at every corner of your heart and find if there is anything that needs healing, purifying, deliverance and surrendering. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you those areas, to speak to you and to allow you to be aware of those parts that need change.

Pray with all your heart as David did. Mean and trust that when you pray that the Lord will reveal or to you and work on you. The way He could work on you is by leading you to seek help from others. Leading you to fast. Leading you to break yourself. Leading you to reject and cut off things that are causing this in your life. Leading you to let go of certain friends. Leading you to add some spiritual disciplines. Leading you to speak to others and heal your past relationships. Leading you to let go of people you caged in your heart who you need to forgive. Leading you to change.

This is prayer you can pray in every season because there will always be something that needs change. The work of sanctification the Holy Spirit does in our lives doesn't end until we go to heaven. He will keep pruning, keep purifying, and keep convicting every day of our lives because every day we are growing and growing to look more and more like Jesus.

Pray God reveals to you the things in your life that in future will destroy and destruct you if not dealt with now. And if that looks like a wilderness season filled with times of trouble trust that in the end, this burning will lead you to be as pure as gold.

-etty