The one who loves a pure heart and whose speech is gracious has the king as a friend. ~Proverbs 22:11
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. ~Matthew 5:8
Principle 4 from Celebrate Recovery: “Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.”
Step 5 from the 12 Steps of Recovery: “We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. ~James 5:16
The only way to become pure is to remove the impurities. That is what confession, making amends and forgiveness is all about. Gold, silver, even water, are not pure in their natural state. Their impurities need to be removed through a process that involves intense heat and careful vigilance on the part of the one in charge of the process to purify. We are the same.
Some of us may come to Christ with more impurities than others, but we are all impure. “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) All of us need to go through a process, designed by our creator, that will “purify us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” When a gold or silver smith sets out to purify the precious metals, his goal is to make it more clearly what it is intended to be.
The more precious metals are refined, the more valuable they become. The precious metal remains to be used for making valuable things. The dross, or impurities that keep the metals less valuable are thrown away because they aren’t useful to anyone, especially the precious metal.
God puts us through a process to refine our hearts. Often, that process involves other impure people. They have things that need to be cleaned out of their hearts as well. God’s design is to use the purifying process to purify both of us. We can ignore it and hold on to our junk. Admittedly, God’s process isn’t an easy one to endure. It often requires intense heat, through conflict and self-examination. But the purpose is to help us become pure, even Holy, before our Father in Heaven.
We often talk about Jesus’ plan for dealing with conflict in Matthew 18, that calls the offended one to go to another and show them their fault. In the steps laid out for today, however, scripturally, through Celebrate Recovery, we focus on the offender, calling them to examine themselves, because they also want to rid themselves of the impurities.
Yes, things have been done to us. What we can do in those situations is learn to forgive and let go of the impurities of vengeance, and grudges, and bitterness that we have been hanging on to. However, we have also caused hurt and the best way to rid ourselves of those impurities is to acknowledge what we have done, apologize, and ask for forgiveness, to close the account and in so doing, become more pure.
The benefits are tremendous! Our proverb tells us that when we have a pure heart, one that has gone through God’s process of purification, we will be a friend of the King, God Himself. In the beatitude Matthew recorded, Jesus tells us that our pure heart will enable us to see God! Did you know that pure gold, hammered into a thin enough sheet, is see through transparent? Imagine our hearts being that pure before our Lord because we have confessed and endured His process and now, we see Him! Isn’t that amazing?
Isaiah encourages us: “Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I (God), am doing a new thing! Now it springs up! Do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19) We can see Him and the new things He is doing and the things He wants to do when we let go, let Him clean us out and make us pure. Our motives and desires will become pure because our heart is now purely in line with His. Pray for strength to endure the heat, because what we will be on the other side is more precious than we could have ever imagined on our own.
Prayer: Father I want to let go of impurities and let You in to clean me up. Purify my heart. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Song: Purify My Heart
Comments
Post a Comment