Devotional Song: Go to this link … Please take the time to see/hear a video Crystal Lewis and Ron Kenoly singing Beauty For Ashes. reminding Christians that God’s forgiveness cleanses of all the ugliness of our sins.
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Highlight Passage - NKJV Psalm 139: 23-24 …
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.
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Highlight Context - NKJV: Psalm 139 [NKJV] … GO TO THIS LINK … David’s song of a life forgiven …
Reference Passage #1 … 2nd Samuel 12: 1-14 — GO TO THIS LINK … David is confronted with his messy closet
Reference Passage #2 … Psalms 51: 1-4 — GO TO THIS LINK … David cleans out his closet
Reference Passage #3 … Psalm 32 — GO TO THIS LINK … David on the joy of forgiveness and cleansing
Reference Passage #4 … 1st John 1: 5-10 — GO TO THIS LINK … Total integrity is a clean closet - NOTE verse 9 …
My Journal for Today: Today’s Our Daily Bread devotional entry, authored by Joe Stowell, begins with a story from Stowell’s youth, one to which I identify personally. He wrote - “To this day I can still hear my mother telling me to go and clean up my room. Dutifully, I would go to my room to start the process, only to get distracted by reading the comic book that I was supposed to put neatly in the stack. But soon the distraction was interrupted by my mother warning that she would be up in 5 minutes to inspect the room. Unable to effectively clean the room in that time, I would proceed to hide everything I didn’t know what to do with in the closet, make the bed, and then wait for her to come in—hoping that she wouldn’t look in the closet.”
Maybe you empathize with this word picture of how we can have a closet hidden away in our house of life where we have some of our messy past stashed away. And we hope that some how others won’t open the closet and see our past ugliness. Maybe there are even ugly/dirty things in that closet like some of those depicted in the attached [BEFORE] photo. We even delude ourselves at times, thinking that maybe God doesn’t even know what’s in our messy closet … where we’ve locked away the ugliness from our past.
King David had one of those closets for a year after he stashed away the ugliness of his infidelity with Bathsheba and his contract murder of her husband. Then, of course, we know the story [see the link to 2nd Samuel 12: 1-14 above] of the Prophet Nathan confronting the King with a parable which “outed” David and brought about the King’s confession (see the link to Psalm 51). David cleaned out his closet of sin and revealed it to all of Israel in a song. And then later [see link to Psalm 32] we read David’s song of forgiveness and deliverance.
It’s the AFTER depicted in the attached photo which also refers to the New Testament teaching of 1st John 1: 9 where the results of confession are emphasized. And we’re willing to be vulnerable (as was David in Psalm 32) and show how God can clean out our closet from our past ugliness and give us a clean, new start.
I think the picture today, the song of “Beauty From Ashes,” and the Scriptures linked above tell the whole story of how God sees all we have hidden in our messy closet of past sins; and He has, via Christ’s atonement on the cross, given us the ability to confess and clean out our closet, never having to hide it again. In fact, we can even be spiritually proud of how God has cleansed us of our sins so that we can open up the door to our closet and show all of what God has done.
I pray that all who read here have let God clean out their closet of sin and we’re all willing to fling open the door to that closet for all to see God’s handiwork of mercy, grace, and cleansing in our lives.
My Prayer for Today … Lord, … Thank You for cleaning out my closet and giving me a clean, new start. Now, I’ll do all I can to keep my closet neat and clean - FOR YOU!! … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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