“Are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” a deacon cried out at 3 a.m. In a cold barn in 1949 in the Hebrides Islands. He read Psalm 24:3-5 during a prayer meeting and asserted that they themselves needed to be sure they were “rightly related to God” as they asked Him for revival. At that cry, the Spirit of God undeniably fell, thousands were saved over the next few years, and we are still talking about it today!
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Psalm 24:3-5 KJV
We are asking the Lord for unity of our local churches, revival in our region, and are preparing for revival meetings, June 11-13 at Bell Central. We all have lost loved ones and our hearts are to be like Christ who came to “seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10). We have many other needs before God– for healing and deliverance for ourselves, for our families, and for our communities. God is a good Father and we don’t have to be perfect to go to Him. The blood of Jesus, thankfully, cleanses our sins and gives us access to God. But – as God’s loving daughter, if my desire is not to be as near Him as I can get, for nothing to hinder our fellowship, nothing to hinder my prayers, then that’s what I want my desire to be. Much like I want no rift between my parents and me or between my daughters and me that would block any bit of our love, our enjoyment of each other, or to hinder any of us from asking the other for what we need…. I want nothing to keep me distant from my heavenly Father.
I just want to be near Him and I need him to do things that I most certainly cannot do. We need revival more desperately than we even realize. What does it take?? Clean hands, and a pure heart! According to Matthew 5:8, “The pure in heart shall see God” and let’s don’t limit that to heaven! I’ve had little success keeping my heart pure, my hands clean (or my mouth shut!) on my own. Starting with a pure heart, though, will make it much more possible to keep our hands clean. By asking ourselves questions daily like, What’s really my motive? Where is this attitude, opinion, feeling of mine coming from? Am I being selfish? … by giving the Holy Spirit a chance to convict and then dealing immediately with any impurities of the heart, we can avoid a lot of the sins of our hands and our mouths!
We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Christ.
II Corinthians 4:5 AMP
Don’t let it be overwhelming, something that seems unachievable. Start with prayer, with each wrong attitude, take those wrong thoughts captive and surrender them to Christ. II Peter 1:3 says that He has given us the help we need…”all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.” Take each opportunity to surrender to the Holy Spirit and be rightly related to God, see how close to Him you can get, and what He does as result!
Devotional by Heather Cornett