Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalms 139:23-24
The longer I live the more I realize my heart is wicked and I need God to purify me. I need him to restrain me from evil thoughts and sinful deeds. No matter how hard I try to live right I find that my flesh rises up in me and as a great weight to my soul drawing me down.
I am not saying I do not sin willingly, for my flesh is willing. Alas, my inward man hates it. I’ve come to hate myself in that I hate the sin I do. Like Paul I wish to cry out for deliverance from myself.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Romans 7:21-25
My spirit longs for the day when at Christ’s return I will be glorified never to sin again. Men have preached a 3-fold salvation being that of the power of sin, the price of sin, and the presence of sin. Yet, I am looking for that day when I will be completely delivered from the pleasure of sin. The process has been started as I hate that sin that dwells in me, but from the testimony of those older than I, they still fight the flesh.
So I pray that the Lord to search me. To seek out that evil that I might crucify it. That I might reckon myself dead to it. That I may live for God and not serve the sin. Again Paul said,
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me
Galatians 2:20
Each day I pray God purify me and clear my mind and heart of evil. O Lord, Crucify me! Live through me! Let me be conformed to the image of your Son, Jesus! As the hymn-writer said:
Searcher of hearts, from mine erase
All thoughts that should not be,
And in its deep recesses trace
My gratitude to Thee.
Let us live in the newness of life, and be controlled by the Spirit. Yet we are unable to do it, let God do it for us and enable us. O’ how each day I realize my total dependence on Him. Lord, help us to live for you and sin not.