create in me a pure heart

I have always known that God knows our hearts, He knows our thoughts, our motives, our desires, and He knows what we truly put first in our lives.

It was the other day He revealed to me that it is so much more than that. It was the kind of epiphany that will change everything for me.

I was listening to The City Harmonic’s Fell Apart, and one of the verses says:

Put me back together, I fell apart.
You are Creator, You understand the heart.

I love this statement. You understand the heart. Because it’s about more than God knowing what lies beneath our outward appearance, it’s about who He is. He created us, He formed our hearts, He knows our minds.

God is an expert on the hearts of men. He can diagnose them and fix them; He is the designer, the mechanic, the healer. He knows what it takes to perfect everything in us.

Sometimes I have days where I think that my heart is in too bad of shape to present to God, I feel unworthy and I shrink away. I feel like the condition of my heart is my fault, that it must escape Him why I continue to fail and hurt. I think, if only I could change my heart for Him so that I will be worthy to even be in His presence.

I find myself trying to explain my heart and my mind to God, to make Him see that I am really trying. “Lord, I promise, when I have sad days and terribly low moods, I am still Yours. It’s just so complicated and I just need You to know that sometimes I am trapped by these feelings. If only You could see that my heart and mind are sometimes held captive by something I don’t know how to control and I don’t know if I ever will.”

But God sculpted everything in me, He doesn’t need me to explain to Him how my heart works. (That actually makes me laugh that I couldn’t see this).
He is the Creator, he knows how the heart operates. He knows that sin is a disease, He knows that we could never come clean for Him. He doesn’t look at my heart with disgust and disappointment. The ways of my human heart will never surprise Him; He isn’t stumped by my changing, aching, sinful heart.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Hebrews 4:12

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
1 John 3:18-20

But because I don’t understand the every inner workings of my own heart, because I am tempted and tried, because sometimes my heart aches and is sick and confused, because I may have days of doubt and faithlessness, because sometimes I feel alone and He doesn’t feel near–I feel as if I have betrayed God. It takes me further into a sadness and state of self-loathing which is exactly where Satan wants me because he wants me to feel like I am beyond the reaches of God’s grace and mercy.

One of the things I love about Apostle Paul is that he is so honest with his own struggle, and it is something all of us can relate to. To see that even Paul, someone that God loved so much and used to further His kingdom, is writing about the very things that we go through all the time.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work with my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:21-25

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 16

God loves us and has compassion for what we suffer with in this world. He loves us so much that He gave us Jesus, who was born in the flesh and experienced humanity.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity…Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Hebrews 2:14, 18

He understands what we are going through, and He will be with us every step of the way if we continue to draw near to Him and trust that in His timing, He will change our hearts and cleanse our minds.