WHAT COULD YOU OFFER TO GOD IN EXCHANGE FOR A CLEAN HEART AND A RENEWeD SPIRIT?

Is your heart broken? Do you want to be healed spiritually? Do you know that only God can comfort you in your time of sorrow?

Only God can repair your broken Heart. Only God can forgive your Sins! 

What could you offer to God, in exchange for a Clean Heart and a Renewed Spirit? 

God can’t be bought off with money. He isn’t awestruck by fame. He is not even impressed with good works.

What God wants from us is a Contrite Heart, a Humbled Heart.

Why? Because a broken Spirit and a Contrite Heart are spaces that God can fill with His Love and Mercy.

We can only fill spaces that are empty. It is the empty Heart, the broken Heart, that can be filled by God. God will not despise the Contrite Heart and Broken

Spirit that cry out to God: “Please fill us!”

Many of us cry to God out of material desperation:

“God, I feel empty because I didn’t get the job. Help change their Minds.”

“God, I feel empty because I didn’t study for that test. Help change my grade.”

“God, I feel empty because my spouse doesn’t love me. Change his/her Heart.”

These cries are not from a Contrite Heart or a Broken Spirit. They are more from a broken ego.

The crushed and humbled Heart doesn’t cry out to God to change someone else. It cries out: “Lord I am broken, change ME!”

When we cry to God to change us and fill us with Him, this is a prayer that God always answers. God doesn’t desire “a burnt offering.” (Psalm 51:16) God desires us, our hearts. When we come to God with a broken and contrite Heart, this is what God will never despise or ignore.

Many times in life we will feel estranged from God because of our own sins or we will feel crushed by personal failure. There is never a bad time to pray the 50^th Psalm – the most important one for Repentance.

However, especially in times when we feel God is absent because of something we have done, a serious sin we have committed, these are the times to turn to God and pray not for a renewed relationship or a restored opportunity but for a clean Heart and a Renewed Spirit.

Psalm 50

Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love; according to Your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified in Your sentence and blameless in Your judgment. For behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear the sounds of joy and feasting, the bones that were afflicted shall rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I shall teach transgressors Your ways and sinners will return to You. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of Your deliverance. O Lord, You shall open my lips and my mouths shall show forth Your praise. For You have no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, You would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and humbled heart, o God, You will not despise. Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be rebuilt. Then You will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then they shall offer up bulls on Your altar (and have mercy on me O God).

Rather than focusing on how to change others, let us focus on how to change our own Hearts!

Sincerely,
Stella Kamenova