Create In Me a Pure Heart
By: Cherie Zack
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from you or take your Holy Spirit from me.” Psalm 51:10-11
The hard part about being a praying wife, other than the sacrifice of time, is maintaining a pure heart. It must be clean before God in order for you to see good results. Writing down what I’m thankful for in Bill did just that…it’s hard to harbor ill will toward someone when you are being reminded of the good things about them. Cleaning our hearts of things that can betray us toward our loved ones helps our hearts to be pure.
Have you ever prayed, “Lord, change him now!”? I did just that many times before realizing I wasn’t helping Bill or myself. I was coming before God with a dirty heart. How do I know? My attitude was bad and I was expecting God to perform a miracle without accepting that I wasn’t any better than him.
One of the things I love about reading the scriptures and learning how to effectively pray for our husbands is that we learn so much about ourselves. God began to draw a picture of what my own heart looked like on the inside and it wasn’t pretty. I had a lot of cleaning to do.
This reminds me of Matthew 7:13, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Plank!!! I had a plank in my own eye…it was easy for me to bring to God all that Bill was doing wrong while leaving myself out of the equation. This isn’t what God wants from us. As wives, we need to come before God each day and confess any sin we have in our hearts.
On those rare days when I feel like I made the right choices, held my tongue, and reacted in a godly way in all situations, God brings to my remembrance something I did. My point is this:
we always have something to ask God to forgive us for. We are human–created from dust. But God is faithful to answer our prayers as we seek him.
Can I encourage you? Correction is always good when it comes from our Heavenly Father.
He wants to change our husbands, but wants our hearts right before Him first. Why? Because we are the one who is coming to Him. When you have time, go back and read all of Psalm 51. You will be encouraged, enlightened and comforted as you are reminded how Great our God is and how His mercy endures forever towards us!!
Heavenly Father, create in us a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us. Remind us in those moments when we feel our husbands have more work to do in their walk than we do in ours that our hearts need to be right before You. That You love them even more than we think we can. Thank You for the husbands you have given us. Help us to remember that we are nothing without Your Spirit within us. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen!! :o)
Cherie is the wife of 17 years to her Navy Man. Mommy to 4 blessings and Grandma to 1. She is one of many daughters of the Most High King. She loves Jesus, her family, friends, hot tea and flowers. Cherie’s passion is to see marriages strong and vibrant and shares her walk with God and her marriage with women every where. She is the co-founder of The Imperfect Wives. You can check Cherie and the rest of the wives out at www.TheImperfectWives.com
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Cherie, what timely words of wisdom! What better way to love and cherish our husbands than by first cleaning out our own heart. Good words my friend! Thank you for sharing with us today…I can’t wait to see what God does with the Imperfect Wives site in 2011.
Each week we are blessed to peek into the hearts of some truly remarkable women and each week I am blown away at just how timely their message is…BUT…I also know that some of YOU have been waiting for just the right time to share how you are “Taking your everyday, ordinary life and placing it as your offering to Him“.
I’d like to challenge you that the time might be RIGHT NOW!
If you are interested in writing something for the Godly Gals series, then take a minute to send me an email at melsworldministry {at} gmail {dot} com and I’ll send you a copy of the submission guidelines.
Come on…what are you waiting for?
