Monday 17 December 2012

SEEING YOURSELF


READ: ROMANS 7:18-20

When you come into God’s presence, the second thing you see after beholding God is yourself. The average person gives himself a pass mark over his conduct and deeds. But when he looks at God and takes another look at himself, he will then see himself the way God sees him. He will withdraw the pass mark and replace it with ‘failure.’ “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwells not good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” (Romans 7:18)
Paul must have been able to see himself through God’s eyes to be able to make that statement. I prefer that God take me privately into his secret room and there show me my wrongs and impurities. This depends on the individual. When God is warning his children and trying to correct them, he starts from the secret room. But if that child is defiant and uncaring, and continues to flaunt God’s instructions, a time will come when his hidden sins will become public. Are you doing something secretly that you have failed to deal with? If you don’t deal with it fast, privately, it will deal with you very slowly in public.
“Then said I, Woe is me! for...I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5)
Isaiah faced woe (trouble) because in God’s presence, he was taken apart and his secrets were exposed. If God were to disclose all our secrets in the open, it would not be pleasant at all. Yet Mark 4:22 says: “For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was anything kept secret, but that it should come abroad.” It is frightening to know that one day, having been cleansed of past sins at salvation, all the secret wrong you have ever done since then will be revealed. Are you prepared for that day? Straighten out your life while there is still time.

MEMORIZE: ISAIAH 6:5 –Then said I, Woe is me! for...I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.