The Clean-heart Prayer - The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional
The Clean-Heart Prayer
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Psalm 51:10
When a woman I met at a retreat in New England asked me for a good way to start her busy day with God, I suggested she let the shower be her cue to ask for a clean heart. She prayed the very next morning, “Lord, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Cleanse me of sin.” As she prayed, a number of sins came to her mind, and one by one she confessed those to God. The woman began to weep, and as the tears flowed, she gave God her shame for past misdeeds and failures. She named the people she’d been angry at and asked his forgiveness for harboring resentment. It may have been a longer-than-usual shower, but when she stepped out of the bathroom that day, she didn’t have just a clean body. She was a new person in Christ Jesus. The old had passed away and the new had come (see 2 Corinthians 5:17).
Although one of her friends had been dragging her to church every Sunday, this woman hadn’t experienced any connection with God whatsoever. Yet when she used this simple but powerful prayer, everything changed, for this is a prayer God loves to answer!
Of course, we don’t have to be in the shower to pray the clean-heart prayer. Repentance and confession are vital parts of our spiritual journey, not only at the point of salvation but throughout our lives. And although having a clean heart is a requirement for effective prayer and close fellowship with God, we can’t clean up our own hearts. We can, however, regularly ask the Spirit to remind us of recent sins, and we can confess them and receive God’s forgiveness. —CHERI
Father, are there any secret sins that are hindering me? Is there anyone I need to forgive or a word or deed that has displeased you? Please show me now, and give me the humility to confess those things and accept your forgiveness. Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me!
In confession . . . we open our lives to healing, reconciling, restoring, uplifting grace of him who loves us in spite of what we are.
—LOUIS CASSELS (1922–1974), UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL SENIOR RELIGION EDITOR
The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional
By Cheri Fuller and Sandra P. Aldrich
Tyndale
$7.99