Facing the truth

Psalm 145:18 The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

Someone shared this verse with me today. It relates to what I preached yesterday. It is Monday and I am still marinating in it. To nutshell yesterday's message, David fell into sin, but confessed that sin in Psalm 51. As a result he grew in the Lord. If we are going to grow in the Lord, we too need to confess our sin. We will all fail God at some point. When we do we should not run from Him but run to Him in confession and repentance. In this context, failures can actually become a spring board to spiritual growth. God can take our failures and bring good out of them that way.

But the key ingredient to it all is truth. This does not happen if we are not truthful. If we are not willing to admit where we have failed God then we are not being truthful. We are deceived. The Lord is not near us as long as we are living deceived. 

It is so easy for us to live self deceived. We as humans are so good at justifying our wrong behavior and our wrong attitudes. When we do that we are refusing to face the truth of the matter, and the result.....God is far from us. The only way to bring Him near is to face the truth about ourselves, confess and repent.

In order for us to do this, we must have help from the Spirit of Truth. HE is the one that must reveal it to us. This should be our prayer: "Lord help me to see through the power of your Holy Spirit anything in my life that does not bring glory to you. If there is an attitude I have that needs to go, or a habit that needs to go show it to me. Help me not to make excuses for it or justify it, but just simply to confess it. Lord help me to not only see it and confess it, but I need you to help me forsake it."

That is the stuff that spiritual growth is made of......