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Inspection
Are you brave enough to let someone
else come in and check the quality of your
cleaning?  If
you spent all day straightening up and deep cleaning your home would
you give someone else permission to come in, white glove poised and
ready, to inspect your work?
I am not sure I would.
I mean, I don't need anyone else to check under my bed and
in the recesses of my closet. I don't need
anyone checking for dust behind my picture
frames and looking for hidden remnants in my cupboards.
No one else should care if my towels smell spring-time fresh or
if my floors have a sparkly luster.
Rules for my house and my heart are different,
however. Anyone who cares too much about
how clean my house is probably is a busy-body, control-freak who
sticks his/her nose into other people's business uninvited. But,
there is one who I willingly give permission to examine my heart.
 Because I seek to honor the Lord with my heart and please Him above
all else, I have adopted a prayer out of scripture giving Him permission
to examine the deepest parts of my life.
Psalm 139:23-24 reads:
"Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting."
I have to tell you, this is not an easy prayer
to pray and it is not safe.
It is a very dangerous prayer, because when
I pray it, I am inviting God to check on my attitudes, my thoughts,
and my actions.
I am not inviting Him in with His white-gloved finger to critically
find the proverbial dust and make me feel bad about my failures and
convince me that I am worthless. My invitation stems from my desire
to be more like Him in every way. I am willing to pray that dangerous
prayer, because I know He will never point out my shortcomings without
committing to forgive me of them and help me overcome them.
I am not sure I would ever be motivated to
have a critical person come and search my
house for dirt because nothing good would
come from it other than me feeling bad and
that person becoming inflated. But, every day, I try to pray Ps 139:23-24
because good always comes from it. He is in the process of making
me more like Him, but to do that, He must strip me little by little
of the parts of me that aren't shining just right.
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