Truth in our Times

In the season of uncertainty, in the midst of chaos, with the chorus of voices all around, truth seems elusive. Once we feel like we have landed on an answer, it turns to mist and floats away. How do we get truth in our hands that we can hold on to? How do we find a truthful answer, a truthful direction, a truth that is solid?

Psalm 51 says that God delights in you knowing truth and having it deep in your gut! For He will put it there and that truth will inform your decisions with wisdom.

This truth is a result of repentance. Gut wrenching, down to business repentance. To repent this way is beautifully lined out for us in Psalm 51. Within the very first words of the Psalm is a beautiful hope. Have mercy is a phrase that we sometimes only see as a withholding of judgement, but the Hebrew words give a connotation of someone who is superior stooping down with kindness to someone who is inferior. God meets us right where we are on bended knee with His beautiful heart of compassion and according to His loving kindness. David reaches deeper for “tender mercies”, a Hebrew word of compassion that comes from the feelings a mother has of cherishing the fetus in her womb.

Once we have established the posture of both our own hearts and see the kindness of God’s heart, it’s much easier to get down to business. Wash me throughly. This word speaks not to bathing, but to washing clothes, but not on the gentle cycle. Going through motions here is not gonna get it. It is not the motions of repentance He seeks, not the ritual of the sacrifice, but the posture of brokenness and a contrite heart (which by the way literally means to collapse physically or mentally). Wash, meaning to trample under foot, is an intense wash. We must be ready to get down to the business of allowing God to wash our spiritual clothing with a strong hand, for we desire to clothe our spirits with garments that are clean, pure, and white as snow.

Purge me with hyssop. Hyssop, the herb gathered in a bundle and used to dip in the blood of the lamb on that fateful day in Egypt when the death angel came. All those who used the hyssop to apply the blood to the doors of their homes were spared. The hyssop used in purification of defiling skin disease or homes found to have defiling molds. The hyssop used in the water of separation purification of touching dead things. The hyssop used and understood to be a disinfectant. We have a pretty good understanding of disinfectants right now. We are thoroughly disinfecting our homes, our churches, our hands, our surfaces and still we know we must fall way short of getting all the germs that could infect us. God’s ability to disinfect our spirits has no such failure, His hyssop will not fail to disinfect every contaminant that we have picked up through intentional and willful sin, as well as those we have acquired unaware, sins of omission or misplaced priorities. For once He has destroyed the harmful bacteria of our heart and soul, we emerge clean.

Getting down to business means we own our sin. We don’t deflect. We don’t ignore, but we come clean in His presence. We acknowledge what we have done. We don’t just say, God you know what I did, but we speak it. We own it. We lay it all out on the table. We acknowledge His right to judge, so that our understanding of the situation is clear. We acknowledge our past without leaning on it for excuse. It is where we have come from, but it does not get to direct our steps.

It is at this point, after understanding our posture and seeing His merciful response, getting down to business with our own sin, owning our mistakes and failures, and after the washing, after the purging, the disinfecting, comes the truth. It’s in the inward parts. Parts not shown on social media. Discussions not held in public but for an audience of one. Hidden places, secret times, in a closet where we meet Him and Him alone, comes truth and with truth comes wisdom.

If this was all the benefit, it would be enough, but He wants abundance for us. With the truth and the cleanness, there is joy. There is gladness. There is rejoicing. A rejoicing that is as intense in us as the passion of repenting. He restores us. He repairs us. He renews us and creates us all over again with a clean slate.

No wonder David responds with worship and praise. No wonder we respond the same. Aloud and in context, a public praise meant to be a boisterous rant and rave about the goodness of God. Lastly we pray for those, for any and all who have been affected by our missteps, our wrongs, our actions, seeking reconciliation with those we have wronged, and praying to see them reconciled to God.

[These and other verses from Psalm 51 are available as a FREE PRINTABLE.]