Dear Ones,
Hope you had a wonderful weekend! We enjoyed our walks on the trail and have had such beautiful weather. Today is exercise class, shopping at Aldi’s, making spaghetti pies etc.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
As I shared with you before that my word for 2024 is Deeper, to go deeper with the Lord. Of course, that means there will be things that have to go that are taking up room in my heart so that more room will be occupied by the Lord. Some of you may be familiar with a pamphlet called, “My Heart, Christ’s Home.” The story is about giving each room of our spiritual home (heart) to the Lord. Years ago, I gave a talk on that using a dollhouse that lite up and spoke of the cleansing of each room.

The Lord wants all of us and that means dealing with the clutter of our hearts.  It’s a deep inner work that involves our attitudes, emotions, beliefs and actions. We have to confront those negative things in our lives and Mark Roberts from Fuller Seminary also shared on Crosswalk.com about it. His timing for my life is perfect as I desire that my thoughts, feelings and actions to be in tune with the Lord and acknowledge my own sinful responses. It takes courage on the part of us all to be truthful and look honestly at our own hearts. It’s more than going through the outward motions of changing our behavior and more of an inner cleansing to see how God sees us. Roberts uses Psalm 51 to help us, like David, to know how to pray and deal with all the clutter within. I want to share His prayer and may we make it our own prayer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             “Gracious God, thank you for the example of Psalm 51. Thank you for David’s courageous look into his own sinful soul. Thank you for how the Psalms teach us to pray with open minds and hearts. Help me, I pray, to have the same confidence and courage that David had. I admit, Lord, there are times I don’t want to confess my sin to you. Sometimes I don’t even want to look inside of myself to acknowledge what’s there. I need your help, Lord. May I discover how doing the inner work of confession is a way to experience the forgiveness and restoration that comes from your grace. Amen.”

Challenge for today: Read through David’s confession in Psalm 51 and make it your own.
Blessings on your week and prayers and love, Judy