Psalm 139
13. For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb.
14. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
15. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
In order to reach our God-given potential, we must begin with a clean heart, because that is where we relate to the Lord. We must remember that, while God created each of us with the capacity to achieve and become everything He had in mind, we nevertheless came into the world with a bent away from Him and His will.
So all the potential He placed within us remains inadequate until and unless we trust Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.
You see, God sent His Son into this world for the purpose of dying on the cross. Jesus paid the penalty for your sins and mine by dying a substitutionary, all-sufficient, atoning death in our place. In the process, He forgave us of our sins and declared us no longer guilty. He set us apart for Himself, declared us His children, and welcomed us into His family. Even more than that, He placed within us awesome potential to become and achieve. But He didn’t stop there. As He did with the disciples, He also planned that we would “be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49)—His Holy Spirit.
When you trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, the Spirit of God comes to indwell you and enable you in every single aspect of life. So it isn’t just your effort.
You’ve been indwelt by a person of the Godhead—God Himself!—to make your potential a reality.
But the Holy Spirit can function only through a clean heart. Tomorrow we will look at what is necessary for a believer’s heart to be clean. |