Who can understand his mistakes?
Cleanse me of my hidden faults.
(Psalm 19:12)
There is no man who does not need help in seeing his sins clearly. The extent to which we seek this help is the truest indicator of our desire to seek God.
When it comes to errors we need to correct, we can hardly trust our hearts to tell us all we need to know. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and exceedingly wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) There are two desires hidden deep in our hearts. One is that other people should think about us the way we want them to think, and the second is that we should think about ourselves the way we want to think. The wag who said “Life is one long struggle to think well of yourself” wasn’t just being a cynic. We all have a tendency to conceal evidence and skew perspective whenever objective evidence requires us to see ourselves the way we want to see ourselves. We leave no stone unturned in trying to find a way to look at the situation in a way that reflects on ourselves in the most “sane” way. Some people have more self-honesty than others, but there is no person on earth who is completely honest with himself. We begin to deceive ourselves about ourselves. We all have “latent flaws” that are “hidden” from our sight.
Even when we try to understand ourselves, we still find it difficult to do. We do not understand ourselves well enough to diagnose our diseases. The only safe path is to seek God’s help. In My supreme for his supreme, Oswald Chambers wrote eloquently, “We must get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves. This is always the last bit of pride. The only one who understands us is God.” The danger of unseen sin is so great that only a fool would trust do-it-yourself plans. Solomon warned that “he who trusts in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). It requires humility as well as honesty to face the fact that God is the only perfect “tester of the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
“We can be used by God only when we allow Him to show us the deeper, hidden areas of our character. It’s amazing how ignorant we are about ourselves!” (Oswald Chambers).
Gary Henry – WordPoints.com AreYouaChristian.com
