03.27.04

Today’s devotional was written by my son, Clark Wrather, who is the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Clark may be contacted at fbcbb@pine-net.com.

Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. - Psalm 51:9-11.

One morning, I went with a friend to look at a new piece of rental property he had purchased and remodeled. Evidently, the former owners had mistreated the house pretty badly and it was in quite a state of disrepair when he bought it.

In just a few months, my friend had completely transformed the place. I took a little tour and saw new carpet that actually went over floors that had been rebuilt. The front porch of the house had been redone. There were new doors and new linoleum and of course new paint. I have no idea how much time and hard work went into the transformation, but it was worth it.

Right now, if your relationship with God is in disrepair, if your spiritual walk and life is dilapidated, you could use a good remodeling. Wouldn’t it be a good thing to fix up your shabby heart and make things right between you and the Lord? You can and you can do it much more easily than the restoration my friend did on his new rent house.

David asked God to create a new heart within him. That’s the great thing about God. He’s able to give you a completely new heart if only you’ll sincerely pray and ask for it. He doesn’t even remodel. It would be nice if we could snap our fingers and our homes would be replaced with a brand new one. It would be nice, but it’s not going to happen. God can snap his fingers and give you a new heart. He can instantly restore a shabby relationship someone has with Him. He can totally transform a relationship that is rundown and dilapidated. God has the power to do that. All you have to do is ask.

Why don’t you ask Him? Pray and ask God to forgive you for not being where He wants you to be. Ask Him to perform spiritual heart surgery on you and He will give you a new heart in the blink of an eye. It’s that simple. All you have to do is ask and mean it. Ask Him….

(Please pray for Clark's two-year-old son, Mason. Mason will be having surgery to remove a dermal track that could be attached to his spine this coming Wednesday.)