Celebrate Recovery! Pt. 3—Coming Clean
Psalm 32

We are built for a PURE heart

Humanity is designed by God to have a relationship with Him. God’s original intent was that people co-exist with Him in an authentic, unhindered state that promoted open, honest, and pure heart-felt interaction (Gen. 2). Even after sin entered the world—damaging humanity’s unobstructed connection to God—people still longed for a real, heart-felt attachment to Him. Without God’s intervention, people are unable to have a pure heart, though we long for it even if we have never experienced it ourselves. It is this restless desire of our hearts that exposes the original relationship with God He intended. Happiness comes from the heart—and there is no true happiness without purity of heart!

We are sabotaged by a GUILTY heart

When believers sin they not only affect their relationship with God, but others and themselves as well. It is this transgression (Heb. peshah, ‘revolt/rebellion’) of God’s ideal that brings accompanying guilt into the heart. Like a cancer, unconfessed sin produces guilt that destroys our confidence in our relationship with God and others (Eph. 4:29-31). Prolonged spiritual guilt can lead to broken relationships, broken spirits, broken lives, and broken bodies. Guilt is the anchor that keeps us living in the past and drowns out the joy God wants to create in our hearts (2 Cor. 5:17).

We are transformed by a CLEAN heart   

Once we acknowledge our sin to God and don’t hide or cover it, God can begin to clean our heart and transform us (Ps. 51:10). As God already knows what’s in our ‘life-closet’, by not dealing with our baggage, we only damage ourselves. Guilt cannot change the past any more than worry can change the future. Jesus offers a return to a purity of heart when we take responsibility and don’t rationalize but recognize, repent, and are restored (Matt. 5:8)! Once the heart is made right before God, what the hands have done must be made right before men. We are called to take a personal moral inventory of our wrongs and make restitution as we can (Luke 19:8, 9; James 5:16). Once we have been forgiven by God, we ask forgiveness of others and forgive ourselves, knowing He has removed our guilt and sin completely (Ps. 103:12; 1 John 1:9)!