My Heart is Like a Dirty Meatloaf Pan
I make a good meatloaf if I do say so myself.
The other evening, after my family's meatloaf dinner, I was in my kitchen cleaning up the dishes when I looked up at the calendar on my refrigerator. As with most Christian homes, we have the traditional Inspirational Calendar with the beautiful scenes and corresponding scriptures. The scripture for this particular scene was Psalms 51:10 -"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." As I stood there reading a scripture I can quote from memory, it suddenly took on a new meaning for me.
I looked at the dirty meatloaf pan and then back to the beautiful calendar scene with the familiar scripture... I realized that my heart, our hearts, are like that dirty meatloaf pan. There is so much leftover 'gunk" stuck to it - in all the corners, stuck to the bottom and sides of the pan... and our hearts...that no one would ever use it again until it was completely clean!
But there is a problem. My pan cannot clean itself. It would not matter how long I leave it sit in the sink, it does not have the power to become clean. I can even sit my bottle of Dawn beside it. My dirty pan has neither the knowledge or strength to clean itself....Sound familiar?
We expect a Holy God to come and dwell in our dirty hearts, and yet we do not have the power to clean it out! To get rid of the anger and the bitterness we have hidden in the corners of our hearts; the doubts and betrayal stuck to the bottom; the hurts and bruises that seem to make us feel no longer usable! . We have neither the knowledge or the strength to clean ourselves! We lack the power to clean out the "gunk". And so we cry out to God to "create in us a clean heart"!
I realized as I picked up my dirty meatloaf pan to begin the scrubbing and cleaning process, that I, as maker of the meatloaf have the power and the strength to clean the pan and only the MAKER of our hearts has the power, the strength.... the love and the patience to clean our hearts. God's Spirit requires a New Vessel (“Heart”) in which to dwell.
Matt 9:15 Jesus replied, “Do men pour new wine into old wineskins? If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will spill, and the wineskins will be ruined. Instead, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Hebrews 9:14 asks “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Titus 3:5 “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:11 “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
2 Cor 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Let God "Create in you a clean heart, and renew a right spirit!"