“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.” – Psalm 139:23

Do your good deeds outweigh your bad? Are you one of the few blissfully ignorant people that barely remembers ever doing a bad thing?Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to like who you are, but if you think you have earned a place in Heaven, think again. Only perfection gets into paradise and there’s only one perfect person; His name is Jesus. All the rest of us sin, and some more than others. That becomes a real problem when you don’t even recognize that there’s sin in your life. You may think you have sin beat all by yourself, but you aren’t looking at the whole picture. You may have conquered your lusts for instance, but are you still an angry or proud person? Then you have sin in your life.

You may not even recognize that you have that sin within you. It’s too easy in this world to become desensitized to the wrongs that you commit. You may try to justify them or think to yourself that your sins aren’t that bad when compared to a murderer or a thief. Even loved ones may eventually turn their heads and fail to recognize your sinful ways. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say, “My husband doesn’t believe in Christ, but he’s still a good man.” Being good doesn’t get you into Heaven, only accepting Jesus and His finished work on the cross will do it. You can’t be good enough. There is always some sin in you that you won’t be able to beat by yourself, but for God nothing is impossible.

No matter how our lives are going at the time, we all need to put Christ first place. If you hang out with hooligans, you will become a hooligan yourself. Conversely, the more time you spend with Jesus, the more you will recognize that you need Him in your life. I’ve tried running my own life and it has always led to disastrous results. I didn’t even realize that I was harboring such bad things inside of myself until they would come out, and usually at the worst possible time. It’s when I surrendered to Jesus, that’s when I truly started living. I am not perfected quite yet, but I’m on the way. God’s path is honestly better than anything I could have come up with.

God knows us through and through, whereas we only see just the surface sometimes. We all need to have God’s magnifying glass look over our lives. I want the best for my life and the lives of those I love, so please, search me, O God, and help me to become the better person you want me to be. Lord, search me and remind me that it is not my good deeds that will outweigh by bad ones, but the complete good works of Jesus that will make all the difference.

God’s blessings to you.

DH