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Search My Heart...BEFORE

hldude

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“Search My Heart…..BEFORE”
Psalm 139:23-24 NIV
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

From the time we wake up each day to the moment we go to bed, we are all preparing in some way throughout the day. Many of us wake up early and head in to work. Kids have to wake up and get ready for the school day. When we are applying for a job, we have to fill out an application and go through an interview, possibly multiple. When we graduate high school, we have to prepare for our college experience or what the next step is if we choose not to go to college.

We spend a lot of time preparing for things in our lives. Why is that? Why do we put so much effort into preparing for things each day? Because we want to be sure we are prepared for the day to the best of our ability. Most of my, if not all, do not like surprises that come up and throw our day off. All of us have experienced this in one way or another. We’ve all been caught off guard with unexpected schedule changes.

I like to prepare for things in my life. When I don’t feel prepared, it bothers me a lot. I don’t always like sudden changes. I do my best to deal with them and adjust, but I’m not always great at that.

With us preparing every single day for so many different things, why do we not put more attention into how we prepare to respond to other people? It’s easy when others are nice to us, but when they are not, it’s definitely challenging.

This passage popped up in my morning reading time and it hit me again. I need to ask God to search my heart fully and bring up anything that is not clean and anything offensive and ask Him to lead me. In all my interactions with people each day, I need to pray “Search my heart….BEFORE”. Before I react to something that may come off negative, I need God to search me. I need to pause and think for a moment if this will encourage others or discourage them.

Sometimes, we feel like we need to get the “last word” in to a conversation. We have all been there! However, we need to ask God to search our heart BEFORE responding. We always, always, always need to do a self-check and see what gremlins are hiding deep in our heart. We always need to point inward and check our attitude before assuming others are wrong. We need to approach everything in love to the best of our ability.

My encouragement to us all is to ask God to search our heart…BEFORE we react or respond to anything.