Just come clean

In high school, I was hanging out in our house with my sister and some friends when we decided it would be a good idea to play with the super bouncy balls in the house.  We were dropping, maybe throwing, them off of the second floor balcony, when the one that I threw knocked a picture of my mom's with a ceramic duck on it.  Unfortunately, the duck fell off the picture.  I got some glue, of course it was craft glue, to glue the duck back on the picture.  Just FYI, craft glue take 10 years to dry completely and isn't made to glue ceramic ducks to tile pictures.

I left it on the counter to dry and when my parents came home I rushed it onto the nail in the hall way.  About 5 minutes later we heard a thud.  You guessed it, the duck hit the floor.  My dad then began the inquisition.  I was wrong for deceiving my parents and enlisting my sister into this charade.  I should have just come clean and let my mom glue it on properly.  Fun thing is, she still has this picture today hanging in her house.

Coming clean is an important part of prayer.  In James 4.1-3 it tells us:

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives... (NIV)

The Message puts rather approriately:

Because you know you'd be asking for what you have no right to.  You're spoiled children, each wanting your own way.

 That is so true.  I know that many times I want my own way and my motives are pure at all.  A key component to effective prayer is to possess a pure heart.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 5.8:

"You're blessed when you get your inside world -- your mind and heart -- put right.  Then you can see God in the outside world." (MSG)

We need to not only go to God and ask, but we need to confess our helplessness ("I am helpless.  How can I, your servant, talk with you, my lord?  My strength is gone and I can hardly breath." Daniel 10.16b-17 NIV) and our wickedness ("If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear." Psalm 66.18 NIV).  We need to understand our total necessity and total depravity.  We are people of unclean lips (even the best Christian that you know) living among people of unclean lips.  Our confession in the presence of God, our Father, shouldn't be any different than Isaiah found in Isaiah 6:

"Doom!  It's Doomsday!  I'm as good as dead!  Every word I've ever spoken is tainted--blasphemous even!  And the people I live with talk the same way, using words that corrupt and desecrate.  And here I've looked God in the face!  The King! God-of-the-Angel-Armies!"

At that point an angel flew to him with a live coal from the altar of God and touched his lips.  At point Isaiah could hear the voice of God calling, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?"

The point is that we need to come clean with God.  Whatever we are holding on to is separating us from God.  He won't be able to hear us and we won't be able to hear Him.  It is time to come clean and quit trying to put things together with craft glue and hide our flaws.  Fall on your face in reverence and worship for you have looked God in the face!  The King!  God-of-the-Angel-Armies!  Come clean and hear His voice.