June 1

One thing people of faith often overlook is the fact that they need to be renewed regularly in the inner man. Even the great Apostle Paul recognized that his lapses into the patterns of thinking and acting that are characteristic of the “old,” unregenerate man were persistent. You do it, too. No matter how well-intentioned you or I may be, we succumb to this unless we allow His intervention.

In Psalm 51:10 we are afforded an insight into our need and into the provision the Lord has made for it. The Psalmist’s cry must be ours. Like him, we must turn to the Author and Finisher of our faith and say, “Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me.”

When we have allowed Jesus to give us a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone, when we have allowed Him to assume Lordship of our lives by allowing Him to reign within our heart, we have given Him the authority to transform our lives from the destructivity of the flesh to the productivity of the spirit.

Yet when He has, when we have allowed Him access and control, we still must give Him the latitude to renew our spirit regularly, for the lure of our old habits and our old life will seduce us again if we neglect to subject ourselves to His mind and to His heart for a daily infusion of Himself into our inner man.