Last night the house was very quiet. I had a productive day cleaning, disciplining the kids, running some errands and avoiding fast food. By 9:40pm I was realizing that throughout my day I had not spent much time with the Lord. In fact lately, my quiet time has been slim to none. I always say a few things to God before bed each night, usually asking Him to help me do better the next day. Asking Him to forgive me for the ways I had let Him (and my family) down that day. That has been the extent of things lately. How sad. I decided that I would take advantage of the quiet and just put on some worship music and try and reconnect with my Savior. Throughout the songs I would offer up some prayers. One thing I remember praying was for God to remove the plank out of my own eye and to help me to stop pointing out the specs in other people's eyes. Somewhere along the line I had picked up this little self-righteous attitude. Somehow pointing out other people's sins (even if it's only in my head and heart) seemed to become a part of me lately. Ugh, how gross. We all sin. We all have our issues, our areas that we struggle with. I should stop focusing on the things i don't like in others and start looking into my own heart to see where I need to repent.
In my efforts to try to get myself back on track with the Lord I decided to pick up my "Starting Your Day Right" devo and read today's passage. The devo was taken out of Matthew 7 and talking about wide is the gate that leads to destruction............ As a rule, I usually take whatever chapter in the Bible the devo was coming from and read the whole thing. Lo and behold what did I find?
Matthew 7: 3-5
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attenion to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother 'Let me take the speck out of your eye', when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Whoa! Okay, Lord. Point taken. I didn't feel condemned by this. I didn't feel like I had been reprimanded. In fact I was happy that I was convicted of something last night and God confirmed it this morning, in the subtle way that He so often does. Will I never focus on someone else's flaw? No. But you can bet that I'll be trying hard not to.
Thank you, Lord for speaking to me.
