Beautiful clothes

Our petit four for the summer is the song “Search Me, Know Me” by one of my favorite Christian songwriters and worship leaders, Kathryn Scott. The lyrics go like this:

Create in me a heart that’s clean
Conquer the power of secret shame
Come wash away the guilty stain of all my sin
Clothe me in robes of righteousness
Cover my nakedness with grace
All of my life before you now I humbly bring

You can listen to the song here:

As you think on these lyrics, I want to leave you with some thoughts for the summer.

In scripture, the heart is essentially the whole person: physical, intellectual, and psychological attributes. The heart is at the center of our being, governing our thoughts, words, and actions. So by inviting God to make our hearts clean, we are asking him to purify our whole lives.

However, even though God is able to see everything in our lives—the good, bad, and ugly—the reality is that we do not like our whole lives to be bare before him. When we know that things are wrong we prefer to hide from him, from other people, and even from ourselves because—as the song points out—we feel ashamed. Listen here to what Bryan Wilkerson, Senior Pastor of Grace Chapel, says about shame. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, our natural reaction is to hide and cover up our nakedness, because of the ugliness of our wrongdoing and the discomfort of our shame.

Yet we need to look beyond this fear to the beauty of God’s grace that is on offer to us. When we bring our heart and life to God, he will not only make us clean, removing the sin that shames us, but he will clothe us with the loveliness of his righteousness. God made clothes of skin for Adam and Eve that were far better than their own attempt at coverings. (Genesis 3:7, 21) But for us, the clothing he gives is far superior. God, through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, clothes us completely with his righteousness (Romans 10:9-11). It is the finest clothing we could wear—far better than our own efforts to patch up our lives. This righteousness includes complete forgiveness for all our wrongdoing (Psalm 103:12). It enables us to stand freely and openly before God in shameless relationship with him.

So we can easily say “all of my life before you now I humbly bring,” because the outcome will be far better than we imagine. Let the words of the song become your prayer. Spend a few moments now with your heavenly Father.