Discipleship Clean

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)

In my opinion “cleaning” should be in the list of words your mother teaches you when you are small to never say. People should find a way to make “cleaning” and all its relatives that are verbs four letter words. Just the verbs are the ones that I have a problem with. I love the adjectives. Who doesn’t like something that is “clean?” It is the physical act of cleaning that has bothered me all my life.My previous words are not to say that I am sloppy or the epitome of all things unclean; they are to say that I am not a big fan of the necessary job of cleaning. If I had a choice to do anything I wanted to in the world, cleaning would be nowhere near the top of the list; in fact I doubt it would make the list at all. Like I said it is a necessary task that we must undertake for scores of reasons, even in our spiritual lives.As we seek to become better disciples we look to purify our lives as a whole—body, mind and spirit. We search for the components of our lives that would hinder us from becoming successful disciples. When we discover one of these hindrances in our lives it should be our goal to cleanse ourselves of it and be one step closer to having a pure heart. If we look at this verse compared to verse 7 we can see that, again, there is too much of a resemblance to not be able to say that they are connected.As disciples we are on a constant hunt for the presence of God and of all things of Him that are holy. We are hungry and thirst for His righteousness, searching for new ways to get more and more of it. As we are filled and satisfied, like Jesus promised, we begin to have our outside character match what is inside of our hearts. We do not have to keep tabs of who we are speaking with or remember what environment we are in and change our character accordingly. This is due to the fact that we have begun the transition from mere Christian whose soul has been redeemed to active disciple whose spirit longs for the relationship with Christ that comes with becoming an active practitioner of His teachings.With this transition and process of seeking after His righteousness comes the desire to live life with a purified heart. Discipleship is to live a life with no ulterior motives. There is no worrying about issues like promotion, societal status, favor, possessions, and the like because we realize those things don’t matter in the Kingdom of God. Those things have no bearing on the depth of the relationship that we have with Jesus as disciples of His teachings. All things that we need to consider as necessary in our life we realize that have been or will be given to us by God (going back to verse 5 where we inherit the earth).If we still consider those things important, then we have not fully and successfully undertaken the call to discipleship.As we seek to purify our lives of everything that hinders our discipleship walk with Christ then we will begin to see our world around us as God sees it. We will look at the people that are in our lives in any capacity (from the closest friend to the stranger that enters and exits our lives in a matter of seconds) as He would see them. Because of this we will be able to serve and love our communities as He would. Beyond that we will be able to serve and love God as He should be loved, because when our hearts are pure we will see God in everything that we affect in our lives.

Father I ask that you would direct me to anything that is in my life that is keeping me from having a pure heart. I want to see you. Amen.Father I long to be more like you with each breath I take. Help me to purify my whole self so I look and act more like you with each of those breaths. Amen.