Blog post July 20th, 2026

How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults. Keep Your servant from deliberate sins! Don't let them control me. Then I will be free from guilt and innocent of great sin. Psalm 19:12-13

I just returned from a week of R&R on a lake in Northern Minnesota. It was a relaxing, peaceful time of rest and reflection. A reset of sorts. I had taken the time to hoe, pull and trim our property before we left. I am always amazed when I return at how much advancement the weeds made will I was absent for a week. Not only the weeds but little trees seemed to appear in unwanted places seemingly overnight.

As I read Psalm 19 again I was reminded of the same thing in a spiritual sense. Had the trees really just appeared or were they blending in and there all the time? Like sins lurking in my heart, the unwanted trees were there all the time, camouflaged perhaps, but present. With a fresh perspective they were very evident.

I love the Psalmist prayer in Psalm 19. Lord reveal the "lurking sins" and cleanse me from the hidden faults that are revealed with a fresh perspective. If we take a week off spiritually speaking, the advancement of things that were there all the time is scary.

What a reminder of the sinful state we live in. The physical work of hoeing, pulling and trimming is exhausting but is exactly the results of the "curse" which came upon the world as a result of sin. Spiritually speaking the work is just as exhausting, but necessary. The reality is we can never take a week off spiritually without paying the price and making the work even harder to regain ground that we once controlled.

It is not enough to trim the tops off the sprouting trees and let the roots grow or they will grow with even more vengeance. So it is spiritually, we must identify the root, take it out and treat the soil so it will not regerminate and come back even stronger.

Heavenly Father, thank you for "resets" and "fresh" perspectives. Thank you for the Holy Spirit that gives us fresh perspectives and helps us see the correlation between the physical and the spiritual. Thank you that You cleanse us from hidden faults and give us fresh Son-shine to keep us growing. Thank you in Jesus name. AMEN AMEN