Learning to Live by Faith

Hymnal Page Scan: His Worthy Praise page 77 | Hymnary.org

Keyboard Recording:

Todays’ post begins after the words to the hymn, so please keep scrolling.

1 Cleanse Thou my heart from secret sin,
From any hidden wrong,
That to a loyal child of thine,
O Lord, must not belong.

Refrain:
Oh, make me white and pure within,
A temple bright and fair;
Cleanse thou my heart from secret sin,
And dwell forever there.

2 Cleanse Thou my heart from secret sin,
From thoughts that lead to ill;
For such, unchecked, unbridled bring
Defiance to thy will. [Refrain]

3 Cleanse Thou my heart from secret sin,
Thus only can I be
Secure from great and open wrong,
And true, O Lord, to thee. [Refrain]

Today’s post:

In my last post about what a broken spirit is, I included a quote from Robert Horton (1855-1934) that said, “the spirit which so long bore a man’s infirmity, and then at last broke because it could bear no more, and became itself intolerable.” I looked up the chapter that the quote was from and read it. It was very interesting. Here is the link to the full chapter if you have a chance to read it: Robert Horton: Expositor’s Bible: The Book of Proverbs – Christian Classics Ethereal Library. The title of Chapter 14 is “The Inward Unapproachable Life.” And the verses Horton is writing about are:

“The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy.” Prov. 14:10.

and

“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of mirth is heaviness.”—Prov. 14:13.

I thought the title sounded interesting – the inward unapproachable life. Horton writes about how no one can really know what is in another person’s heart…and we can’t even know everything that is in our own hearts. But God searches the heart and knows our hearts. And we can go to Him for help…for cleansing and renewal of our hearts.

Horton begins by saying, “We know each other’s appearance, it is true, but there for the most part our mutual knowledge ceases. Some of us unveil nothing of ourselves to anyone; some of us unveil a little to all; some a good deal to a few; but none of us can unveil all even to the most intimate friend……We are quite startled to discover how absolutely alone we live, how impossible it is for a stranger, or even for an intimate friend, to meddle with more than a fragment of our inner life. This is not because we have any wish to conceal, but rather because we are not able to reveal, our silent unseen selves; it is not because others would not like to know, but because they have not the instruments to investigate, that within us which we on our part are quite helpless to express.”

I thought it was interesting that he pointed out that there are things within our hearts that we are not able to express because we are not able to reveal our silent, unseen selves. This means that we need help knowing and expressing what is in our own hearts.  There are a lot of hymns that are prayers for God to search our hearts. The imagery in “Cleanse Thou My Heart” will be really helpful for our meditation time. It is a prayer to God. We need to remember that we need help with this. And we need to remember to spend much time with God…asking Him to search our hearts.

I wanted to share with you the paragraphs around the quote from yesterday’s post so you can see what he was talking about. Horton writes about how it is difficult for us to know what another person is feeling because only the person who had the direct experience knows what he feels like. He first talks about this in terms of feeling another person’s joy. Next, he will talk about it in terms of feeling someone’s bitterness. The examples of joy he gave were of a man who had labored for many years trying to provide for his family and then was finally able to get to easier circumstances, an artist who was finally able to paint the painting he had been envisioning after many years of toil, a mother’s joy in her newborn child, a poet, and several other examples.  He is saying that only the person who felt that joy really knows what it feels like. He paints a picture of a person who is feeling great joy within his heart looking around him and wondering why other people do not feel it, too. Next, he talks about how someone can be feeling great bitterness and heaviness of heart, but the people around him do not feel it and are unaware that he is feeling it. This next paragraph has the quote in it from yesterday. I want to share the full paragraphs with you because there is some imagery we can work with and I think it is important for you to hear it the way he wrote it. Horton says,

“But this thought (of realizing other people do not feel what we feel) becomes very pathetic (in the sense of “pathos”…meaning becomes deeply moving or deeply affects the heart) when we think of the heart’s bitterness, which the heart alone can know,—the hope deferred which makes it sick, the broken spirit which dries up the bones, the spirit which for so long bore a man’s infirmity, and then at last broke because it could bear no more, and became itself intolerable. The circumstances of a man’s life do not give us any clue to his sorrows; the rich have troubles which to the poor would seem incredible, and the poor have troubles which their poverty does not explain. There are little constitutional ailments, defects in the blood, slight deformities, unobserved disabilities, which fill the heart with a bitterness untold and unimaginable. There are crosses of the affections, disappointments of the ambitions; there are frets of the family, worries of business; there are the haunting Furies of past indiscretions, the pitiless reminders of half-forgotten pledges. There are weary doubts and misgivings, suspicions and fears, which poison all inward peace, and take light out of the eye and elasticity out of the step. These things the heart knows, but no one else knows.

What adds to the pathos is that these sorrows are often covered with laughter as with a veil, and no one suspects that the end of all this apparently spontaneous mirth is to be heaviness. The bright talker, the merry jester, the singer of the gay song, goes home when the party separates, and on his threshold he meets the veiled sorrow of his life, and plunges into the chilly shadow in which his days are spent.”

So, there is a lot of imagery we can work with from those paragraphs. First, we can work with imagery for bitterness. Horton says that there are things that happen in life that fill a person’s heart with bitterness…so take time to envision that happening. A person has a healthy heart…and then something happens…and his heart becomes filled with bitterness. I see something like a toxic energy filling the heart…it burns…and makes the person feel tired. You can envision the energy/vitality in the person’s bones drying up. His spirit is heavy…and it sends a dysregulated energy throughout his body. When someone’s spirit breaks…his spirit itself becomes a torment to him if I am understanding it correctly. So that dysregulated energy is going throughout his body.

Look again at the part where Horton says, “There are weary doubts and misgivings, suspicions and fears, which poison all inward peace, and take light out of the eye and elasticity out of the step. These things the heart knows, but no one else knows.” And then take time to envision that. The person might have had inward peace to begin with. See what color and image comes to mind to represent peace. Then see doubts and misgivings poisoning that peace. The color that represented peace becomes murky and bitter. The light in the person’s eye becomes dim and cloudy. The elasticity is taken out of his step and he now walks with a heavy, painful step. So again…start the imagery with the person feeling relatively ok…and then doubts and fears poison his peace…bitterness fills his heart. Once the bitterness fills his heart, that toxic energy goes throughout his body…drying up his bones, dimming the light in his eyes, and giving him a heavy, painful walking step.

This is how that person feels in his heart. Then take time to work with what Horton was talking about in the next paragraph. Oftentimes people have to hide what they are feeling. So envision the person putting a veil over his heart…covering over his broken spirit…and then he starts smiling and laughing. But that dysregulated energy is still flowing throughout his system…he’s just acting like he doesn’t feel it. When he gets home, the veil is taken off…his begins to feel that veiled sorrow more profoundly now…all the stress of the day starts to hit him…and he feels all of the pain that his wounded spirit is not really able to bear. He plunges into that chilly shadow.

I think it will help to work with the imagery like this…alternating between how we feel when we are veiling our emotions…and then how we feel when things get quiet and all of our emotions bubble up. Sometimes it feels good…or like some kind of relief…to stuff everything down and walk around smiling. But we know that later, we are going to feel everything we are suppressing. So we are trying to develop another setting…a new pathway for our emotions. We will still need to be able to contain our emotions…at times we will still need to set them aside to process them later. But that will be the new setting…learning how to actually process them rather than just suppressing them and then later feeling them in an overwhelming way and then refreezing them. And for that new setting, we will go into the quiet valley of prayer and ask God to cleanse our hearts. I want to share a few more things from Horton’s Exposition of the Book of Proverbs before looking at the words to “Cleanse Thou My Heart.”

One thing that Horton said that I thought was really interesting was this… “Here is a cheerful heart which enjoys a continual feast, and finds in its own merriment a medicine for its troubles…” So as we are wondering what can help our hearts, he gives us this picture of the merriment within a cheerful heart being a medicine itself. Take time to envision that…the cheerful energy has a radiant glow…the energy is joyful in a way that the joy flows throughout the heart and throughout the entire body like a healing medicine…regulating any stressful energy…flowing easily, gently, and pleasantly…restoring that poisoned peace…bringing calmness to the body.

Horton has been talking about how we cannot know what is in someone else’s heart and we cannot even know all that is in our own hearts. Next, he talks about the pain of not feeling understood. He says, “Our sorrow yearns for comprehension, and is constantly doubled in quantity and intensity by finding that it cannot explain itself or become intelligible to others. This rigid and necessary isolation of the human heart, along with such a deep-rooted desire for sympathy, is one of the most perplexing paradoxes of our nature; and though we know well that it is a fact, we are constantly re-discovering it with a fresh surprise.”

Although there are limits to the human understanding of the heart, we can always turn to God – the One who searches and knows everyone’s hearts. Horton says, “‘The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.’ (Proverbs 20:12) How obvious is the inference that the Maker of the ear and the eye hears those silent things which escape the ear itself, and sees those recesses of the human heart which the human eye is never able to search!……He sees in the heart what the heart itself does not see.”

Horton points out that this means that God will see our sins when He searches our hearts. But we can rejoice in knowing that the One who searches our hearts is our loving Father, who longs to purify us and make us more and more like Him. We can trust Him with our hearts. Horton says, “He delights to turn His knowledge of our nature to the purpose of cleansing and transforming the sinful heart: ‘By His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many,’ He says. He is ready, too, to shed abroad His own rich love in our hearts, leaving no room for the hankering desire, and creating the peace of a complete fulfilment.”

In an earlier paragraph, Horton talks about how turning to God is the answer. He says, “Have we not found a solution of the paradox? The human heart is isolated; it longs for sympathy, but cannot obtain it; it seems to depend for its happiness on being comprehended, but no fellow-creature can comprehend it; it knows its own bitterness, which no one else can know; it broods over its own joys, but no one can share them. Then it makes discovery of the truth that God can give it what it requires, that He fully understands, that He can enter into all these silent thoughts and unobserved emotions, that He can offer an unfailing sympathy and a faultless comprehension. In its need the lonely heart takes refuge in Him, and makes no murmur that His coming requires the searching, the chastisement, and the purging of sin. No human being needs to be misunderstood or to suffer under the sense of misunderstanding. Let him turn at once to God.”

Horton concludes by talking about how we can not only share our sorrow with God, but our joys also. He says, “Finally, no human being need be without a sharer of his joy: and that is a great consideration, for joy unshared quickly dies, and is from the beginning haunted by a vague sense of a shadow that is falling upon it. In the heart of the Eternal dwells eternal joy. All loveliness, all sweetness, all goodness, all truth, are the objects of His happy contemplation; therefore every really joyful heart has an immediate sympathiser in God; and prayer is quite as much the means by which we share our gladness as the vehicle by which we convey our sorrows to the Divine heart.” 

Now lets look at the words to “Cleanse Thou My Heart” by Edith Tillotson and work with the imagery we will use in our meditation time. In my last post, we used the imagery of the quiet valley of prayer. So take time to bring that imagery to mind. Envision heavenly sunlight shining in the valley and feeling the presence of God’s peace there. Then remember the imagery of the person with a broken spirit…how they have that toxic energy pulsating through them. I will think about my own heart energy and you can think about yours if you would like to. Envision yourself getting ready to walk into the valley of prayer. See Jesus looking at you tenderly…waiting with open arms…eager to hear from you…longing to help you. We will sing the words of this hymn as our prayer. The words in the verses ask God to cleanse our hearts from secret sin…to search the recesses of our hearts…and show us the things we might not be able to see ourselves. The chorus is really interesting. Tillotson uses the imagery of our hearts being a temple for the Holy Spirit. She prays for God to make her “white a pure within, a temple bright and fair.” So try to work with that imagery when you are singing it…envision your heart as a temple…and see God working within it to cleanse it and make it shine before Him with radiant light. And remember, as you are walking into the quiet valley of prayer…that you are going to see your loving heavenly Father. His purpose in searching your heart is not to hurt you, but to cleanse you of things that are blocking you off from Him and to draw you closer to Him. Step out of that chilly shadow that Horton was talking about and step into the warmth of God’s loving presence.