Finney: Allow God to Search Our Hearts

Revival LecturesWe’re very good at wanting other people to know about their sins, but not quite as enthusiastic about hearing of our own. Charles Finney nails it in his Revival Lectures:

Perhaps you have resisted the Spirit of God. Perhaps you are in the habit of resisting the Spirit. You resist conviction. In preaching, when something has been said that reached your case, your heart has risen up against it.

Many are willing to hear plain and searching preaching, so long as they can apply it all to other people; a misanthropic spirit makes them take a satisfaction in hearing others searched and rebuked; but if the truth touches them, they directly cry out that the preaching is “personal” and “abusive.”

We all need to allow God to lay open the intent of our hearts. We should welcome the “searching.” Anything that pulls us away from sin and toward righteousness is a blessing, even if we don’t always recognize it as such.

We need to keep in mind the plea of the psalmist David:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.