How to Get Clean Inside

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Now, how do you get a clean heart? Loved ones, it is not by psychology and it is not by reading those "improve yourself" books. An unclean heart is something that only God can deal with. No man can deal with it and all you're doing with these books is putting cosmetics on an old barn that doesn't look too good and trying to make it look better. Unless you go to the heart of the problem, you'll never be delivered from that unclean heart. How do you get a clean heart? Well, you'll find it, loved ones, it's gloriously simple, it's Acts 15:8. And Peter is explaining what happened at the house of Cornelius. Acts 15:8: "And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith." That's how! You get your heart cleansed by the Holy Spirit through your faith. That's it! It's not a long, long series of trying to train yourself. It's not years and years of trying to reroute the thoughts and feelings of your heart. It's not years and years of psychoanalysis trying to trackback where you got these wrong feelings or these bad feelings. It's not trying to get a group who will treat you nice and will treat you right. It's not that, loved ones! It's what the Bible says: you get your heart cleansed by faith, through the Holy Spirit. Faith is belief plus obedience.

When you were born of God, when the Holy Spirit acted upon you and made you aware of Jesus, and made you aware of God and of the realities of Heaven, you know what you did: obedience for you was repentance, it was turning from the things that were wrong in your life, it was stopping them, stopping them there. And then it was believing that Jesus had died for you and God was willing to forgive you. Now, it's exactly the same for a cleansed heart. It's faith -- belief plus obedience -- except that the obedience in this situation is consecration. Not repentance -- not turning away from the things that are wrong, but giving everything in your life to God, consecrating it wholly and absolutely in complete and full surrender, right from the top of your head to your feet. Right the whole way down to the deepest part of your heart.

It's giving it all to God and saying: "Lord, I want the Holy Spirit to come in and to rule my heart and to do what He wants. I want Him to make His wishes my wishes; I want His will to be my will. I don't want to even think a thought or turn an eye where He doesn't want to do it.

I want to give myself wholly to you, Holy Spirit. You take over this whole being of mine and even the thoughts that I think are harmless, if you say I have not to think them, I won't think them." It's full consecration, loved ones.