Mike Focht 8/1/2025
How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments! Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.
Psalm 119:9-11
What question could be more direct? How can our way be cleansed? How can the way of a young man—the man who seems most susceptible to temptation—be cleansed? This is a question full of longing and sincerity. A question we want answered!
What is the instruction the inspired psalmist gives? The Word of God!
If you do not want to sin against God, you must hide the Word of God in your heart. Your whole heart! We need spiritual strength for spiritual battles, and you cannot find spiritual strength through material means. Spiritual strength is found in God’s Word.
God’s Word cleanses our way. Illuminates our path. Sanctifies us. Grows us. Builds our faith. And sets us free. The cleansing work of the Word doesn’t happen in a singular encounter. God’s Word changes us in the same way good food and water nourish a body, the sun tans our skin, or the right conditions cause a seed to grow and bear fruit. The Word of God provides the right conditions for a heart to be cleansed, a mind to turn godly, sin to be crowded out and die, and spiritual life to grow.
We must continue pouring the water of God’s Word into our defiled minds, fickle emotions, and dirty hearts. If we do, God will transform our minds, strengthen our will, and create in us a clean heart. God’s instruction is clear. Make no mistake, there is no shortcut to this process! No other source can produce the spiritual results we need. There is nowhere else to offer our heart for cleansing.
Clean Christian living requires clean Christian hearts. Clean hearts, hearts that refuse to sin against God, only exist where there is a hidden fountain of God’s Word deep within.
What does this look like practically? Pouring the Word of God into your life continually and obeying all that you learn there.
Go to church to hear God’s Word—every chance you can.
Read God’s Word on your own, daily.
Study God’s Word with helps like commentaries or study tools.
Begin to memorize God’s Word—write down what ministered to you recently and carry the passage around in your pocket to think on it during the day.
Put Scripture in strategic locations to keep yourself from wandering from His commandments, such as on your TV, computer screen, phone case, home, workplace, or get a tattoo if you’re into that!
Download a free church app (Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia has a great one!) or teaching podcasts and listen to messages as you take a walk or drive.
Listen to an audio Bible reading app.
The point is simple. Flood your entire life with the Word of God. Sincere reception of God’s Word and sincere desire for sin cannot coexist for long. Flooding our life in the Word will not be a hardship if God actually has our whole heart. A whole heart is an entire life. Once His Word has access to our entire heart, He will begin to cleanse and sanctify our entire life. If I pour water into a dirty cup, and stop when it is full, it is just a cup of dirty water. If I keep pouring the water in, until the cup is overflowing, and keep pouring the water so that it continues to overflow, the dirt will eventually wash out, and the cup will eventually be clean. That is how God’s Word cleans a life.
It is Christ’s desire to wash His bride with the water of His Word to sanctify and cleanse her. The psalmist learned the blessing of the Word's cleansing process. Will we? Clean living is His promise, not mine.