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Psalm 26:2-3 Test me, Lord, and try me; examine my heart and mind. For Your faithful love is before my eyes, and I live by Your truth.

Over the years, I’ve had many jobs that required proofreading and checking for errors. Many years ago when my boys were very little and I was a stay-at-home Mom, I did typing as an independent contractor, usually for college students. First, using a typewriter, next using what then passed for a home computer, I typed papers for the students and proofread them. I also frequently typed resume’s as they were getting ready to graduate and looking for jobs.

One of the good things about teaching myself to use a computer, is that I made myself marketable for a job outside the home as the boys got older – so after a while, I typed my own resume’ and got a job.

It’s not a surprise that my jobs have required and continue to require checking for errors. After all, errors happen, but they can’t remain. One of the things I find so satisfying about doing accounting is that the accounts must balance. If they don’t, it means there’s an error, so I must go looking for it.

The problem with checking for errors – for both words and numbers – is that it can be very easy to overlook the error, because the human mind tends to “see” what was supposed to be there, what we thought we put there, rather than the mistake.

Years ago, I learned a “trick” for proofreading text, words, which is to read it backwards. It makes the error stand out and suddenly become visible because reading it backwards means you’re less prone to simply read over what you thought was there. But that “trick” is much more difficult to do when checking for errors amid numbers.

It occurs to me that this is the reason we need the Holy Spirit to help us when we examine our own lives, our hearts and our minds, for sin, for obstacles that we put in the way of God, for anything that is not physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually healthy for us – because we tend to see what we want to see. The Holy Spirit is God and that is not a problem for Him. He can and will get right to the heart of the matter.

Holy Spirit, open my heart and life and expose anything that will get in the ways of the work that You are doing in my life to make me like Christ. Lord, I also ask You to lift the scales from my eyes and help me to see what is displeasing to You so that as You remove it, I may develop an aversion to it in order to stay far away from it in the future. Through Christ I pray, Amen.

Psalm 139:23-24 Look through me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there is any sinful way in me and lead me in the way that lasts forever.