As I was praying one morning for believers, the church as a whole, asking the Holy Spirit to search our hearts to find any wicked way in us, the word dredge came up in my spirit. I was asking the Holy Spirit to work as a machine to remove sin from our hearts and lives; and to fill and cover us with His Grace so we can live for God.

Thinking pretty sure I knew what dredge meant I still went to the dictionary to check the definition. Dredge actually means to gather or search; a machine or barge for removing earth or silt. Then I looked up the word silt; which means fine earth, especially particles of such soil floating in rivers, ponds, or lakes. It also means to obstruct or cover. Wow!  Do you see the spiritual aspects of why the Holy Spirit was having me pray for the dredge of silt in our hearts? I sure can.

In essence, my prayer was asking the Holy Spirit to search and remove any soil from our hearts. We need to understand that there are times that the devil plants thoughts in our mind and heart that we are not aware of that can be a potentially dormant possibility of a sin rising into action. This is why we need to ask the Holy Spirit for help because He knows all things, and can “lead us in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24) Psalm 19:13 puts it this way, “keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me; then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.”

I think a lot of people fear the judgment of the Lord because they are afraid of being condemned but right now, we should desire His judgments because they warn us when we are in danger of even the slightest sin trying to entreat our heart. Those secret and presumptuous sins that are only detected early by the Holy Spirit. (Psalm 19:13) This also includes the way we are thinking that may not line up correctly with His Word.

Okay, that takes care of how the dredging works: it’s the work of the Holy Spirit to convict and cleanse us of sin, not just the openly easily seen or heard sins, but those secret thoughts too. God is so good to help us in not just exposing our faults, but to remove the stain of them and cleanse our heart from the residue of them when we repent of sin. (1 John 1:9) Hallelujah!

Now to the silt in our lives.  As mentioned above, it’s the fine or small things in our lives that we might not recognize as problems. Song of Solomon 2:15 talks about the “little foxes” that spoil the vines and tender grapes. They are small enough to get into small areas of the fence of a garden and eat the young leaves of the plants.  Hebrews 12:1 also talks about “every weight, and the sin which so easily beset us.” Not all weights in the beginning are sin but they are things that slow us down in obeying God, and potentially could become sin. This is how the silt of sin works in our lives; those things that we see but deem too insignificant to address! But please understand these weights will eventually destroy the strength of our faith in God.

To give you a more vivid picture of how this spiritual silt works; it’s similar to a weed that first shows up in a vegetable garden or yard. If we are not looking closely at the state of the garden, that weed will not be removed when it is young and then it takes root in the ground and is harder to take out. The same thing happens in our heart when we don’t realize we have let in a little bit of sin; a little bit of jealousy, bitterness or offense. If we don’t remove that little sin, will fester and take root deeper in our heart. Then it grows and the longer we wait to ask for God’s help, the deeper the roots intertwine into other areas of our heart, doing more damage to the condition and quality of our heart and our life.

So, let’s be sure to guard our heart with diligence to keep us free from the issues that life wants to deposit in us (Proverbs 4:23).  Every day we need to allow the Holy Spirit to dredge our hearts – revealing and cleansing us from all the silt that’s displeasing to God. When God shows us something that needs to be corrected, let’s be quick to repent and receive His forgiveness and cleansing. Amen and amen.