A Broken and Repentant Heart

April 8, 2019

A Broken and Repentant Heart

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and make me willing to obey you.

Psalm 51:12

Psalm 51 is one of the Seven Penitential Psalms: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. These psalms are appreciated for their honesty and self-reflection. They model authentic prayers that seek God’s mercy, forgiveness and healing. Whatever our struggles, these psalms reveal we can come before God in humility and honesty, and at God’s Throne of Grace, experience God’s love, mercy and forgiveness. It would be good to make a note of these psalms in back of your Bible so you readily locate them.

Psalm 51 is so very poignant because of the depth of David’s sin and the harm he caused through his sin with Bathsheba. (See 2 Samuel 11-12) If God’s mercy and forgiveness is sufficient to cleanse, renew and restore David, can there be anything in my life that is beyond God’s capacity to forgive?

I think David’s prose in Psalm 51 is some of the most beautiful and profound in the entire Bible. Verses such as seven and ten have captivated souls for generations: “Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow; and, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.”

However, as a child of God, I must not just relish in David’s prose; I must make his prose be the cry of my heart. My sins are every bit as repugnant to the holiness of God as were David’s. I stand in need of forgiveness, cleansing, renewal and restoration every bit as much as David.

My Takeaway: “Go and sin no more” Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery (John 8:11). Sadly, although she may have desired Jesus’ words to be her goal, the reality of life is that she did sin again. So did David. So do I. Forgiveness, cleansing, renewal and restoration are not once and no more experiences with God. Forgiveness, cleansing, renewal and restoration are the natural rhythm of life for those seeking the life in Christ as their way of life. In these last two weeks of Lent, let our daily prayers include: “Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow; and, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.”

Sē’lah

Alex

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.