Day 41: What God Wants

Bertram Mackennal [Public domain]

Psalm 51:16-17

New Living Translation (NLT)

¹⁶ You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
    You do not want a burnt offering.
¹⁷ The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
    You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.

***

This is really a continuation of yesterday. Whereas yesterday I just assumed that perhaps David was inspired to write that psalm after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba, this Psalm really is. Preceding the words of the Psalm are directions for the choir director, and describes this as being specifically about that sinful period in his life.

I think the easiest trap for us to fall into is thinking that God is only some passive, benevolent spirit in the sky that is quick to forgive when we pay a little lip-service to Him. While He is loving, patient, and forgiving, He's also a just God, and He makes His justice known, even to His own children. The consequences of our actions can bring disastrous results, and God isn't one to let us off the hook easily. He wants us to learn from our experiences, and the lessons He teaches aren't easy ones.

How often do we plea with God for this or that, making our requests known, and then like an afterthought, we remember to say "oh yeah, while I'm at it, will you forgive me of all my sins?" I hope I'm not the only one who has been guilty of that. Or maybe we rush through it at the beginning of our prayer; "Oh Lord, please forgive me for having done such-and-such today. Now will you help me out with this?"

David understood what God really wanted from us. In a time when animal sacrifices were required for just about everything, including to cover sins (because the Lamb of God had not yet come to bear that burden), David knew that what God wanted even more than an adherence to the laws of sacrifice was sincerity.

God doesn't want us to flippantly ask forgiveness as though it were something to mark off our to-do list. He wants us to be broken, naked, and deeply sorrowful before Him. Ok, now I don't mean "naked" as in "nude", despite the imagery, I mean He wants us to be totally transparent, not trying to hide anything from his sight or to cover any of our actions with excuses.

We should learn from David's example. He was on his knees before God, begging for His mercy and compassion. He pleaded with God not only to erase the stain of his sin, but to cleanse him of his guilt and purify him from it. He owns up to what he's done, and is so sorry for his actions that he says it haunts him day and night! He can't get it out of his head how he took another man's wife, and then plotted to ensure that the wronged man would be killed in battle. He knew that Uriah's blood was on his hands, and He specifically asks God to forgive him for that. He accepts that God's judgment against him is just, and that he has deserved the price he has paid. Do you remember what that price was? His sin cost him the life of his child. And the consequences of his actions didn't just affect him. Imagine what Bathsheba must have been going through! Sure, she had moved into the palace after losing her husband, but now she had lost her child! She must have felt a lot of resentment towards her new husband, the king. Don't ya think?

As David prayed, he got it. He knew that burning a sacrifice, although required by law, really wasn't good enough. He understood that what would please God far more than going through the motions was for him to offer himself, his own broken spirit and his own broken heart, as his sacrifice. And that is exactly what he offered, knowing that God would accept such an offering and restore David to the joy of his salvation. He wasn't asking that God would simply let him be happy again, He was asking that God would restore his happiness with the kind of joy that comes only from God, through obedience to God.

That is the manner in which we should pray. We screw up daily, so many times that we can't even keep track. Most of the times we don't even acknowledge the things that we do to offend God, because they're so habitual that we don't recognize them as being wrong. But they pile up around us, creating clutter and chaos in our spiritual lives (even if we don't claim to have one) until we completely break down emotionally. 

The only one who can, or will, pull us out of the quicksand is God. And until we are truly, deeply sorry for having strolled into the quagmire in the first place, God's going to let us keep sinking. Things will never get better until we come before God, broken in spirit, and offer ourselves to Him.

Isn't it time?

Day 40: It's My Life (...and Yours)

Jonathan Billinger [CC-BY-SA-2.0]

Psalm 32:5

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁵ Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
    and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”
    And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone. 

Psalm 32:8-9

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁸ The Lord says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.
    I will advise you and watch over you.
⁹ Do not be like a senseless horse or mule
    that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.”

***

Oh, how this psalm seems to reflect to my life! That's the beauty of it, for me.   I can read this psalm, written thousands of years ago by some shepherd-boy-turned-king, and feel like we have so much in common! I wonder what life experience, what rebellion, David was thinking of when he wrote it. The worst thing I can think of that could have inspired this was when he got Bathsheba pregnant and then set her husband up to be killed so that her infidelity wouldn't be found out. 

That's really pretty bad, and I don't think I could top it, but I can sure relate to it. There was a time in my own life when I had found myself in a similar predicament as David's mistress. Nobody plotted the death of my then-husband, though. No, he's still alive and well. 

God didn't let David off the hook for that. I can only imagine that he tried to ignore God for as long as he could. Nobody wants to feel conviction when they're passionate about their disobedience, and if Bathsheba was his disobedience, he certainly was passionate about her! 

How that speaks of the human condition! Aren't we all like that? Even if we love God with all our heart, when we are seduced away from a right relationship with Him, we get so caught up in the enjoyment of our sin that we just don't want to hear that what we are doing is wrong!

Sooner or later, though, we have to face the music. David sure did. The penalty for committing adultery, then having Uriah killed so that he could marry his lover, was the death of their son. I'm not sure that's what this psalm is about, but I do know that David spent a lot of time on his knees while his infant boy was struggling for life. And I know that later, David enjoyed a renewed relationship with God that can only come from true repentance. In this case, I'm guessing David's rebellion probably lasted all of a year. Oh, I wish mine had been so short-lived. It took me more like a decade.

Once back on track spiritually, God took control of David's life, just as He took control of mine, and just as He will take control of anybody's life who is willing to relinquish their own stubborn will. It's amazing how we always think we can manage our lives just fine, and how far unmanageable our lives become before we realize that we've strolled too far off  the right path. But once we repent and get back in line, we discover what we should have already known... that life is so much easier when we're living for God! There really is true freedom in that. 

We may think we can do better for ourselves than God can, but we can't. Since I have assumed that the sin that brought David to pen this psalm was sexual in nature, I'm going to be bold enough to point out one of the most common misconceptions about our ability to choose for ourselves.

Myth: 
"I can't possibly consider marriage to someone I haven't slept with, because I might get stuck with someone I'm not sexually compatible with." 

Fact: 
God knows everything about us... including what we enjoy physically. Think about it. God created us to be sexual people. He created intimacy between a husband and wife to be a special, wonderful gift! He didn't intend for sex to just be utilitarian. He wants it to be pleasurable, and there is plenty of scripture to back that claim up. So why on earth would anyone think that God wouldn't make sure that any mate that HE was allowed to choose for us would be unsatisfactory in that way? On the contrary, if we were to all live for God and give Him control of selecting our mates, we'd discover the true potential of God's gift to us, and it would be a mind-blowing experience every time.


If we will just trust God to bring us His very best in our lives, we will never, ever be disappointed with the results.

Now, I have to apologize to my mother in case she's offended by reading this. And to anyone else who might wonder how on earth I took a psalm of repentance and restoration and turned it into a lecture on sexual misconduct. Honestly, I don't know. It wasn't what I had in mind when I started writing, but it's what I ended up with. Maybe God knew that someone reading this needed to hear it. I'd sure like to think that even now, I'd allowed God to direct my thoughts, and given Him control over my keyboard.