IBS Application for Psalm 51:8-12

“Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.”

I selected another longer passage this time, but the Psalms are speaking to me a lot. David’s words strike the right cords to convict me when I need it, and this passage is no different. I know that the context of the passage here is significantly different than the context in which I find myself, in specific regard to the sort of sin that David is repenting of here as opposed to the sin that I often fall into. But the spirit of repentance I feel is the same, as is the fact that both David and myself are sinners, so I can relate to the feelings expressed here. Ultimately, it is against God alone that we all sin, and we are all level before the cross in this regard.

As I’ve mentioned in previous IBS entries, I’ve struggled a lot with self-condemnation in the past. I still have times today when it rears it’s ugly head in my life again, but I know that I have freedom from it in Christ. This passage provides a very good description of how I feel about these times of condemnation in light of God’s intervention.

Beyond my past, there are things I’m struggling to reconcile in my heart that God has called me to do while out here in the field. But God has had His hand heavy upon me to get me to move in the ways He’s called me to to move, much in the same way that He pressed David to, as David noted in Psalm 32. In this case, I feel like the strength and the foundation I’ve been standing on-the bones that have been holding me up, if you will-have been broken by Him in this season of my life. It feels odd being moved by God in this way, seeing as how I have to be held up by Him as I move. But trusting that He won’t drop me as I heal and get stronger is what faith is about.

I want my heart to change to reflect what God wants. I want a new, clean heart that is free from the worries and the stresses of life. And it shocks me to say that living in this way has been getting easier. I’m more confident than I’ve ever been in the past, not in myself, but in the One that gives strength and purpose to us. I am confident in that He has called me to serve a role here, and I do so with both trembling and rejoicing, but I wish I could find more joy and less stress than I feel at present in my service to Him and to Team Guatemala. I do not claim to be at my destination yet, as far as complete confidence in Him is concerned; I still fall into doubt and self-condemnation at times. But I am farther along in my journey than I thought I would ever be, and I praise God for that!

When I do find myself in these places of hinderance, I often find that my prayers reflect David’s prayer here in this passage, where he begs God to renew his spirit, to not cast him away, to make the joy of God’s salvation fresh in his mind again, and to uphold him with a willing spirit. I don’t simply stop at asking forgiveness anymore, because I have made aware of just how great my need for mercy is, and just how abundantly He bestows both that and grace upon me. And the grace that He has given to me is the sort of gift that He has entrusted me with to do something for Him, essentially what Jesus was talking about in the parable of the talents. I don’t deserve what He has granted to me, but that He would trust me with anything at all is humbling.


My application for this one will be to spend some time in prayer each day for the next three days asking for a renewed sense of joy towards all the service that He has allowed me to do in His name, and that I would continue to find joy in the moments of “bone breaking” for His sake, because I find myself struggling the most in these areas of my walk right now.

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