Psalm 51:10-12 - June 6, 2009

Ps 51:10-12 "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." NIV

When someone has experienced the presence of God, when a heart has tasted the joy of standing before God with a clean conscience that does not accuse them in God’s presence, when someone has felt the confident inner strength that flows from walking in the Spirit it is a dramatic sense of loss when your heart has become distracted for a season and you find yourself caught in a lukewarm or sinful state. Your heart no longer feels the burning sense of God’s companionship and your inner life is dulled by the dilution of other things. This is the context of the cry found within Psalm 51:10-12. David has been a radical worshipper, prophetic voice, triumphant warrior and anointed king throughout the seasons of his life. He has tasted of the radiance of God’s favor and abiding presence upon his days but in a series of failures that have progressed out of a season of untimely rest David has fallen into a place of sin and separation that is weighing heavily upon his heart.
Instead of cries of praise and celebration or prayers of intercession for victory in battle his prayers have turned towards his own inner sense of loss and sinfulness. “Create in me a pure heart, O God…” David’s longing is for the sense of defilement that he has exchanged for his confidence before God to be lifted off. He can feel the pressure within his heart that is the fruit of conviction burning in his conscience and he turns his cry to heaven for a work of transformation that will make him whole. He understands that he has lost his focus and that by allowing his successes to become an excuse for self-indulgence that has resulted in losing his position of bold faith before the Lord. And with that realization David cries out to God “renew a steadfast spirit in me.” David has the understanding that what his heart needs is a steadfastness to be worked in his character. Every man and woman of God must come to the place of being unshakeable. Every servant of the Lord must wrestle for the complete transformation of their character that will enable them to walk with stability and consistency in those seasons of blessing, favor and increase that the Lord wants to pour out upon his children. We need desperately to learn the lesson of our own human potential for self-indulgence. It is easy to stay focused when the bullets are flying. It is easy to stay firm when you are fighting for your very life, but when those seasons of rest, those opportunities for discreet escapes into self-indulgence and compromise present themselves our hearts somehow justify our actions with all the reasons that we deserve this illicit pleasure. David knows this path well now and in his pain he is crying out to the Lord, “Make me steadfast; make me unmovable!”
In his pain David cries out for the knowledge of the presence of God to be restored to him. He has lived as it were under and open heavens and now his sin has separated him from the conscious knowledge of God’s abiding presence. This pain is almost too much for him to bear and he cries out “Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me!” This cry is a reflection of the understanding that the greatest loss a believer can experience is the loss of God’s conscious presence carrying us, empowering us, speaking within us! Sin separates us from the most precious pleasure the world has ever known- the conscious knowledge that God is with us!
David knows that his heart is now ensnared in this cycle of sinfulness. He knows that he is not burning with the presence that he once enjoyed and so he lifts up a potent phrase before the throne of God that reflects this sense of loss that is working to convict his heart; “restore to me the joy of your salvation!” David has known the joy of being in a right relationship with God and so the absence of the empowering joy that comes from having a pure heart before God is painful to bear. In his weakness, in his understanding of his potential for backsliding David continues his plea for mercy by asking for the great necessity of the Christian life “grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” When we fall into seasons of sin it is because we have lost the foundational ingredient to success in God; willingness! David knows that his heart has lost its willingness to press into the disciplines of his spiritual life. He recognizes that his love for the pleasures of this life has grown as his circumstances have become more favorable and that as a result his heart has grown cold to the burning of God’s presence. With this realization David lifts up a cry for a new motivation to run hard after God: “grant me a willing spirit to sustain me!” Ask God today for a willingness to do all that he asks of you. Cry out for the sustaining power of a “yes” towards God in your inner most being and will carry you through the times of temptation with great victory because of the greater vision that is burning within your heart!