30 Days of Praise-Day 14 Psalm 51:15-17

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

I love David. He, like most of the other men and women that God chose to include in His Word, is so real and genuine. He wasn't a super Christian, or perfect or un-relateable on some pedestal. In fact, he committed adultery and then had the woman's husband murdered so he could have her. And God had to deal with his sin. This Psalm is his response to that and his confession of his wrong-doing after Nathan the prophet made him see the error of his ways through a parable. I love how he says "Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise", as if the praises of God were so overflowing in him that just by opening his lips, one would fall out. Even in the midst of his sin and brokenness, he was praising God.

A "broken spirit" is what God requires of us when assessing our own sin. We are to confess it to Him and experience a godly sorrow over it; not condemnation, as that is never the will of God. But when we're convicted, we are also broken and need to come to the Lord for healing and restoration. Which leads me to my other favorite passage in this Psalm:

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

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Chuck Smith had something interesting to say about these verses found earlier in the chapter:

So the prayer for the restoring of the joy of salvation. It is amazing the way sin can just rob you. Unconfessed sin can just rob you of God's joy in your life. There are so many Christians who are borderline Christians. They try to live as close to the world and still be a Christian as they can, and they are always just trying to find out just how close that is. Always experimenting. Just living on the edge. Flirting with the other side. And they have the dilemma of having too much of Christ to be happy in the world, but too much of the world to be happy in Christ. "Restore unto me Lord, the joy of my salvation. And uphold me with Your free Spirit."

My prayer today is first that I would be so enamored with my Lord, so accutely aware of His greatness, that praises would just flow out of my mouth (figuratively-in my actions and words to others, etc) when I open it. Second, I want the joy of my salvation restored to me. I want all the cares of the world to be absorbed by the loving caresses of my Heavenly Father and to be free of worry, doubt, shame, guilt of past and present sins. I want to experience what true joy is...despite what's happening around me.