Psalm 51

I've been attending a Bible Study over the summer lead by a different person in the group every week, and the topic was recently prayer.  We discussed confession, and the person leading the study that night brought us to this Psalm.  It was written by David when God sent the prophet Nathan to convict him of his sin with Bathsheba.  The story can be found in 2 Samuel 11-12.

Verse 1 always sounds pretty presumptuous for me, obsequious at best (for the record and just as a side-note, I think this may only be the fifth time in my life I've been able to legitimately use that word!).  "Be gracious to me, O God... According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions."  Sometimes when I see those words, I hear in my head the voice of a teenager who just stole her father's credit card and bought $200 worth of shoes or something saying "Dad, you are so awesome!  You are the world's greatest Dad!  And I know you've got plenty of money, so you won't even miss $200, right?"

Yes, God is loving and compassionate beyond belief, but when I first become aware of sin in my life, those aren't the first attributes of God I'm thinking about.  I'm thinking more about His justice, wrath, and perfection... You know, the things that made Him destroy the world in Noah's day and totally wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah?

But you know, maybe David's on to something here, because while I'm dwelling on that in the midst of my guilt, I generally start playing up my unworthiness in my mind and therefore stop praying all together.  Don't get me wrong, fearing the Lord is a good thing, and sometimes a reality check that deflates one's sense of self can be a pretty healthy thing--but "fear of the Lord" is to help us know more of Him, not to make us too scared to go on in our pursuit of Him.

So David doesn't do that.  In the midst of his guilt, he focuses upon who God is and how worthy of worship He is.

And that's only verse 1!  Where as I used to think verse 1 was just David trying to weasel out of his guilt, what follows proves that he isn't.  In verses 3 and 4, David acknowledges his guilt, along with the fact that God is "justified when You speak, and blameless when You judge" (verse 4).

Then in verses 2, 7-8, and 10, David is not just applying for forgiveness: he is asking God to change his heart.  David isn't just asking for a get-out-of-jail-free card, he's asking God to heal the root of the problem (because the Lord knows we can't do it without Him!).  Verse 10 says, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  I don't think this request is made to apply to the sin that David committed, but rather to apply his continued struggle with sin to come.  Saved or not, we are still human, and sin is a daily (if not hourly) battle.

Verses 16-17 then talk about how God doesn't care about the religion.  David was a wealthy ruler, he could have requisitioned a herd of cattle and taken them all to the temple to have them sacrificed because that's what the people in his day did about sin, but God doesn't care about the ritual, and He's not just a big Barbeque Buff.  God cares about the heart.  God loves us and wants a close, intimate relationship with us.  He wants us to be honest with Him and open to Him, and He wants to work in our lives and help us fight sin.

Sin separates us from God already, and guilt just complicates the process of letting His forgiveness restore the relationship.  Does that mean be the teenager that steals the credit card and assume that it will be okay?  No.  When we confess our sin, we need to also ask God to change our heart.  Mistakes are learning experiences, and we WILL make mistakes.  We have a choice: we can feel bad about those mistakes and let them take away from our intimate relationship with the Creator of the Universe, or we can ask Him to help us learn and transform us into a people more like Him.

Psalm 34

This was a Psalm of David. It was written at the time of the events of 1 Samuel 21:10-15. Just an interesting side note.

David is praising God for what He has done in his life. David does this a lot. I don't think we do it enough. God created me, he knew me by name before I was even a thought, He had a plan for me and still has a plan for me no matter how many times I try my hardest to mess it up. He provides for me, He frees me from my demons, and He never leaves me. How often do we just sit down and list a few of the great and mighty things God has done for us? I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. (verse 1)

This Psalm was written during the events of 1 Samuel 21:10-15, which on the surface is kind of a humorous story from my perspective. David was on the run from King Saul, who was jealous of him and wanted him dead. He came to this king of whom he was afraid, on top of the fact that he had just left his friends and family to run for his life. We're talking a very scary point in David's life here. To keep from being recognized, he pretended to be crazy, and this king seriously said (in KRV, which stands for "Kaycee's Remembered Version): "Do I not have enough madmen in my court that you have to bring me this one?" Pretty slick on David's part, if you ask me.

So then David escapes and he pens these words. I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. (verse 4) When we stop to look at the things that God has done in our lives, it reminds us of how faithful He is. The cool part? God doesn't change. I'm facing a new set of struggles at this new stage in my life, but I'm facing them with the same God that protected me during family hardships, the same God who provided me a church family back home, the same God who has provided for me since day one of moving to Iowa. Much of this Psalm is David looking at all of the ways that God was with him.

At times, this Psalm appears to limit God's protection to the "righteous." For example: The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry, the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. (verses 15 and 16) So who is "righteous" if ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?

This is the cool part.

The Lord redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who take refuge in him. (verse 22) Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. (verse 5). I may be a sinner. I may have screwed it up pretty bad. I may have made some awful mistakes that I still really regret. But according to Psalm 34, I can look to God and take refuge in Him, and I don't have to carry the shame of my mistakes, because I am redeemed by God! That makes me righteous in His sight, and all of the grace and protection and love that God gives to David is mine, too!

~ * ~

Other highlighted verses: 11-14 and 18

Intro to Psalms

Personally, I've struggled with Psalms my whole life. I mean, it's the longest book in the Bible, so that makes it pretty overwhelming. Then every time I try to read it, it feels like I'm reading the same thing over and over and over... and over and over... and over again. "God, why is my life so hard? Why am I facing these trials? Why are my enemies winning? But every time I come back to You, everything is beautifully hunky-dory!" Just about every Psalm holds at least loosely to that format, and I can't always quite follow how the Psalmist goes so fluidly from such devastation to such peace. When it doesn't follow this path, a Psalm begins with this elaborately poetic praise of how awesome God is, and as I'm reading my Bible looking for something to apply to my life, I'm sure that the Psalmist was really feeling God in that moment, but I'm generally not so much.

So I keep trying to read through Psalms because people tell me that they are "powerful," but I start with Psalm 1 (which is great, don't get me wrong), but once I go into Psalms 2 and 3, I start seeing the same thing and then I give up until the next time I am struck with the inspiration to try again... starting with Psalm 1. Then 2 and 3. Etc.

But every now and then, especially the past couple of years, God uses a Psalm to show me something awesome.

So instead of trying to read through the Psalms, I'm going to keep my feelers out for those ones that God speaks to me with, and I wanted somewhere to write down what I learned. So maybe, with this blog, I'll stop just giving up on Psalms all together, and perhaps God can show you something in the Psalms, too.

The title of each of these posts is going to be a Psalm. I'd encourage you to read the Psalm first, so that God's words are in your head before you start reading mine. Who knows? Maybe God has something entirely different in mind for you to take away. The Psalms are still God's word to us, and I shouldn't ignore them just because they are daunting. They can be truly powerful!