I recently woke up in the early morning from a very good dream about someone wanting to reconcile with me. It had such an emotional effect that I had to immediately get out of bed and pray for this person. As I did so, I was drawn to David’s prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 and realized that this is what I needed to pray for them in the hope that my dream would turn into reality.
However, it is impossible to pray Psalm 51 in an intercessory way (bringing the needs of others before God with the hope of bringing God’s grace and goodness to others) without first praying it in a humbly repentant way for us first.
Since then (about 9 days), I have begun each morning with prayerful meditation on David’s prayer, praying it for myself as needed in the branch-of-the-vine kind of way,[1] and then praying it for the person who had reconciled with me in my dream, and anyone else I can think of who would be blessed to experience David’s prayer of repentance for themselves.
My meditation has settled into asking for three things. First, that God would do for me whatever David prayed for himself. Second, that God would do for others what David and I prayed for ourselves. Third, that God would lead others to pray each of these prayer requests for themselves the way David and I prayed them. The aim is that God would answer their prayers with as much gracious blessings as David and I could wish for ourselves.
With that as background, I am up to this request in David’s prayer:
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit. (vs 12)
Let’s look at how we can pray about this in the three ways we are considering.
QUESTION 1: What are we asking God to do for us when we pray
this for ourselves?
We must begin with the admission that we have lost the joy of God’s salvation and become weak and demoralized about what we have done. David had already addressed how he couldn’t hide from his sin, he knew God was blameless in any judgment he meted out, he could feel his sin as a curse from conception, and he was desperate to know that God would “cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me” (vs 11).
When he prayed this “restore” and “uphold” prayer, he was asking God to let him have back the things he had lost because of his sin. He could not erase the sin from history, as much as he wished it could happen (he likely had no idea that people 3,000 years later would still benefit so much from his prayer), but he could call on the God of “steadfast love” and “abundant mercy” (vs 1) to restore what he had destroyed and repair what he had ruined.
When we pray this for ourselves, we freely admit to God how our joy has taken such a beating because of our sins that we have fallen prey to a spirit within us that struggles to be willing to walk in the righteousness of faith. As a distressed father of old pleaded with Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” we can pray, “I am willing; help my unwillingness!”
I often find myself on a Beatitudinal Journey through whatever God is teaching me. As I walk through the eight Beatitudes Jesus used to introduce his Sermon on the Mount, I see a fresh valley of blessings pouring into my life, helped along by my meditation on how they apply.[2]
I can see how the “poor in spirit” admission that I have lost joy because of sin and fallen pray to an unwilling spirit because of iniquity is God’s blessing to lead me to honest repentance. The blessing continues as I express myself as one of “those who mourn” and enter the blessing of God’s comfort through forgiveness. When I interact with God in acknowledgment that I cannot fix myself but rest in the authority of Jesus Christ to save me from my sin, I find the blessing of meekness that knows I am a joint heir with Christ of all that is his. And when I find myself “hungering and thirsting for righteousness” no matter how horrible my sin, I know I am being blessed with the satisfaction of righteousness that is mine only by grace through faith.
That is what I see in David’s prayer, that God would restore to him the joy of his salvation and uphold him with a willing spirit. David had arrived at the bottom of the Beatitudinal Valley where God could satisfy him with the super-abounding grace that restores sinners from our horrible experiences of sin into a life where “the righteous shall live by faith” once again (David’s sin was a faith problem after all). And I know God is just as loving and gracious to answer this prayer for me as he was to return David to joy and restore his broken and contrite spirit.
QUESTION 2: What are we asking God to do for others as we pray
this prayer for them in an intercessory way?
The first test in praying this for others is whether we are in the “blessed are the merciful” experience where we want God to be just as merciful to people who have wronged us as we expect him to be with us in our wrongdoing. We will also discover whether we are in the “blessed are the pure in heart” reality where we want only one thing, that God would be glorified in all of us as we all find our satisfaction in him. We will also know whether we are blessed as a “peacemaker” by our heart’s desire in asking God to do for people who have wronged us the same return to joy and willing spirit as we have experienced for ourselves. And we will know we truly want the same thing for others as ourselves when we are willing to be blessed as one of those who “are persecuted for the sake of righteousness” even while we pray for our persecutors as Jesus instructed.
If we have truly prayed David’s prayer for ourselves, knowing that “where sin increased” in us, “grace abounded all the more” for us,[3] We will be just as eager to see God restore to our church-going opponents the joy of his salvation as he has returned us to joy more times than we could ever deserve, and we will want him to be just as gracious in upholding them with a willing spirit as we have felt him do for us more times than we can count.
QUESTION 3: What are we asking God to do for others as we intercede for them that they would pray this prayer for themselves?
When we pray for others, it never means God will just do what we ask for them without engaging them in a relational way.
For example, once we know that the Bible never teaches us to forgive unrepentant people, when we obey Jesus’ command to pray for our persecutors, and we take up his prayer from the cross, “Father, forgive them,” we know that God cannot and will not answer that prayer without bringing them to repentance.
When we obey Jesus’ command to “bless those who curse you,” our prayers for our cursing opponents cannot be applied except in the Beatitudinal way Jesus presented. He can only bless a cursing person by bringing them to see their poverty of spirit that is making them such a miserable person. He can only bless them by leading them to mourn what they are doing. He must bless them with the meekness that surrenders to the authority of Jesus Christ and hungers and thirsts for the righteousness of being like Jesus.
In other words, Jesus taught us to seek what is best for others (that’s what agapè-love is all about), and to answer our prayers he will always engage with a person in a relational way that leaves them aware that they are dealing with the living Christ and must humble themselves and receive the good news with great joy and thanksgiving.
With all that in mind, it isn’t enough for us to pray for sinning people that God would return them to joy and build up their spirits. We must pray that God would show such kindness to them that would lead them to repentance so they would call on him to restore to them the joy of his salvation, and to uphold them with a willing spirit. We must ask God to bring them to the place of praying this prayer for themselves just as we have prayed it for ourselves. We want them to know God as the gracious and loving Savior who has forgiven them just as we have come to know him by letting David mentor us in how to pray.
So many church-folk have no idea how to live in “the joy of your salvation” because they have never really prayed in repentance and faith. They languish with an unwilling spirit because they have never confessed how desperately they need God where they have so horribly sinned.
The cure is to meet with God in David’s prayer so we know the joy of restoration and forgiveness for ourselves and then actively seek the same experiences for others, including the personal repentance and faith that attaches to God in everything we go through.
The fact that God led David in his prayer, and then led his people to include David’s prayer in the Bible, means that it is God’s will that we be restored to the joy of his salvation after any sin, and it is God’s will to uphold us with a willing spirit. If we will take this kind of praying to heart for ourselves, we are already doing the same thing we want God to do for someone else.
And so, we keep praying for ourselves and others according
to the word and will of God and wait expectantly for God to do God-sized things
in all our lives that were once nothing but a dream.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1]
John 15:1-11 is where Jesus spoke
of himself as the vine and us as his branches. His emphasis was on our need to
abide in him in order for us to bear much fruit. This means we always deal with
how we are doing in our walk with God first, and then look at how he wants to
bless others out of that abiding attachment to him. It is easy to apply this to
David’s prayer as we make sure we are caught up on everything we need there for
ourselves and then asking God to do the same things for others as we seek God
to do for us.
[2]
Matthew 5:1-12 (in context of
the whole Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5-7)
[3]
Romans 5:20
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