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,
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.
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,
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.)
