Friday, January 23rd | Daily Devotion

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,  and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is before me. Against you only have I sinned  and no one is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words  and blameless in your judgments. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in the truth and inward being. You teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop  and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins  and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me  a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. –Psalm 51:1-12

TRANSCRIPTION:

Good morning, good morning, grace and peace be unto you  on this wonderful Friday morning.  Pray all is well. I'm Dr. Powell here  with our weekly daily devotionals. We've been  couched, of course, in the book of Psalm  and thought it fitting for us to close out our week  with a familiar Psalm, specifically one that speaks. uh directly to our situations and circumstances,  us being human in our own sinful nature.

So that's the 51st Division of Psalm. As always, I'll read a portion of it, and I encourage you to read its entirety in your free time. It's not that long.

The 51st Division of Psalm:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,  and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is before me. Against you only have I sinned  and no one is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words  and blameless in your judgments. Behold,  I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in the truth and inward being. You teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop  and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins  and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me  a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.” And it goes on. 

This is one of the most famed Psalms. Mainly because it is the one that David wrote  when he was confronted by Nathan about his transgressions. It always baffles me, how does David, whose sins are probably more  egregiously played out for us in scripture, how does someone like that become a man after God's own heart? Clearly it wasn't because he had some level of righteousness that he walked in.

More importantly, David had a strong understanding about how to restore relationship by his genuine nature of being honest about where he was. His consistent effort to make sure that he uh corrected his actions and found his way into good graces with his understanding is a direct understanding of how we deal with our sin. 

None of us are walking around blameless. The difference is the ones who are able to acknowledge  their transgression and go before God's throne of grace  with humility.

And he opens up this piece with explaining, I know my transgressions, that nothing that I've done is hidden from you, even though it may have been hidden from Peter, that everything that I've done, you know about it. But God, it's my desire, my desire to be closer to you, my desire to be different than I was, my desire to correct my mistakes. And that's what God is looking for.

God is looking for the perfected nature of your honest, honest, honest renewal by saying, God, I messed up. And I realized when he talks about being conceived in sin, he said, listen, we have some sinful nature. We are going to miss the mark. Missing the mark is a part of life, but failing to repent from those areas and to learn and to grow from those areas, that's the true area of sin.

Being shaped in an iniquity is one thing, but being governed by iniquity is another.

So on today, I encourage you, take a look over your life. Take a look over your areas and spaces. Look deep inside to where you can confess your sins and make them known  in a place where you want God to  redirect and reconstruct you. Are there areas and spaces that you definitely need to surrender over to Him?

I pray that this does something for us on this wonderful Friday. Be blessed, be safe, and be warm. I'll see you on Monday. God bless you.