40 Days of Prayer, Day 13
Day 13, Friday, September 2
Psalm 51:12-13 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will be converted to You.
Restoring Joy, the Glorious Work of God
God is a God of relationships. And just as strong human relationships produce joy, joy functions within the framework of our relationship with God. God created the universe for His glory. God created us for His glory. God saves us through faith in Christ for His glory. All of these works of God provide the means to bring glory to His own name. These works also allow us to be in a relationship with Him. Since God is a God of relationship, one of the byproducts of His works is joy. Joy spills out of the Creator’s heart and into humanity. Joy has always existed because the Triune God has always been in joyful relationship with Himself, a relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Love between the members of the Trinity produces joy within the Trinity. This is also true for us. God’s love, spilling out of the Trinity and into our lives, produces joy within us. When we sin against God, it mutes or dampens the joy of our relationship with God. This is not surprising. In our human relationships we experience the same thing. When a child rebels against a parent, the joy of the relationship is strained as the parent has to discipline the child and as the child battles with the consequences of that rebellion. Joy dissipates when the relationship is under stress.
David understood the joy of the relationship. God had saved David on the basis of faith. We don’t know exactly when David trusted in God for His salvation, but David looks back on that joyful moment in this psalm. As David confessed his sin and sought God’s forgiveness, David also longed for the restoration of joy. “Restore to me the joy of my salvation.” This request in the psalm comes after the request for forgiveness. Grace and mercy from God restore our relationship with God. Joy is a critical byproduct of that grace and mercy. David understood this. He sought it out. He pursued the joy of the relationship. So too with us, because God is a God of relationships and joy is a natural extension of our relationship to Him. What is your joy level in your walk with God right now? Is the relationship purely external action like church attendance? Is the relationship purely theological knowledge? If we are in a close relationship with God, we should have a life of joy. Yes, we should confess our sins and seek God’s forgiveness. But the forgiveness is not just an ends to itself, to get us out of trouble with God. The forgiveness is a means to an end, the restoration of a joyful relationship.
Prayer Focus
Help me dear Lord seek You for Who You are and not just what I can get from You. Restore the joy that I knew and experienced when I first put my faith in You. Give me joy as only You can give. Forgive me for seeking joy in so many other things. Set my mind on my relationship with You for in You is true lasting joy. Amen.
From Bunyan’s The Acceptable Sacrifice
But, do the broken in spirit believe this? Can they imagine that this is to be the end that God has designed them to, and that he intended to make with them in the day in which he began to break their hearts? No, no; they, alas! think quite the contrary. They are afraid that this is but the beginning of death, and a token that they shall never see the face of God with comfort, either in this world or that which is to come. Hence they cry, 'Cast me not away from your presence'; or, Now I am 'among the dead whom God remembers no more' (Psa 51:11, 88:4, 5). For indeed there goes with the breaking of the heart a visible appearance of the wrath of God, and a charge from heaven of the guilt of sin. This is very dreadful; for it cuts the soul down to the ground; 'for a wounded spirit who can bear?' (Prov 18:14). It seems also now to this man, that this is but the beginning of hell; but as it were the first step down to the pit; when, indeed, all these are but the beginnings of love, and but that which makes way for life. The Lord kills before he makes alive; he wounds before his hands make whole. Yea, he does the one in order to do the other; he wounds, because his purpose is to heal; 'he makes sore, and binds up; he wounds, and his hands make whole' (Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6; Job 5:18). His design, I say, is the salvation of the soul. He scourges, he breaks the heart of every son whom he receives, and woe be to him whose heart God does not break.