“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalm 51.10
Most of us know the setting for this psalm. If you don’t, let me give a short background. David had sinned with Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet had confronted him with his sin. This psalm is David’s response to God as a result of his sin.
The first thing David does in v. 1 is to ask God for His mercy. Then in v. 2 he asks for God to wash Him and cleanse him. Then in vs. 3-4 he acknowledges his sin and his sin was directly against God. All of these are important steps in David’s repentance. Here in v. 10 David is establishing a very important truth. He is asking for God to create a CLEAN heart within him, not a NEW heart. David is not praying as one who was once God’s child, who was expelled from God’s family because of his sin, and is now asking to come back into God’s family. He is praying as one whose FELLOWSHIP with God was broken, not his RELATIONSHIP with God. That is an important truth for us to understand. Whatever you want to call it, once we are in God’s family, there is no way out.
Then David prays: “ … renew a right spirit within me.” Why is this important? Our spirit is that part of us that makes decisions of a life-changing nature. David had allowed his spirit to take him down a wrong path that included adultery and murder. He doesn’t want to ever take that path again. So, he cries out for God to “ … renew a right spirit within me.” Should we ever find ourselves in such a desolate place, we need to emulate David’s cry to God. He WILL hear us as He did His son, David. Just my thoughts …
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