30 Days of JoyDay 3 of 30
When You Make the Biggest Mess of Your Life
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.
Psalm 51:12 (NKJV)
David was King. He had everything a man could want, but it wasn’t enough. He slept with another man’s wife, and then tried to cover it up. When the cover up failed, he had the husband murdered. But this is the man after God’s heart, the sweet singer of Israel—surely there must be some mistake? But there was no mistake, and God sent the prophet Nathan to call David to account.
Have you ever messed up? I know I have. I’ve deliberately and selfishly ignored God and done exactly what I wanted to do. And then I’ve justified myself… I deserved that thing… What harm could it do anyway? Maybe you’ve been there.
Nathan said David had “utterly scorned the Lord.” (2 Samuel 12:14). The same David who knew such incredible intimacy with God, became so blinded by lust and selfishness that he scorned the One he had loved so much. My friend, if that can happen to David, it can happen to anyone… it can happen to you!
So what happens when God uses a Nathan to tell you, “You are the man!” When Nathan called him out, David had a choice to make, and you and I have that same choice. David chose repentance: “David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ ” (2 Samuel 12:13).
David didn’t argue or blame anyone else. As king, he could have had Nathan put to death with a single word, but he didn’t. Instead, David humbly cast himself on God’s mercy. There would be terrible consequences to his sin, and sometimes we can’t avoid the fallout from our actions, but that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
Psalm 51 is David’s plea to God for forgiveness, a right spirit, and a cleansed heart. What a prayer this is! If God ever calls you out and you know you’ve done wrong, I urge you to get Psalm 51 into your spirit and make David’s prayer your own.
David said, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” He had sinned, but he knew a God of mercy would recognize the change in his heart and restore his joy. The joy of salvation is the joy of sins forgiven, and the joy of once again walking with a God who loves us without limits.
Prayer
Thank you, Father, that if I sin, you sent Jesus to be my advocate. Because of His righteousness, I can repent and be restored to you. Because of the cross and the sacrifice Jesus was willing to make there on my behalf, my sins can be forgiven, and you can restore the joy of your salvation to me once again.
Joyful Gems
“The great paradox [of my life] is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men or women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realize that the thing God has chosen to use in my life… is none of the successes, achievements, degrees, awards, honors, or cases I won before the Supreme Court. That’s not what God’s using in my life. What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison. That was my great defeat, the only thing in my life I didn’t succeed in.”
Chuck Colson
Scripture quotations from the ESV®, NIV®, AMP, NKJV, The Message, and NLT. Scripture credits · About the author