I'm sorry. Please forgive me

"David Asking Forgiveness" by Julius Schnorr Von Carolsfeld (1851-60)

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Nehemiah 10-11; Psalm 51

TO CHEW ON: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise. Psalm 51:17

Psalm 51 is David's eloquent prayer of repentance, prayed after the prophet Nathan confronted him with God's reaction to his role in the Bathsheba affair. I wonder, had he been avoiding God in the interim? Or had he carried on as usual, pretending everything was fine between them? Now that he knew things weren't fine, a lot of seemingly pent-up realizations came bubbling to the surface:

• He's been feeling dirty: "wash me thoroughly ... purge me with hyssop ... wash me..." (Psalm 51:2, 7, 10). My Bible's footnotes explain, "The Hebrew word for wash (vs. 10)  is not the one used for the simple cleansing of a dish in water but rather the washing of clothes by beating and pounding them" - New Spirit-Filled Life Bible p. 727.

• His sin has been bothering him—even if he squelched it down pretending it was no big deal: "...my sin is always before me..." (Psalm 51:3,4).

• He admits that he deceived himself and needs God's help for that not to happen again: "Behold You desire truth in the inward parts / And in the hidden part you will make me know wisdom" (Psalm 51:6).

• His sin has sucked the joy out of life: "Make me hear joy and gladness .... Restore to me the joy of Your salvation" (Psalm 51:8,12).

• It has silenced his praise: "O Lord, open my lips / And my mouth shall sing aloud of Your righteousness" (Psalm 51:15).

• He fears God's Spirit has left or will leave him: "Do not cast me away from Your presence / And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11).

• He has a renewed realization that God is holy and not someone with whom to toy: "Have mercy upon me, O God ... Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed" (Psalm 51:1, 14).

• No bargaining, he gives God carte blanche to deal with him over this sin: "Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion" (Psalm 51:18).

I would suggest that David's reactions to his uncovered sin are frequently ours as well. That's why Psalm 51 is often our destination when we've sinned and we're needing to confess and repent.

May our words be as sincere, our spirits as broken, our hearts as contrite as David's appear to be when we read or recite this sacrifice of confession and repentance.

PRAYER: Dear God, You know how easily and often I sin and feel the same emotions as David expresses here. Help me to be as repentant as he was. May I learn from these times so that "truth in the inner parts" and wisdom in the "hidden part" become my lifestyle. Amen.

PSALM TO PRAY: Psalm 51

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Suffering and lament

"Jeremiah"  by Julius Schnorr Von Karolsfeld

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Lamentations 1-2; Psalm 28

TO CHEW ON: "Judah has gone into captivity
Under affliction and hard servitude;
She dwells among the nations;
She finds no rest;
All her persecutors overtake her in dire straits." Lamentations 1:3

Lamentations is a book of laments. Four of its five poems are acrostics, perhaps the writer Jeremiah's poetic way of exploring his feelings of grief from Aleph to Tau (A to Z).

Jeremiah was mourning the fall of Jerusalem and with it the kingdom of Judah. Second Kings and Second Chronicles tell the story of her moral decline. Despite prophet warnings, the nation has continued downward, perhaps feeling too secure in God's promises of ultimate protection. Finally after a starving siege by the Babylonian army, Jerusalem fell, the city was destroyed, the temple burned, and all but her poorest  citizens marched into exile in Babylon. So Jeremiah weeps.

Some of Lamentation's themes help us understand and deal with our own griefs. (Themes are suggested by the "Introduction to Lamentations" in my Bible, by Roy Edmund Hayden, New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, pp. 1037-1038):

1. Their suffering was the result of their sin (Lamentations 1:5, 8, 18, 20).
2. Their suffering was seen as coming from God rather than from men (Lamentations 1:13,15).
3. Their suffering could direct them to God.
4. Suffering, tears, and prayers belong together (Lamentations 1:12, 16, 20).

The reasons we suffer may be different from the reasons Jeremiah and the Israelites suffered. We live under a different covenant where even blatant sinners may not experience punishment for sins until after death (2 Peter 2:4-10). But often we are forced to live the consequences of past actions. And suffering is also allowed to discipline us (Hebrews 12:3-17).

In a personal application part of Lamentation's introduction, R. E. Hayden shares some helpful thoughts about suffering with us:

"We need to submit to what God is doing and attempt to learn from the experience. If it is God's discipline, it will last as long as is necessary. There is no quick-fix solution to some of these problems and no easy way out. Discipline will direct us to God, drive us to prayer, and bring us into submission. We need it" - R. E. Hayden, "Introduction to Lamentations," New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 1039 (emphasis added).

PRAYER: Dear God, I hate suffering as much as Jeremiah did. When trouble comes, may it drive me to You. Help me then to learn all the lessons I need to learn. When I am not suffering, help me to be sensitive and comforting to those around me who are. Amen.

PSALM TO PRAY:  Psalm 28

The Bible Project VIDEO: Lamentations (Read Scripture Series)

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Liquid prayer

Image: AndersAndersen / pixabay.com

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Psalm 126:1-6

TO CHEW ON: "Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy." Psalm 126:5


We could call the crying in this psalm the "ministry of tears" or "liquid prayer" (C. H. Spurgeon). In a sidebar article in my Bible, Dick Eastman has identified six aspects of the ministry of tears that are pictured in the Bible ("Tears and Brokenness in Victorious Warfare," New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 787):

1. Tears of sorrow or suffering:
King Hezekiah was at death's door. He pleaded with God for a longer life. God's answer:

" ' I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold I am healing you…" - 2 Kings 20:5 (AMP).

2. Tears of joy:
Twin brothers Jacob and Esau had been estranged for years following Jacob's deceiving their father over the birthright. Now Jacob needed to pass through Esau's territory with his family and possessions. Did Esau still want to kill him? How would their meeting go? Jacob spent the night before, wrestling with a heavenly Being. In the morning they met this way:

"But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, and hugged his neck and kissed him, and they wept [for joy]" - Genesis 33:4 (AMP).

3. Tears of compassion:
Jesus' friend Lazarus had died. As Jesus approached the home of his friend he was met by Mary and friends, all weeping. Even though he knew what He was going to do, in the moment Jesus was overcome by emotion—empathy, compassion:

"Jesus wept" - John 11:35.

4. Tears of desperation:
Haman had convinced King Ahasuerus that it was a good idea to wipe out the Jews. The reaction of Mordecai (Queen Esther's relative) and other Jews in Shushan and throughout the land:

"… He cried out with a loud and bitter cry … And in every province where the king's command and decree arrived, there was great mourning among the Jews with fasting, weeping and wailing" - Esther 4:1,3.

5. Tears of travail:
In Isaiah 42, the LORD promises to again provide help to His people. He describes the breakthrough as the the tears a mother cries when in the throes of labour pains:

"I have held My peace a long time. / I have been still and restrained Myself. / Now I will cry like a woman in labor" - Isaiah 42:14.

6. Tears of repentance:
Turning from our sin to God is often accompanied by tears:

"“Even now,” says the Lord,
“Turn and come to Me with all your heart [in genuine repentance],
With fasting and weeping and mourning [until every barrier is removed and the broken fellowship is restored]" - Joel 2:12 (AMP).

Whatever kind tears we are shedding right now, we know that God sees, cares, and takes notice. In our times of weeping, we are comforted, for:

"You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book?
When I cry out to You,
Then my enemies will turn back;
This I know, because God is for me" - Psalm 56:8,9

PRAYER: Dear Father, help me in my times of weeping to turn to You for ultimate help.
Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from the Amplified® Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

No More!

"... New Jerusalem ... prepared as a bride..." Rev. 21:2

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Revelation 21:1-7

TO CHEW ON: "'And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.'" Revelation 21:4


Our reading today is so rich, it's hard to pick out one idea on which to focus. But the "no more"s listed here have their hands up and are waving wildly, so let's take a minute to ponder them and a few more found in Revelation. These are things that will have no place, that are no more in the "new heaven and a new earth" that God has prepared.

No more sea - Revelation 21:1

Hmm, interesting. But I love the sea—from a place of safety, of course, when on land looking at its beauty and appreciating its place in the water cycle. Of course the sea is also the source of much heartache, taking the lives of sailors, sweeping coastal communities away in its storm surges and tsunamis. In God's wisdom our new home, that 'holy city," will have no more sea.

No sorrow. No crying - Revelation 21:4

"Sorrow" and "crying" stand in for a host of experiences and emotions from disappointment to devastation, having hurt feelings to experiencing the pain of abuse and separation. All the things that would make us sorrowful and cause us to cry will someday be NO MORE!

No pain - Revelation 21:4

No more physical pain that makes us grit our teeth to go on, or confines us to beds or wheelchairs. There will be no more psychological and emotional pain either—that pain that drives people to depression or to seek the bitterest of relief in addictions or obsessions.

No curse - Revelation 22:3.

What curse? The curse spoken of in Genesis 3:17-19, of obstacle-filled yet necessary work that seems so pointless when it leads, in the end, to us joining the ground we spent our whole lives tilling.

No night - Revelation 22:5

No dark to stumble around in, a cover for evil. Perhaps no more need to sleep.

No death - Revelation 21:4

No more untimely separations from those we love.

What a future to contemplate!

PRAYER: Dear God, it's hard to even imagine a future without things like sorrow, pain, crying, obstacles, death. I love Your guarantee: "I make all things new." Help me to remember this when events in my life cause me to become disheartened and weary, even distraught and panicked. Amen.

MORE: No More Night sung by David Phelps

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New King James Version (NKJV) Used with permission. The Holy Bible, New King James Version Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Ministry of tears

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Psalm 126:1-6

TO CHEW ON: “Those who sow in tears
Shall reap in joy.
He who continually goes forth weeping
Bearing seed for sowing
Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing
Bringing his sheaves with him.” Psalm 126:5,6

Emotion is never glossed over in the Bible. In Scripture real men and women cry. “Tears in Scripture play a unique role in spiritual breakthrough,” begins a sidebar article in my Bible.

Here are some of the varieties in the ministry of tears:
- Tears of sorrow or suffering – 2 Kings 20:5
- Tears of desperation – Esther 4:1,3
- Tears of joy – Genesis 33:4
- Tears of compassion – John 11:35
- Tears of travail or birth – Isaiah 42:14
- Tears of remorse – Matthew 26:75
- Tears of repentance – Joel 2:12-13
- Tears of planting – our focus verses above.

What tears are you shedding today? Tears of remorse over some failure or shortcoming of your own? Tears of suffering over sickness (your own or someone else's) or the death of a loved one? Tears of travail over the state of an unsaved son, daughter, parent, spouse or friend? Tears of frustration over the apparent lack of effectiveness of your life?

Whatever your tears, don’t hide them from God. He understands and in due course will answer. Your liquid prayer has its purpose in His plan.

PRAYER: Dear God, my heart breaks over many things. See my grief, helplessness, desperation, and need. Please use my tears to nurture your plans and purposes on earth. Amen

MORE: Sayings about tears

“Tears are liquid prayer.” ~ Charles Spurgeon.

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts." ~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1860

"Tears are God’s gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow." ~Rita Schiano, Sweet Bitter Love, 1997, published by The Reed Edwards Company

"What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul." ~Jewish Proverb

“You number my wanderings;

Put my tears into Your bottle;

Are they not in Your book?” ~ Psalm 56:8