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Restoring Joy

             Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (Psalm 51:12)

At some point, I defined joy as the firm belief that one is cared for by someone who is capable of accomplishing that care. It’s not that there are no cares in the world but that someone will make things right. In other words, joy requires trust, which results in obedience. If you’re learning to do something you want to do, joy results from trusting that the teacher can teach you enough to do what the teacher tells you.

As we read this verse, I think we’re tempted to understand it as “Restore to me the joy of my salvation.” But there is no sense in asking someone else to restore what we created for ourselves. We can do that. For David to ask that God restore the joy of God’s salvation requires that God give David reason for confidence that God can and will care for David by providing salvation that David cannot provide himself. If David could, there’d be no reason for David to ask God to do it.

The second part of the request is close to one I have prayed several times recently. David is asking God to change him and the way he thinks so that he (David) is willing to walk in the way God chooses after having failed miserably. My version of this prayer, found in someone’s blog, is that God would change my thinking, one thought at a time.

This verse is sometimes hard to pray because it requires that we surrender—that we look to God and not to ourselves. But that’s why it’s one of the most important prayers we can pray.

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