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Restore to Me

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

If you look in a regular dictionary, you’re likely to find joy defined as great pleasure, great happiness, or delight.  Prof. Dallas Willard defined joy as “a deep, abiding sense of satisfaction and delight that comes from being in right relationship with God, rooted in the presence of Christ and the practice of spiritual disciplines.” Rather than being an emotional high, it was a foundational feeling that didn’t change due to circumstances.

In Desiring God, John Piper defined Christian hedonism as “the belief that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, meaning that the pursuit of joy and pleasure is fulfilled through delighting in God.”

So what is the joy of our salvation and why might we need it restored? Salvation refers to being saved, either eternally (as it is usually used) or in a specific situation. When someone is saved, they start out excited, and over time, seem to lose their enthusiasm, and I suspect this is the connection we make with this verse. But take another step in that direction. What is “salvation”? It refers to establishing a relationship with God, or the condition of having one. In other words, the source of our joy in our salvation is the reconciliation with God.

We might think of it like any human-to-human relationship. When stress or something disrupts the relationship, it can be hard to repair. However, when steps are taken and the relationship is improved, the parties involved are likely to feel good about it. They will be happy that things are returning to the way they want them to be. That presumes, of course, that they are honest in their desire for the relationship be repaired. They would have joy in the salvation of their relationship.

That repair requires a willing spirit. Sometimes, people don’t want to admit they were wrong. They don’t want to work toward making things good again. They may say they want it, but they aren’t willing to pay the price. That’s the second part of the verse. We need a willing spirit to help build a healthy relationship. That willingness may take a long time to develop, and it may have to last for a long time as the relationship is rebuilt. Small wonder David prayed for these things.

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