Psalm Devo - Apr 23

Devo

Good morning friends,

I’m glad to be back with you this morning for our morning devos here at Youth 180. I hope that you all are doing great. While your home and doing school there that you are taking time to rest and chill during this really weird time we are all in.

I’m excited to share with you from the book of Psalms this morning. Our rhythm is that we read the Psalm together, talk about it a little and then pray together. Let’s jump right in. This morning we’re going to look at Psalm 51:14-19. Let’s read it together starting in verse 14, “14  Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15  O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16  For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18  Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; 19  then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.”

This is a Psalm of David, remember this is a man who we’re told was after God’s own heart. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t mess up, cause you see David was a guy who did some pretty crazy stuff. Stealing another mans woman and killing people. But what we learn from him in this Psalm is that even in the midst of him knowing that he is a guy who is so messed up he could go to God for restoration and redemption. David is coming to God with this broken and contrite heart. A heart that knows that he’s messed up but also knows that the only way to get it fixed is through God.

You see what I think we should want to recognize in ourselves is that God loves us. And he loves us so much that he wants us to come to him with our mess and brokenness and he wants to change us. He wants to step into our stories. Tim Keller the guy whose devo we are going through during our morning times together writes when he’s taking about coming to God in this way, with this broken and contrite heart, “It is a heart that knows how little it deserves yet how much it has received.”

And we need to look at our situations in this way in that we don’t deserve this grace. Grace which is the fact that God will look at us and our lives through the lens of Jesus who was perfect, and he’ll do that if we accept him into our lives. That we understand this and know that because God loves us so much that he gives this grace to us anyways. For those who love him and ask him in to their lives. That this is the broken and contrite heart that David is talking about. This is what he’s saying we need to give to God. This is a reasonable sacrifice to him.

So I want to encourage you today with that. Consider your heart. What your messiness is. And consider giving that over to God. Knowing that he can restore us, redeem us and renew us because of his love for us.

Let’s pray.