A New Heart for the New Year

I don't make New Years resolutions because I have yet to keep them. I have learned that it is better for me to seek to be better rather than to do better.  I came across this writing from years past and decided to post it, hoping the reader will find it relevant. I still do.

                                   
 
Father, more than anything, I ask you to create in me a clean heart.  That was David’s prayer in Psalm 51 and it is my prayer in 2013.  David knew his heart was selfish and in need of a spiritual circumcision; his was no different from ours. Lest we think too highly of ourselves, Jeremiah reminds us that the heart is deceitfully wicked above all else. David knew his heart was far from pure and even further from what you desired of him as king.  You desire no less from me as a child of the King. 

Above all, he wanted to return to sweet fellowship with you; he wanted to be able to sing your praises, drink in your mercy and bask in your grace. So do I, Father; oh, so do I! He wanted to return to the place where you were his first love and where closeness with you mattered more than all the gold and silver that were his.  In the pit of despair, he called out to you, acknowledged his sin and grieved over it, knowing that he could never feel the heights of repentance until he had reached the depth of admission.  He accepted your forgiveness and lived with the consequences.  But you took sin that was directed against you and turned it into a blessing for all mankind – one of those being his son Solomon and where would we be without his wisdom?

David had multiple faults, falls, and failures.  Yet in all of Scripture, he is the only one you refer to as “a man after my own heart."  I want to be a woman after your own heart, Father.  I want to accept what you give with grace and gratitude.  I want to be unselfish, desiring what you want for me rather than what I think I need.  I want to be obedient to your Word and for that obedience to be as natural as breathing. And when the year has ended, I want to look back and know that I am a little further down the path to being the woman you desire me to be.

And so I pray with David “Create in a me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Waiting with open heart, 

Rosi

© 2013