ON THE VANGUARD

FORGIVE MY MESS
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
Psalm 51:17

I had a hard time sleeping last night. My day yesterday was a good day for the most part. The kids were with their mom, celebrating her birthday, and it allowed me to have a good portion of the day to myself. I tried to stay productive during that time, doing some house work and preparing for a Torah study coming up. But during the day I felt the Holy Spirit talking with me about something I was not to do. To put it bluntly, I felt Him warning me. I understood what He was saying and where He was guiding me from and had every intention of staying away. The problem started, though, when I opened my mouth. How did I allow myself, after being warned and seeing the caution signs, to still be caught up in the mess? As I went to bed last night I felt a pit in my stomach which led me to cry out for forgiveness. Tossing and turning during the night, trying to get any sleep at all, I finally drifted off. When I awoke this morning, I heard these words on the radio.

“We pour out our miseries, God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are, the honest cries of breaking hearts,
Are better than a Hallelujah”
Better than a Hallelujah – Amy Grant

Hearing these words coming softly from the radio, I was reminded of Psalm 51:17. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” I know I have shared on this verse before, but in light of my day yesterday, and in light of the fact that this is the season of Teshuvah, I feel strong on my heart to share on this verse again.
The Bible has much to say about forgiveness as we see that the whole Bible itself is based on the relationship God desires to have with us and the way He has made for this to happen. Because God cannot look upon us when we are covered in sin, He has made a way through the sacrifice of His Son for us to be forgiven. But what does forgiveness look like? To answer this we can look at the life of King David. In II Samuel 11 and 12, we read the details of David. In short, David coveted another man’s wife and took her into his chamber to sleep with her. When she became pregnant, panic set in and he looked for any way to cover up his error. At first he called her husband home and got him drunk, hoping he too would sleep with his wife. When that didn’t work he took a more drastic approach and had the man killed. Without saying a word to anyone David was exposed still when the prophet Nathan approached him and shared a simple story about a man stealing a sheep from his neighbor. David’s initial reaction was to cover up his sin, but once it was in the light and he saw it for what it really was, he came before God in confession.
Now please understand I did not sleep with another man’s wife, or anyone. But it is the details of forgiveness I want to bring out. In Psalm 51 we reads David’s confession, and in Psalm 51:17 we read of the heart that God is looking for. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” For as many times as I have already messed up, and as many times as I still will, I want my heart to reflect a brokenness and contriteness. Yet what does this really mean? In Hebrew the word for ‘broken’ is SHABAR, meaning to break down or break in pieces, wreck, crush, or quench. When we sin we puff ourselves up and begin feeding the monsters of pride and selfishness. So then, as the Holy Spirit works on us, the monster we are either begins to fight it or surrender in humility. In surrendering, however, we find the true brokenness we are in need of, that then leads to true forgiveness. Still, it is both a broken and contrite heart that God will not despise. ‘Contrite’ is defined in Hebrew as DAKAH, meaning to be crushed or collapsed. So desperately we need to be crushed by God’s Spirit and void of the desire to sin that stands in the way of our relationship with God. It is this type of repentant heart that should follow our weak moments of sin that God will not overlook and not despise.
Asking for forgiveness can be hard, and extending forgiveness can be even harder still. Yet God asks us to do both. We are to confess our sins to each other (I Jn 1:9) because it places us in a position of humility, a place in which we become broken and contrite. But we also need to remember that God will forgive us when we come to Him broken and contrite in heart. So maybe as the words of the song I heard on the radio suggest, He hears our pray of forgiveness as better than one shooting Hallelujah. And the greatest part of God forgiving us is what He does with our sin. He remembers them no more. In fact, Psalm 107:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” I don’t know your situation fully and what you may be going through, but I urge you to come before God with a broken and contrite heart, for this is the heart He is looking for and will work in and through. Let us repent in this season of Teshuvah, when with the sound of the shofar He is calling us back home, back to forgiveness.