Asking for a New Heart

Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10, WEB)

David prayed this after his own sexual sin had come to light, after he had wrecked his integrity and harmed others to cover it. Out of that wreckage he prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." This is not the prayer of a man in a comfortable place. It is the prayer of a man who has seen the bottom of what he is capable of and has stopped pretending otherwise.

Notice the verb. He does not ask God to help him scrub the old heart clean. He asks God to create a new one, because he has learned that his own heart, left to itself, keeps producing the same corruption no matter how sincerely he resolves to change. This is an honest prayer for a man who has tried and failed to reform himself by effort. Some things in us are past repair and need to be made new, and only God does that kind of making. David had the wisdom to stop patching what needed replacing.

If you are tired of promising God a better version of the same heart that keeps breaking its promises, pray David's prayer instead. Stop offering him your improved intentions, which have failed you before and will fail you again, and ask him for something you cannot generate on your own. Ask God to create in you a clean heart, to renew a right spirit where the old one keeps bending toward sin. It is a request he delights to answer, because it finally puts the work where it belongs, in his hands rather than in your willpower. The same God who forgave David and did not throw him away is ready to begin that new work in you, starting tonight, with a heart you could never have cleaned yourself.