Restoring Joy by Grace

My blog is for the purpose of sharing my heart with those that care to read the blog. But in many ways, I also find healing in expressing myself through writing. It’s like personal therapy. I’ve been struggling so much lately. I feel beat down and weary from life’s trials. Seems not long ago, I was almost sullen over having no “big trials” in my life that were driving me hard after the heart of God. Wow! I guess I should be careful what I ask for! But in truth, my spirit is excited about the hardships I’m experiencing right now. Sure, that may not make much sense to most people, but the sufferings I experience in life are designed to sharpen me and make me more like Jesus. To bring about in me the changes God desires…the transformation into the identity Christ gave me in His death, burial and resurrection.

So here I am in bittersweet territory. There are so many lessons to learn that it seems difficult to wrap my mind around all of them. One lesson is most assuredly regarding grace. One of my most favorite bible verses is “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.” Psalm 51:12. I have been coming back to that verse quite a bit lately. The first part of that verse speaks to my heart on the matter of grace. David’s plea to the Lord to restore to him the joy of His salvation is about bringing him back to the place where he understood God’s grace. There is such joy found in the freedom of God’s grace. Grace isn’t a fuzzy feeling or warm invitation. It is the exchange of blood to pay for the debt of sinners…sinners like David…sinners like me. It is this verse that often brings me back to the foot of the cross. It makes me so humble to look up and know that my sin caused my Savior…my perfect Savior…such horror, anguish and agony. To know that He experienced all of the Father’s wrath on my behalf…for every sin I have ever committed or will commit…to know that He, who knew no sin, became sin, so that I could be positionally righteous before my Heavenly Father…that is humility. That is grace. The freedom of that love, that God poured out for me is where we come to a place of joy over our salvation.

But why the word “restore”? Because we still fight against the flesh. David, who God said was a man after His own heart, was a sinner who committed murder, lied, stole, and carried on in adultery until he repented. After we experience salvation, we begin to walk with the Lord. And likening it to other relationships, the “newness” wears off for us. We do not always choose the righteousness afforded to us in Christ through our salvation. And thus we stray. When we realize our walk is out of alignment, it is a cry of our hearts like David’s that sets us back on track: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation”. That cry says to our Lord…bring me back to that place of humility…bring me back to the newness of what it means to have received Your grace….bring me back to the place where I know the depth of my depravity and how hopeless I am to do this life on my own…bring me back to the place of complete dependence upon You, Lord!

This is one of the ways in which the Lord has been speaking to my own heart. Pride is such a wickedly deceptive thing in the life of every believer. So few of us every realize the depth of our own pride. I know that I personally recognize it very little. Thank the Lord for opening my eyes to it. To know that I’ve become self-dependent, self-focused, self-centered, and selfish is a horror in light of the cross. It’s all pride. Not wanting to be wrong, fear of rejection, high expectations of others, wanting to do things in my own time and my own way, and a host of other things are all revelations of my sin: pride. My sin kills fellowship with my Lord and it keeps from experiencing the joys of the freedom I have been given through grace.

What an incredible God we serve though! Because like David, I can make the cry of my heart, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me". I am constantly brought back to a sense of awe before Him. I just can’t possibly fathom Him as a whole…I can barely fathom Him in tiny parts! But just this part of grace...wow...there is restoring of joy when we understand what salvation from sin really is. I take on faith that the Lord is who He says He is, has done what He says He has done, and that I can count on all of His promises! Through faith, I have everything I could ever need or want! Praise the Lord for His grace!!!