Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10

In this Psalm David cries out to God having committed adultery. If our Spirit is broken through sin we should petition God to create in us a clean heart and to renew a right Spirit within us.

We are far from perfect and that simply means that we will not always have good thoughts. Our action at times will lack and not reflect who we ought to be. So by repeating this prayer in a humble and genuine way we are soliciting God’s help in maintaining our alignment with his will.

The word ‘create’ evokes an understanding of making something new from scratch. So in asking God to create a clean heart we are asking him to get rid of the old, dark and tainted heart that we have and make the right heart for us. A heart that is coming from him because anything else would be unacceptable.

We must admit against our better judgment our spirit is not always yielding to God. There are times when we will fall short of God’s intentions for our lives, our Spirit will become misaligned from God’s will and so we there will be  opportunities to have our Spirit renewed by God. So in asking God to create a new heart we also need a renewal of our spirit within. We need God to strengthen our Spirit which has yielded to other things apart from his perfect will for our lives.

Heart and Spirit are inter-twined they go together and therefore needs to be in unison, in one accord in order for us to live according to God’s will for our lives.

Let this be our constant prayer to keep us in God’s perfect will.

Affirm: Our heart and Spirit reflect God’s perfect will for our lives. We have been given a new heart and our Spirit is constantly renewed through Jesus Christ. It is well with us.