I laid down and closed my eyes and in my mind’s eye (a vision?) I saw a burning bush. God opened my lips but my mouth was not speaking forth the praise. So, I went back to David’s heart and found that he also felt the same way, but he asked God to open his lips and then his mouth will speak forth praise.

Jesus died so He could create a clean heart. To this day I recall that moment I prayed for a clean heart. David is not only asking for a new heart but a restored spirit and a spirit that is focused on God and not the things of this world that would lead him into disobedience. The Hebrew words are chadesh to restore and nakon which means to focus as in focus my spirit within me. Not only that but to renew a right spirit. But he finally realized that his only hope was for God to bara (create, form out of nothing) a pure heart. David tried mightily to make things right with his God. Thus, he cried out: “Lev tahor bara’ ti” Create a pure heart for me. I can’t change the attitudes of my heart, so like David, I had to plead with God to change it for me.ĭavid’s heart was broken because the God that he so loved, could not look upon him. I also knew there were areas of disobedience in my heart that prevent me from enjoying that relationship with Him. Although I knew the score between him and I was settled 2,000 years on a cross and that He is my Heavenly Father. He wasn’t in this relationship for a paycheck, he just wanted things to be ok between him and God.Īs I read this passage I began to beg God for a clean heart. He knew his heart was not right with God. He longed to feel the presence of God, he ached for those times when he and God shared their hearts while he was just a shepherd boy. But for David that was almost irrelevant. Maybe for some of use it is enough that God still answers prayers, still provides for us. Finally, the King called a servant and commanded him: “Whenever my son needs anything let him ask you and you must give to him generously.” The servant asked: “But why give him anything if he is disobedient?” The king, the father replied: “I love my son, I do want him to be in need, however, I cannot look upon him in his disobedience so he cannot come to me with his request, so I will grant his request through you so I do not have to look upon him.” The father tried to correct him but the disobedience continued. However, the son soon became disobedient to the father. Whenever the son needed anything, he would come to his father and ask and the father would willingly grant it. There was a King who had a son that he loved very dearly. The Talmud tells a story which may explain David’s broken heart. “Well my sins are forgiven and I’m on my way to heaven, praise alleluia.” But for David it still left him with a broken heart. You would think that having your sins forgiven, and the consequences of the sins removed would be enough. But David had a broken heart, broken over the separation that his sin had caused between him and His God. In fact the prophet told him he was forgiven. Yet the prophet told him he would not die. In fac,t the consequences for his sin according to Jewish law should have been the death penalty. It wasn’t the consequences of his sin that troubled him, he was willing to accept that. David had committed sins that had separated him from the presence of God.

I realized how far I was away from God and I longed for that “clean heart.” I begin to feel what David must have felt in his heart. I come to Psalms 51:10 and examined my own heart, my own motives, and my own longings. So, I begin to read the Psalms as if it were my own heart cry. You must read the Torah with your heart and then you will understand the words God spoke through David.” That struck me: “The words God spoke through David.” I remember how he picked up one book and said: “You Christians, you read the Torah like any book outside this room. Commentaries on the Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah. It was filled with books, all books about God. I remember years ago an orthodox Jewish rabbi, showed me a special room in his house. Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O’God and renew a right spirit within me.”

Clean hands and a pure heart song