“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “‘I will confess by transgressions to the LORD’”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.” Selah
~ Psalm 32:5
Hi James and Ellen,
Do you ever ask God to forgive you? Do you ever thank God for forgiving you? David asked God to forgive him. David knew what it was like to have God forgive him. God forgives a guy, gal and kid who will go to Him in a heartfelt way asking Him to forgive him or her. Do you know what forgive means? To forgive means to completely forget something wounding that was done to you. Have your dad and/or ma forgiven you for something hurtful that you have done to them? When you do something insidious – like to your teacher or your dad and/or ma, who are you defying? Who sees and knows the deviousness that is done by guys, gals and kids? God sees and knows every bit of evil that is done by every guy, gal and kid. God also knows every bit of goodness that a guy, gal or kid does. David knew that God saw and knew his reprehensible ways. David would sincerely ask God to annul, erase out of His mind and not recollect an unscrupulousness act that he had done. David was very grateful that God would cancel, forget and not remember any longer a malevolent act that he had done. It is obvious that David had a very special place in God’s plan but . . . David at times still did evil, wicked things. Doing evil is sinning. To sin is to disobey God’s will to reject sin’s influence. Ask your dad and/or ma to help you make a list of words that you have said and actions that you have done that would count as sins. When David wrote the song that is now Psalm 32, David seems to have just realized that God had heard his genuine plea to be forgiven of something that he should not have done. David is sensing that God’s presence is really close to him again. David is remembering what it was like before he finally went to God to ask God to forgive him of his wrongdoing. David is remembering what it was like when he asked God to forgive him of the awful transgression that he had apparently done. David is remembering God’s heavy hand pushing down on him – reminding him of what he needed to do in order to feel right with God again. David had felt like all his strength had left him. All David had wanted to do was to lie around groaning and moaning and feeling sorry for himself. David – during this period of time of rejecting God’s help, no longer had fun in his life. Have you ever felt like how David felt – after David knew that he had disobeyed God’s will and was stubbornly refusing to do what he knew that he needed to do? When David finally earnestly asked God to forgive him, how do you think that David felt? Verse 5 says, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “‘I will confess by transgressions to the LORD’”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.” Selah
Selah is a word that is used seventy-one times in the Psalm Book. Selah does not have a meaning. Selah can imply pausing for a moment to think about what had just been said. David wanted to in his psalm song pause for a moment to reflect on having been forgiven by God. Are you learning to thank God for not keeping His heavy hand on you – which God will do to remind you that what you have done is inhibiting Him of being able to reflect His glory through your lives back to Him, after you have asked Him for His forgiveness? Your grandpaa knows that he has said and done things, is still saying and doing things and will always say and do things that do not conform to God’s will. Your grandpaa knows that he was born with a human nature that sin tainted black. Because he has a corrupted human nature, your grandpaa knows that he is always going to be subject to being caught up sinning just as David always seemed to end up getting caught up sinning. You also will invariably get caught up sinning. Do you know what letting sin control your lives will really do to you? Your grandpaa – early in 1987, went back to Bolivia for about a month. Your grandpaa made the trip to Bolivia to take videos for a video presentation that your grandpaa wanted to have made that would be used to help raise the funds that were needed to buy a piece of property that was located on the edge of Santa Cruz. This piece of property would become the urban leadership training center. Your grandmaa and grandpaa were at the time in the United States with your dad and Aunt Lynn on a yearlong furlough. Just as your grandpaa left Delaware on a train for Washington, D.C. – where your grandpaa was to catch a plane to fly to Miami and then to Bolivia, it began to snow. It snowed so much that all the flights out of Washington were canceled. By the time that your grandpaa made it to Bolivia, your grandpaa was feeling stretched and stressed. Your grandpaa was really hoping that he would be able to visit as many as possible the churches that were associated with South American Mission – to take videos of these churches as well as to show these churches to the guy who went with your grandpaa to Bolivia. While your grandpaa was visiting a village where one of the churches is located, your grandpaa was bitten on his left hand’s little finger by a tiny, vicious ant. Bolivia has an ant that has a very painful bite. Your grandpaa’s little finger – from the bite of a tiny ant, became infected. A red line after a couple of days began moving up your grandpaa’s left arm from the infected ant bite. It is not good when this happens.
A sin to God is like being bitten by an ant. All ant bites hurt. All sins hurt. A sin will affect and infect you. A sin will affect and infect your heart – just as an ant bite could have killed your grandpaa if the infection had reached his heart. Remember the list that your grandpaa asked you to ask your dad and/or ma to make; your grandpaa hopes that you will do what David did when he sincerely told God that he was genuinely sorry for what he had done when he did what he did. God will forgive you as He forgave David. Just as an antibiotic healed your grandpaa’s ant bite infection, God will heal a guy, gal or kid of the evil that he or she has in his or her life when the guy, gal or kid . . .
Psalm 32 (200)