Prayer Works Morning Devotion: May 7, 2025

"Waiting On The Holy Spirit - Getting Our Hearts Ready for Pentecost"

"Psalm 51:10-13 - Prayer Of Repentance"

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Good morning, good morning, good morning, everybody. Let us pray. Father, we come before you today. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your love. We thank you for this new day that you have given us.  

We are looking ahead in anticipation, knowing Lord, that you have already gone ahead of us to create some things for us to follow through. So we are praying Lord that in our efforts of reaching out to you, that God continue to open our eyes and our minds to the things that you desire for us to grow in.  

And we pray today that as we look at this Scripture, remind us of the importance of repentance, remind us of your desire to connect with us.

So we thank you that today is another opportunity to humble ourselves and come before you, so that you can do a new thing in us. We bless you and honor you in Jesus name, Amen.  

Well, today we are in Psalms 51. And this is a prayer by King David. Now, we are in verse 11 to verse 13, I think I want us to kind of read the whole Psalms so that we can have a clear understanding because sometimes we can just go to one particular verse and get what we need. 

But the context behind that verse I think could be lost easily in translation if understand what was going on here. So King David had just committed a terrible sin. He had committed a documentary with Bathsheba, and he had sent his husband in battle, frontline, so he can get killed. 

Now, the prophet Nathaniel approaches him and told him, you have to repent. So, verse 1, have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.  

Against you, you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight. So, you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth. Sinful from the time my mother conceived me.  

Yet you desire faithfulness even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in that sacred place. Cleanse me with his soul, and I will be clean, wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and greatness.  

Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sin and blot out all my iniquity. Verse number 10, which is where we are today, create in me a pure heart or God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  

Do not cast me from your presence or attack your whole spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways so that sinners will turn back to you, deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed.  

O God, you who are God, my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I will bring it. You do not take pleasure in bent offerings. 

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, you God, will not displace. May it please you to prosper Zion, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in the sacrifice of the righteousness in burnt offerings made by his people.  

When both of them are offered on your heart. Brothers and sisters, this chapter here shows us that there is nothing that we could do on this earth that God is not willing to forgive. David is called a man after God's own heart, after God's heart.  

Yet he commits one of the most heinous crimes. Two of them took somebody else's wife and got her husband killed in war. I mean, this is some serious stuff here. It's like ordering a hit on somebody, paying somebody to go kill another person, which is stuff that we hear nowadays or in our world.  

Yet this man does the same thing and is driven by this one particular fate. He wants, the man's wife. And he's succeeded in doing so and then he's confronted by Prophet Nathaniel. And he's told him, man, you've got to repent.  

Now, what do you say in verse 10, I mean, David is showing us what God's options are in dealing with us. Because when we read this prayer, we can read it to what David is asking God to not do, which means that the opposite of what is asking God to not do is true.  

So create in me a pure heart or God. Right from the go, you realize that the process of a clean heart does not start with you. We don't have the ability to create in ourselves clean hearts. How can we do that? 

We're born sinners, how can we create in our own selves a clean heart? That's impossible. So David is showing us that in order for you and I to have clean hearts, we have to ask God to do that.  

Now, what the definition of heart in the situation is the intent, intent that flows out of your heart, intention. So when David is creating me a clean heart, he's saying, God, let my intentions that flows from the depths of my heart be clean.  

Then he says and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Again, it's God's job to renew but in order for him to renew anything, or to create anything a clean heart, that means the heart has to be brought to the table for him to do his job.  

So our job in this entire equation is to take our hearts and bring them to the Lord so that we can put them on the table so he can surgically create, renew, and remove some things. The challenge, most times, is that we don't want to bring our hearts to the table.  

Do not cast me from your presence. For me, this is one of the most scary scriptures because if you're saying, do not cast me from your presence, it means you can be cast away from your presence.  

One of the greatest and saddest things that can ever happen to a human being is when God casts you away from his presence. It's one of the most tragic and saddest things that can happen to a human being, to hear your spirit is devoid of God's spirit.  

You can't access the Holy Spirit. It's like being in hell while you are alive. These people will leave like this. Well, God's spirit does not interact with them at all. They are devoid of His Spirit. But if you're saying, do not cast me, there's a possibility that you can be cast away from the Holy Spirit.  

The scripture says, I then gave them up to their own depravity, to their own thoughts. God gives you over to your own thoughts. If we ever stop sometimes, you know sometimes we have these thoughts that we don't talk to people about because we are really kind of out of the left field. 

You know those thoughts that we all sometimes have, you're in the middle of having a conversation with somebody, and somehow you feel like, man, I want to punch this guy. You're like, geez, where's this coming from?  

You will never say to anybody because you know it's really out of the left field. I mean, just think about some of the worst things that you can think about in the day. Random thoughts that you are not placing your heart towards or trying to follow through is just random thoughts that pops up in your head.  

Now imagine God says, I'll give you over to that. That there's nothing that can hold you back from evil thoughts. That whatever you conceive in your mind, your heart follows through to do. That's a scary place.  

So when David says don't cast me away from your presence, he's like, man, I know what I'm thinking about what this man is done. What he is capable. Think of what David is capable of doing. 

This is a man after God's own heart and he's showing us what he is capable of doing when God's spirit is not present. Now imagine being given over to those thoughts. This is David. If this can happen to David, surely it can happen to any one of us.  

Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. So it means God can take his Holy Spirit from you. Now restore to me the joy of your salvation. What is the joy of salvation, righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. 

And then grant me the willing spirit to sustain me. What does the willing spirit give you? It sustains you. If you're always willing to do what the Lord is telling you to do. If you're always willing to obey God, if you're always willing to hear and obey the Holy Spirit, that is what sustains you.  

Prayer does not sustain us. Worship does not sustain us. Worship is God's food. Prayer is communicating with the heavens. But in order to be sustained in this kingdom, you always have to have a willing spirit of obedience to the Holy Spirit and to God's voice.  

That's what sustains us. We don't get sustained by going to church. We don't get sustained by prayer. We don't get sustained by worshipping God. All those things bring us closer to God.  

Why do we need to be close to God so we can hear Him clearly. Why do we need to hear Him clearly so that we can leave this life the right way. But to be sustained in Him, you have to have a willing heart. 

Create in me, O Lord, a clean heart. The pure heart, pure intentions. O God, renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cost me from your presence or take your whole spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.  

Now, look at what He says in 13. Then I will teach transgressors your ways. Now, in reverse, you can't teach any transgressors God's ways if you don't have a pure heart and pure intentions, if you don't have a steadfast spirit, if God has cast you away from His presence, and you have taken the whole spirit away from you. 

And when the joy of salvation is not restored in you, and if you don't have a willing spirit, and you are not sustaining in him, you cannot teach transgressors. Can't teach transgressors God's ways.  

Can't teach, cannot teach transgressors God's ways until you have pure intentions. One of the things that I love about God is that He has made our lives easy, by giving us His holy scriptures.  

There are times when it's hard to pray, but the scriptures have provided for you and I, even prayers that we need when we have done things, where you can go and read and connect with the scripture, and pray through the scriptures.  

So we can never say I don't have words to pray. They are there if you want. Everybody should know this prayer by heart, some 51, everybody should. Every person should know this is a must, scripture, must, chapter to know, because I will guarantee you this before the day is over.  

We are all going to do something that is sinful. But this, we should know and daily read, because if this prayer supplies and it supplies everything, it has the context of human beings flaws. 

This is God's intent with us and the possibility thereof. We want to be saved. Humanity needs saving, so they can be in right standing with God. And this prayer, that's what it is about.  

Salvation, right standing in God, and obeying him so that we can teach others to do the same thing. Pretty much the whole theological aspect is right here. The only thing we have to do is to sit on the table and allow God to surgically create in us the clean hearts, the pure hearts.  

Now, why do we need pure hearts? We need pure hearts so that we can approach God in confidence. One of the hardest things to do in life is to approach God in confidence when you have sinned. And I'm so glad last weekend we talked about sin in Bible study and here we are again.  

And this is not a coincidence, because again, we are waiting for the Lord to pour out His Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, and His giving us instructions, prayers to pray. So everybody, I want you in your spare time memorize Psalm 51 know it, know it.  

When you don't have words to say, you can read Psalm 51 with all your heart and mind in your Spirit. And God can do exactly what He did for David. He can do it for you. We are being shown and while we are here, guys, this is an incredible phenomenal story.  

You could teach the person or share with the person who does not know the Lord. Because the man who was after God's own heart, God loved this man. He walked with God. He did something incredible, phenomenal things with God before this day.  

He had seen God in action in His life. He had killed Giants. This is the same man that wrote Psalm 21, Psalm 22, 23, 24, same person. The Lord is my shepherd. This is the same person.  

But after you done, what are you done? He pins this beautiful, incredible phenomenal prayer. Now, again, you can see the love of God for us that in his wisdom, David gets inspiration from the Holy Spirit to pen this prayer, to make it available, to generations of mankind that will come and will find this prayer standing.  

Because God knew what happened in the Garden of Eden, demand their response, and this is a response to all that, to the human depravity and nature that we possess in our soul.  

This is a prayer of repentance vest Him, create in me all God, a pure heart, and renew us that first spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit away from me. Restore, pray for restoration in all of us.  

Restore to us the joy of your salvation and God may you continue to grant us a willing spirit, so that we can be sustained in this treacherous terrain that we find ourselves in.

Lord, we know at the core we are born in sin, fallen short of your glory, yet in your wisdom, you have allowed man and women of past generations. 

Inspired by the Holy Spirit to write repentance prayers, so we can also return through their words. Oh God, create in us a pure heart, renew a steadfast spirit within us. Do not cast us away from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit away from us, restore in us the joy of our salvation.  

When you have done so Lord, grant us every single one of us, a willing spirit to obey, to follow instructions, to follow through, so that our willing spirit can continue to sustain us in the journey of salvation.  

Lord, I pray for repentance, from past things. I know the enemy sometimes comes in torment us, but I pray Lord that God, may you continue to your mercy on us. Help us in our minds, in our thoughts.  

May our intentions be pure as your children, as we hunger and thirsty after you. The intent that flows out of our hearts may it be pure. Teach us your ways for your ways are perfect. Show us the path.  

Lord, help us to be the soil, good soil, where the seed of God's word can be sown in, and produce fruit. May we continue to stand on Christ, the solid rock, for  we know all other, all others' ground is sinking.

Lord, today we repent, because we ask you to clean us, clean us, Lord, from thoughts to deeds to ideas, clean us. 

Purifier us because we desire to be close to you. Lord, we thank you for the blood of Jesus, that was shared on Calvary, that we can give access to this Holy Word, in the Holy Spirit.

Thank you for pouring out your Spirit on the day of Pentecost, so we can have incredible counsel and a friend that never leaves always on our side.  

May our ears be attentive to His voice and to His living. O God, create in us a pure heart, and renew a steadfast Spirit within us. Do not cast away, do not cast us from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit away from us, restore in us the joy of salvation and grant us the willing Spirit to sustain us.  

Then we will be able to teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you, and deliver us from the guilt of our sins. May our tongues sing righteousness, create in us our Lord, a clean heart, renew a steadfast Spirit in us.  

Don't take your Spirit away from us, restore the joy of salvation and grant us the willing Spirit so that we can be sustained. May our hearts, our Spirit, as we continue to commit ourselves to your kingdom, we know it’s challenging, and it's not easy. 

But O God, how wonderful are your deeds, how great is your everlasting love, that there is nothing we’ll experience or ever go through, that is too difficult for you. So we lay at your surgical table, and daily continue to ask you to create in us a clean heart, with a pure Spirit.  

Now we pray Lord, as we go through this day, help us in every way imaginable. Show us your ways, cleanse our lips, cleanse our eyes, cleanse our ears. May we see you, in your glory, and may we hear you.  

Now lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever, Amen. Brothers and sisters, as we go through this day, simple words that David gave us, create in us a pure heart. 

Renew a steadfast Spirit within you, do not cast us away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit away from us.

May God continue to restore the joy of your salvation, and grant you a willing spirit so that you can be sustained. Have a wonderful day, and we'll see you tomorrow.