Why Psalm 51:6
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Psalm 51:6
Psalm 51 is David’s humble prayer for forgiveness and cleansing. The background of this Psalm is David’s sin as recorded in II Samuel 11:1-15. He uttered this payer soon after Nathan, the prophet, faced him concerning his encounter with Bathsheba II Samuel 12:1-15.
In verse six of Psalm 51, David has acted absolutely contrary to what God desires and to what God has been teaching him “in the inmost place.” But it is just this “desire” of God and this “teaching” of God that are his hope. I used Psalm 51:6 because like David I was dealing with hidden things. I did not have the moral stamina or courage to face the many daunting experiences of my childhood. With David, It was not until Nathan the prophet told him the parable of the little ewe lamb (II Samuel 12:1-15), that David was made aware of the fact that the Lord knew what he had hidden in his inner parts. Prior to this awareness, David did not face and own the hidden things in his inner most parts.
For many years of my life, I did not like where I was born. I write about this in Getting Honest. “When I was later moved out of state, I fabricated many of the details of my childhood. I told people that I came not from a 90-acre farm, but from 500 acres of prosperous farmland. And I wouldn’t mention that that farmland had been in Mississippi, a state that nobody at that time would have admitted to being from. It would take a while, with help from the seminary, for me to discover why I felt the need to embellish and sometimes outright lie with others, of course, but also with myself. It would take an internal desire to want to drop my façade, look within, and get honest with myself.”
I won’t presume to say that I know what getting honest means for others. For me, it has meant a spiritual awakening that has come complete with experiences – experiences that I have described in my book Getting Honest – that I have a hard time describing as anything other than mystical. I have experienced the divine. And there is little one can’t face in life knowing that God is present always. There is infinite comfort in that. And as the mystic Saint Teresa of Avila put it, “To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that.”