“Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression. ” (Psalm 19:12-13)
If you’ve been following along in Psalm 19 this week, you’ll notice another shift in verse 12. In the first few verses, David looked up. He found himself amazed by a God who could create the heavens, especially the enormous and powerful fireball called the sun. Then he looked down into the pages of God’s Word and was overwhelmed that the creator of the heavens would talk to us in words on paper.
Now David looks into his own heart. Compared to the sun, he sees his smallness. Compared to God’s commands in Scripture, David sees how sinful he is. He realizes immediately he often does not live according to the Law. He is not operating according to the design. He naturally sins without thinking of it sometimes.
At other times, David admits, he intentionally rebels against God’s commands. For the fist time in this chapter, he asks God for something: “Forgive the sins I do without realizing I’m doing them – and keep me from doing the ones I know are wrong. Please help me not to be controlled by my sinful desires.”
Think: Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the sense that you are way off the path of living according to God’s design for your life? Do you ever run into a brick wall of conviction over your sinful choices?
Pray: Pray this passage to God. Ask him to convict you of sin and to give you the courage (and power in his Spirit through faith in Christ) to obey him.
Do: Ask someone you trust to tell you if they think you have any “hidden sins” that you aren’t aware of most of the time. (Be brave and try not to get defensive.)