April 5,2014: Morning Prayer and Meditation on Psalm 32:1-6

What a blessed message this is! O precious Heavenly Father. This is the joyful sound
that goes to all the world, the good news that the angels announced on that first
Christmas morning: good tidings that should be to all people.

I praise and magnify Your truth, O Precious Father, astounding though it is. What a
wonderful simple truth is that You by Your Own good pleasure have announced
forgiveness of sins to Your people. They are pronounced blessed, and their sins are not
counted to them.

I confess, O Lord, that Your word in this Psalm, which Paul quotes in his epistle to the
Romans, belongs to the righteousness of faith.

I was called out of darkness into light by this great gift of justification which included
two unearned gifts from You, O Lord, through Your Son, Jesus Christ by the Holy
Spirit. We know the meaning of this Psalm because You have taught us, and we could
learn no other way.

I praise You for the first unearned gift of full and free forgiveness of sins, so that all of
our sins, past, present, and future are not imputed to us, they are not charged to us
because by faith, which is Your gift, we believe that Christ died for our sins, so that He
who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God.

This righteousness is without the law, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.
This righteousness which declares us innocent before Your Holy Law is without flaw,
perfect and whole and we are adopted as Your children and given the Spirit of
adoption that Christ may be formed in us. This was your second great gift of grace to
us.

Your Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, O Lord, and reproved the guile and hypocrisy that
defined our life. You brought us to despair over our sins and transgression. We refused
to confess them, and condemned others for the things we did ourselves. We shut our
guilt within ourselves and justified ourselves before others, either pretending that Your
Law did not apply to us, or that we were innocent of sins. Your hand was very heavy
upon us and it was like we had died a kind of death, far from the water of life, dry
bones without hope and without God. The pride of our hearts kept us in chains to our
sins and misery.

But Christ had died for us when all our sins were future and we were without hope and
help. As God commanded the light to shine out of darkness on that first day of
Creation, so in a new creation You shined into our hard and barren hearts, generously
pouring out Your Spirit of life, the water of life, and banishing the dry bones of
hypocrisy, guile, and bitterness, which had come because Your hand was heavy upon
us, and we did not seek You.

By Your glorious Light, the good news of the Gospel, shined into our hearts, melting
them, changing us, bringing forgiveness and confession of sins, translating us from the
kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

We are not alone in this, for this is the inheritance of all the godly, those in whom the
words of the apostle are fulfilled who was sent “To open their eyes, and to turn them
from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive
forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in
me.” Acts 26:18

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“1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit
there is no guile.
3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.
4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the
drought of summer. Selah.
5 I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will
confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.
Selah.
6 For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be
found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.” (Ps
32:1-6)