Open Thou My Lips

“O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” (Psalm 51:15-17)

The inner man, the spirit. Broken and crushed. That’s what this world will do to us when we try to live life in our own way in our own time.

But did you catch what the Psalmist first said in this passage? It is the key to our relationship with God. Notice the Psalmist asks God to open his lips, or better put, to cause him to speak aright. He is asking God to fill Him so he can speak and praise Him.

We, as the Psalmist does here, must turn everything over to God. Not just who we are and what we have done. We must relinquish self to God to the point where God must fill the void left by us.

Folks usually turn to God when they realize that how they’ve been living just hasn’t been working out. When we are at this point, what we are asking God to do is to fix the outcome, the effect. But we have to move past this point and move into asking God to fix the cause, which is us. This is when we should let go and let God. Rid yourself of the old man the old cause and be filled with the new man, the man of God. This is when the effect of our lives will change.

Bill Hitchcock