The following article is an excerpt from Praying with David by Michael Phillips.
“Give me understanding…” —Psalm 119:34
“Teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” —Psalms 51:6
This prayer has perplexed me. Why pray for wisdom in secret…in his secret heart? It seems that wisdom ought to be made public. Everyone certainly needs it. The lasting legacy David’s son Solomon has left the world is a practical and public exposition of how wisdom is lived in life—what are the attributes of wisdom, what are the fruits of wisdom. What, then, is the reason David worded his prayer in this way?
As I pondered it, I began to see that this prayer is not as much about wisdom, as for what it reveals about David himself.
David was a very public man—in the national spotlight all through his tumultuous life. He is the biblical character about which we know more than anyone but Jesus. In some ways we know even more about David’s inner thoughts and the events of his life than we do those of Jesus. David is the last person about whom we would use the phrase, “a private man.”
Yet David nurtures a secret in his heart.
It is a good secret, a precious secret. It is a secret because he knows that few others—if any—would be capable of understanding it. In hindsight as God’s revelation has increased, we understand about that inner chamber within the heart where David cherishes his secret. But as noted earlier, something new was being birthed in David’s life that primitive humankind had not known before.
As public as was his life, in this one thing David stood alone. The secret was this: He shared the innermost places of his being with Another. He lived in secret intimacy with YHWH or “God” (Elohim). But David was learning to live with him in the secret places of his heart as a Father, and even perhaps in faintly foreshadowing ways, as a friend. This secret region in David’s heart was shared only with his Father-God.
When David prayed, he was praying both out of his secret place but also to the one who dwelt in that place with him. David’s life foreshadows the Spirit-life of the Christian who lives with the Spirit of Christ dwelling alive in his or her heart.
Therefore David prays to be given wisdom, knowing that God’s revelation to him—into his deepest heart—can only be known in secret because no one else dwells there with him but God.
– Excerpted from pages 89-90 of Praying with David by Michael Phillips
Continue Reading: Praying with David by Michael Phillips
In Praying with David, best-selling author Michael Phillips explores how David’s prayers were inwardly focused on his thoughts, sin, frailty, spiritual character, and his need for God. When the fiery tempest within him stilled, hearkening back to his youth as a shepherd boy on the hillside with his sheep, the divine Fatherhood slowly crept into David’s heart, mind, and soul.
In those moments of solitude, David discovered what it meant to have a personal, transparent, authentic relationship with his God.