July 23 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"My soul clings to the dust; revive me by your Word" (Ps. 119:25).

Devotional

Ah! How many who scan this page may take up and breathe David's words! You feel a deadness, a dullness, and an earthliness in spiritual enjoyments, and duties, and privileges in which your whole soul should be all life, all fervor, all love. You are low where you ought to be elevated. You grovel where you ought to soar. You cling to the earth where you ought to be embracing the heavens. Your thoughts are low. Your affections are low. Your feelings are low. Your spirits are low. You seem almost ready to question the existence of the life of God in your soul.

But even in this sad and depressed state may there not be something cheering, encouraging, hopeful? Evidently there was in David's—"My soul clings to the dust. Revive me by your Word." This was the cheering, encouraging, hopeful feature in the Psalmist's case—his breathing after the reviving of the Divine life of his soul. Here was that which marked him a man of God. It was a living man complaining of his deadness, and breathing after more life. It was a heaven-born soul lamenting its earthliness, and panting after more of heaven. It was a spiritual man mourning over his carnality, and praying for more spirituality. It is not the prayer of one conscious of the low state of his soul, and yet satisfied with that state.

"My soul clings to the dust"—completely discouraged—"revive me by your Word." Perhaps no expression is more familiar to the ear than this. Maybe no acknowledgment is more frequently on the lips of professing Christians than this. And yet where is the accompanying effort to rise above it? Where is the putting on of the armor? Where is the conflict? Where is the effort to emerge from the dust, to break away from the enthrallment, and soar into a higher and purer region? Alas! many from whose lips smoothly glides the humiliating confession still embrace the dust, and seem to love the dust, and never stretch their pinions to rise above it.

But let us study closely this lesson of David's experience, that while deep lamentation filled his heart and an honest confession breathed from his lips, there was also a breathing, a panting of his soul after a higher and a better state. He seemed to say—"Lord, I am prostrate, but I long to rise; I am bound, but I struggle to be free; my soul clings to the dust, but revive me!"

Similar to this was the state of the church, so graphically depicted by Solomon—"I slept, but my heart was awake" (Song 5:2).

Revive thy work, O Lord,
thy mighty arm make bare;
speak with the voice that wakes the dead,
and make thy people hear.

(Albert Midlane, 1858)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.