The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 143:11
Quicken me, O Lord.
What is religion?
In the New Testament the word “quicken” sets forth an idea which is at the very core of religion. Dead in trespasses and sins originally, the man, as Christ makes him, is alive for evermore. Regeneration is a quickening; sanctification is the continuance and evolution of that quickening which began in the new birth. It is a remarkable thing that the same word “quicken” should occur in the Old Testament only in the Psalms, and there almost always as a prayer. The great advantage of the prayers for quickening, and the expressions about it in the Psalms is, that they show us the meaning of the idea and instruct us about it. What quickening is comes out in the result; and the result is variously expressed thus--quicken us and “we will call in Thy name,” and again quicken me, and “so I shall keep the testimony of Thy mouth”; or, again, as a cure for worldliness the prayer is offered, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; quicken Thou me in Thy way.” The idea in these prayers is, that the praying soul does not care as it ought for these good things, but knows and confesses that this is a great defect; and consequently asks that it may have the power to care for them. You may remember the case of Darwin, who tells that through devotion to study he lost his interest in music and poetry, going so far as to say that the power to appreciate these which he used to have had died out for want of use. He was sorry for this, and he might be supposed to wish for and even to pray for the restoration of that faculty so exquisitely delightful and so much to be desired. He might be supposed to take steps to re-awaken it. His feeling, if not his words, would be, “Quicken me in this; make me sensitive in this. Let my ear have the power to appreciate, and my heart the sensitiveness to feel the power of music and of genuine poetry. Quicken me.” That is just what the prayer means in higher matters still. Each one of us has lost many faculties and powers through sin. Our heart is hardened. We cannot see the good, the beauty of some things that are really good. Nothing is more common than to see this illustrated in different ways in different men. How many have a taste for what is intellectual, artistic, natural--for works of philanthropy and charity? How many have the ear that can hear the cry of the needy, or the heart to feel for the oppressed? Are not some so unpitiful and uncharitable, and cruel that they are not aware of their heartlessness? Surely then this is the time when with deep humility and penitence the prayer should be offered for quickening; that the things to which the soul is now sensitive and rejoices should cease to delight, and that the power should be given, or should be restored, of delighting in the true, the good, the beautiful as these are approved of God, and of all right men. Surely the heart’s cry should be--“Quicken me so that my soul will respond as the soul of Christ to the will of the Father, and to the deep necessities of those in sin and suffering. Quicken me that I may so prize the good that my soul shall, as the soul of Christ, pity the lost, the perishing, the sinful. Quicken me, so that my present insensitiveness, and callousness, and very blindness should disappear, and something of the gentleness, the penitence, the pitifulness, the self-sacrificingness of Christ may be awakened in my soul. Quicken me that I may be a man, not a monster--a man with a heart and a conscience; and not a mere human animal with a covetous eye, a grasping hand, and a selfish, unsympathetic nature. Quicken me that in me the image of God may be renewed, the lost likeness restored, and the family tie of sonship reconstituted. (T. M. B. Paterson.)
The Spirit’s quickening influence
In the winter and early spring there seems to be no life in the garden and field and forest. Everything looks dead--twice dead. But it is not so really. Under the surface roots are full of ferment, seeds are swelling, and within the bark of the trees is as much movement as m a city’s noisy streets. Every fibre is tingling with vital force, and the sap is coursing along the minute channels, and all that is wanted is the breath of the south wind, the warmth of the smiling sun, and the branches will burst into buds, and the earth break out with laughing flowers. So in souls that seem dead, twice dead, the Spirit of God is often at work, and one earnest heaven-sent message calls out the buds of penitence and faith, and it is seen as a very garden of the Lord. Spiritual winter may hold a springtide of blessing and resurrection glory in its chill grasp, but He who commands both can easily transform the one into the other.