It is clear from this passage that there was something which David still wanted, although he was the Lord’s. He was safe, but he still prayed to be saved; he had been made the Lord’s own dear child, but he still prayed, ‘Save me.’ Let us consider, then, what he wanted, and what he did; and may God the Holy Ghost so apply the passage to our souls, that we may know the double blessing of being His and being saved through His grace! I. WHAT HE WANTED; or, in other words, what he prayed for when he prayed that he might be saved. There appears to be no reference in the psalm to temporal deliverance, so we need not consider the prayer as referring to it. It was for spiritual gifts that he prayed, and from spiritual difficulties that he desired to be saved. And when we consider these spiritual gifts it is very clear that it was not acceptance, or reconciliation, for which he prayed, for his mind must have been quite at rest upon that point when he said, ‘Lord, I am Thine.’ What he was longing for was personal holiness,—that is, a complete conformity to the perfect will of that holy God to whom he belonged and whom he loved. You see this throughout the psalm. He does not pray, ‘Pardon me,’ ‘Receive me,’ or ‘Blot out my transgressions,’ as he does in some other psalms; but he does pray again and again that God’s statutes might be written on his heart: ‘Oh, that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes:’ ‘Teach me Thy statutes;’ ‘Deal bountifully with Thy servant, that I may live and keep Thy word;’ ‘Quicken me after Thy loving-kindness; so shall I keep the testimony of Thy mouth.’ The whole psalm is full of such prayers, and they show us perfectly clearly that the salvation for which he prayed was the power for holiness from God. So the psalm also teaches us what was the difficulty in the attainment of his wish. There are some allusions to enemies, from which we may infer that there were persons about him who hindered his progress. But the psalm shows clearly that the real difficulty lay in himself, and in the deadness of his own heart. No less than nine times does he pray, ‘Quicken me.’ And what did that prayer imply? Was it not that he was conscious of a dead, cold state of heart, and was longing for life and warmth? Had there been no element of deadness in his soul, he would not have required to be quickened; but there was that element of deadness, and he himself urged it as a reason for his prayer, when he said (verse 25), ‘My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken Thou me according to Thy word.’ It was the deep corruption of his human nature which continued to cling to him, even when he was the Lord’s, against which he prayed when he said, ‘Lord, I am Thine: save me.’