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Lord Teach Us to Pray: Confession!
Intro: I was asked at Pizza with the Pastor what is the hardest part of my job. It’s kind of a hard question, but in general it’s the fear of not serving the church well.
Satan points out all my failures, my sins, my shortcomings, accusing me, telling me how inadequate I am to be a pastor. And the truth is that I am inadequate, but my God is adequate, and I serve at His calling.
There is only one thing that can destroy God’s calling on my life and that is disobedience and refusing to confess the sins the Holy Spirit reveals to me. At best unconfessed sin will limit the effectiveness of my ministry and makes it more difficult to hear that quite voice of the Holy Spirit.
In this current series we are asking God to teach us how to pray. Last Sunday we looked at the role of adoration in prayer. This is where prayer begins as it aligns us with God’s authority over us.
God is the boss; He is the King. If we don’t align with that simple fact, we are out of alignment from the first step. Who rules your life, God or yourself?
Once we establish God’s dominion as our ruler we move to the next step: Confession.
Confession will include at least 3 things:
- Agreeing with God about our sinful condition.
- Turning away from that sin.
- Moving in a new direction of obedience to God and His Word.
One author lists 4 components of true confession:
- True confession takes personal responsibility for sin.
- True confession acknowledges that sin is first & foremost against God.
- True confession realizes that sin is at the core of humanity.
- True confession knows that we offer nothing that can excuse or offset sin.
You see, sin reflects the true condition of our heart. It may be that we aren’t choosing to sin, we are just acting out the true condition of our heart. Thus, we need to be like David and to ask God to cleanse our heart.
So, open your Bible to Psalm 32 as we look at a Psalm of confession.
Psalm 32:1-2, “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 2 Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.”
We would all agree with that statement, you are blessed when your sin is forgiven and no longer counted against you. Keep reading:
Psalm 32:3-4, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”
OK, it may be just me but that doesn’t sound like a blessing. Bones wasting away, groaning all day, God’s hand heavy on me, strength sapped. No, that is not a blessing.
Go back to vs 3 and look at the first few words again, “When I kept silent.” This silence is not confessing, it’s remaining silent in our sin. That is what will cause your bones to waste away. This saps your strength.
Here is the key: When we hide from our sin, we hide from God.
Psalm 32:5-6a, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
6 Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found;”
Do you see the transformation that happens here? Upon the forgiveness of David’s sin, David doesn’t say “and you forgave the consequences of my sin.” He says, “you forgave the guilt of my sin.” It is our guilt that is relieved by God’s forgiveness.
Jesus paid for the consequences of our sin. He took the weight of our sin upon Himself. He took the weight of all the worlds sin upon Himself. All sin! So, what is left for us is the guilt to be forgiven. Confession is what must be done to be relieved of guilt.
You know this, when you know you have done something wrong you feel the weight of that guilt. If you do something wrong and don’t feel the weight of guilt it is a sign of a seared conscience. Don’t get so used to your sin that your conscience is seared.
Look again at that first part of verse 6. “Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found;”
There is a clock ticking toward a time in which God will no longer be found. Don’t miss that cut off! Don’t miss it!
1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Proverbs 28:13, “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”
Do you see the benefits of confession here?
Let’s go a step deeper.
James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (Read it again!)
Do you want to gain victory over a sin you just can’t seem to shake? Confess it to someone. Bring yourself under them for accountability. This is how you take a step towards freedom from THAT sin. Think about this principle…confess your sin to someone who will help you stop this sin in your life.
The only reason you wouldn’t confess this sin is because you really don’t want to stop sinning. Do you see the flashing red light?
Sometimes other people will confront us about sin they see in our lives. Check out this story about David after his sin with Bathsheba and his killing her husband to cover up his sin.
2 Samuel 12:1-14, “The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
11 “This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”
13 Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. 14 But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”
David’s declaration and acknowledgment that he had sinned against the Lord was true confession as we will see in a few moments.
When we are confronted with our sinfulness there should be a similar emotional response.
2 Corinthians 7:10, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
Seeing our own sinfulness should break us. If it doesn’t, we have not come to realize the offense we have given to God. Now listen to David’s prayer of confession:
Psalm 51:1-12, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
The second element of our prayers should be confession. Simply pouring out our heart over our own sinful condition. If you don’t see your own sin daily you need to pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal the sin, the impurity of your heart. Then you, like Paul, can proclaim what a wretched man that I am.
Confession begins with proclaiming to God our sin, our wrongdoing. But it doesn’t stop there. If our sin has hurt another person, we must go to them and confess to them and ask forgiveness.
Matthew 25:40, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
The offenses we cause to one another are also offenses we have done to Jesus. Do we understand this?
That argument isn’t just with “that person”, it’s with Jesus. That hurt, that offense, that careless word, that disrespect…all toward Jesus.
If we say we love Jesus, but we don’t love our brother or sister we lie.
Jesus taught us to love even our enemies. That’s radical, but if we are to be His disciple we must obey…no conditions.
We begin with Adoration, then move into Confession. This is the prayer of the saints.
Our problem is that we try to cover up our sin in order to look good to others. But when we die it will all be revealed. Wouldn’t it be better to reveal it now so that when we get to heaven all we hear is, “Well done good and faithful servant.”
Do we pursue holiness? Do you pursue holiness? If we love Jesus, the pursuit of holiness will prove it.