In preparation for my trip to Paraguay, I am reading through a prayer booklet from E3 Partners. Several of the days focus on the Lord’s Prayer and the different elements of daily prayer to God. This week the readings focused on confession of sin as one aspect of prayer. There are two wrong views of confession which we need to correct, before I will emphasize its purpose.

First, confession-admitting you have sinned and asking God to forgive-does not need to be done before a priest or another person in order to be forgiven. Jesus is our high priest! He is the one who goes before the Father on our behalf, and he is at the Father’s side right now, interceding for us. To require that confession be done to another person, no matter who that person is, undercuts the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross on our behalf. (Heb. 4:14-16)

Second, true confession does not require remembering every one of our exact sins. This requirement is impossible! We all have sins which we cannot remember, or we have conveniently “forgotten,” or sins we are not aware of. Sins can be sins of commission (actively disobeying God’s commands) or sins of omission (failing to do something God has commanded). True confession has to do with our heart posture, since there is no way to actively recall every single sin we may commit in a given week.

That being said, confession is to be a regular part of prayer. Jesus taught his disciples to pray “forgive us our sins…” which follows the prayer for our daily bread. If we seek God daily for our physical sustenance, we certainly should seek him daily for our spiritual sustenance. The book of James plainly states that we are to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). The implication of this command is that confession is an ongoing practice of the family of believers.

Two important Psalms of confession are Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. In each of those Psalms, three different words for sin are used. These three words cover “all the bases” so to speak, when confessing sin. The three Hebrew words are pesha, avon, and hatta. Pesha means to breach an agreement, or cross the line. Hatta means to miss the mark, and avon means to be crooked or twisted. These three words give us a richer understanding of God’s love and forgiveness, because he forgives ALL of our sin, and he takes the guilt of our sins away! Notice how all three words are used in Psalm 32:5, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

If we are not careful, sinning and not choosing to confess can become a default response to people and circumstances. The Bible says that God–at some point–will not listen to our prayers if we are cherishing sin. Consider the following passages: Psalm 66:18-19 “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.” If we are persisting in sin, hiding it, or taking pleasure in it–all the while not recognizing it before God–it is clear that God will not hear our prayers. This kind of rebellion is what is called “the sin of the high hand” in the Old Testament. Jesus said that those hypocrites who pray “only to be seen by men” have already received their reward. Their reward is only human adulation. They do not experience the blessing of closeness with God or the reward of answered prayer.

Another example is Isaiah 59:2, “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” Isaiah makes clear that God can hear and can save, but the accumulation of sins and the hardness of heart make it so that God does not hear the people’s prayers.

Is there hope when we confess? YES! God is always ready to forgive, but sometimes our fellowship with Him is disrupted when we have not confessed our sins. Thankfully we have the promises of God that he will cleanse us by His Holy Spirit. For example, 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” In King David’s case, he was known as “a man after God’s own heart,” and yet he had times when he sinned and was not forthright in confession. David’s example means that our salvation is not in jeopardy when we have unconfessed sin, but our intimacy with God is disrupted, and certainly our human relationships suffer the damage from our dishonesty.

Confession is a way to wait on God and ask Him to search your heart. Many times in prayer, when I am silent, God points out different situations or areas in my life in which I need further grace and sanctification. Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” When we take time to confess our sin and ask the Lord’s forgiveness, we do not need to “fill up an entire book” so to speak. We can confess our sins and also listen to God speaking to our hearts. Here are several questions to think about the next time you spend some time in prayer and confession:

• Lord, Is there any sin in my life that I have not recognized as sin?
• Lord, is there anything I am overlooking, excusing, or not wanting to face?Lord, do I have any anger, resentments or grudges against another person? 
• Lord, search my heart and show me my sins from your point of view.
• Lord, break my heart over the sin in my life. Show me how to respond differently day by day.

Taken from E3 Partners Prayer Guide- “Ignite Your Prayer Life” by Jim & Kaye Johns

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 51:17 ESV