Where Prayer Becomes RealSample

Day Four

Praying When There is No Condemnation

When we discover we are forgiven, there is an incredible freedom that arises in our hearts. We feel alive and we feel free. But we can easily leave that place and discover a new sort of bondage. Many of us discover that while we believe God forgave us, we think He is profoundly disappointed in us. Once again, guilt and shame arise in our hearts, and we struggle with fear and anxiety as we seek to be faithful. 

It is precisely in this place where we need to hear Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is no condemnation. If knowing forgiveness leads to freedom, how much does the realization that there is no more condemnation? But the freedom this leads us into is counterintuitive. This is not a freedom to leave and do whatever we want. This is not a lawless kind of freedom. This is a freedom that leads us to be honest. 

I assume that none of us try to be dishonest in our prayers, even though our prayers can be profoundly dishonest. We see our sin, our rebellion, our brokenness and our struggle, and we don’t name the truth of it, but we just ask God to make it go away or to fix it. When we do see our sin we apologize profusely, hoping that if we show God how sincere we are, maybe He will accept our apology. We forget that there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, and instead of accepting that and bringing the truth of ourselves to Him, we hide from his glare by beating ourselves up. 

The only way to really believe – all the way down – that there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, is to bring all that makes us feel condemned before Him and lay it at his feet. We cannot merely affirm truths like this, we need to test them. We need to test if we really believe that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. We need to test if there is no condemnation. We test to see if we believe these things by bringing the whole of ourselves to God. 

Where do you struggle to bring the truth to God? What do you have a hard time believing that God can receive from you? Is it your anger, lust, envy or maybe your sense of uncleanness, condemnation or fear? What would it look like to find Jesus praying for you, not in the past, but in the present as you experience these things?