A 7-Day Guide To PrayerSample

Come messy.

When we fumble due to sin—and it’s gonna happen—confession puts us back on the field. - Lou Holtz

We desperately want to come to God when we feel like we have it all together. But, God wants us to come to Him in the middle of our turbulence. We do not have to clean up our act to impress Him.

We do, however, need to talk about the condition of our hearts with Him. Part of prayer is confessing the wrong things we’ve said, done and yes, even thought. C.S. Lewis says that confession is like the threshold of prayer. Meaning, we do it first.

Confession is hard for us because we don’t want to admit our flaws. News flash: He already knows. He knows the things we try to hide from Him. That thing we did years ago that we swear we’ll take to our grave? He knows. And guess what? He loves us anyway. 

Even though He knows, we still need to confess our sins. It’s actually something that most of us either don’t want to do or don’t feel is necessary. And we certainly don’t want to call ourselves sinful. That would mean we are full of sin. Another news flash: we are sinful. But the Bible is crystal clear that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” How much will we be cleansed of? Everything.

When we confess our sins, we then make the choice to repent. That means that we do an “about face” and literally turn the opposite way from the sin we just confessed. Confessing our sin and walking in repentance might include this simple prayer. “God, please forgive me for gossiping about Beth today. I will choose to speak words that don’t tear other people down from now on.” 

But there are times where we come to Him and we have much more to confess. There may be years of moral discrepancies that weigh us down. Some things we don’t remember specifically. If that’s the case, our prayer could be, “God, I know I have sinned so much, and I don’t remember it all. Would you please forgive me where I have messed up?” And guess what? The Bible tells us that He will remember our sins no more and that they are removed from us as far as the east is from the west. 

We may think that we are hopeless and our circumstance is helpless. Guess what? Hopeless and helpless are God’s specialty. We just need to bring our messy lives to Him.

Reflect

• Ask God to bring to mind anything that you need to confess and then simply do that.
• If there is one issue that keeps tripping you up, what do you need to adjust, remove, or add to help you turn the opposite direction?
• Write down any revelation that God speaks to you through today’s Bible reading or devotional.