Thursday, March 15, 2018
Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out
the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from
my guilt. Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me
day and night. Against you, and you
alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and
your judgment against me is just. For I
was born a sinner—yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. But you desire honesty from the womb, teaching
me wisdom even there. Purify me from my
sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my joy again; you have
broken me—now let me rejoice. Don’t keep
looking at my sins. Remove the stain of
my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O
God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and
don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey
you. Psalm 51:1-12(NLT)
Having spent the
early and middle years of my life in a religious tribe for which Lent was
something those other people did, I missed a lot of opportunity to
develop a readiness to do good for my soul.
This thought arises out of one of our idioms which says it plainly, that
confession
is good for the soul.
Now this idea and
the idiom it belongs to is not merely a cultural saying, born from human wisdom;
the concept is all over the pages of Scripture.
Our insides are
not equipped to hold onto our sins like a killer keeping his secret:
When I refused to confess my
sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.
Psalm 32:3(NLT)
Holding on to and hiding our sin holds us back from growing:
People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they
will receive mercy. Proverbs 28:13(NLT)
Leaders of great movements like Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls
confessed:
I confess that we
have sinned against you. Yes, even my
own family and I have sinned! Nehemiah
1:6(NLT)
Relationships can be reclaimed:
“If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the
offense. If the other person listens
and confesses it, you have
won that person back. Matthew 18:15(NLT)
Our wholeness and physical health depend on confession:
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so
that you may be healed.
James 5:16(NLT)
Being forgiven is the entry to an unburdened life with a clear heart:
But if we confess our
sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all wickedness. 1 John 1:9(NLT)
The question that
haunts my understanding of human nature about confessing our sins is: If confession is so good for us, why
are we so reluctant to do it?
And the answer to
that question is no different now than it was for the first pair of humans who
sinned and wouldn’t own up to it:
When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife
heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among
the trees. Then the Lord God
called to the man, “Where are you?” He
replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God
asked. “Have you eaten from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit,
and I ate it.” Then the Lord God
asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The
serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s
why I ate it.”
Genesis 3:8-13(NLT)
Pride – when you
stand naked before God with cookie crumbs all over the hands that have done
what you’ve been told not to do…well, it’s time to pass the buck!
For You Today
Lent is a time for owning that buck, and releasing it back into the hand
of your God.
You chew on that as you hit the
Rocky Road; have a blessed day.
