DAY 7 | 21 Days of Prayer 2021

Welcome to Day 7 of a 21 day journey of prayer and seeking God! I love the first week, don’t you? It’s always so full of hope and anticipation. All the motivation is pumping through our veins, and our hearts are fully engaged. Week 1 is great. Day 17 is harder. Because, you know, somewhere between Day 1 and Day 17, life happens.

But might I just lovingly say, this is not hard. Finding 10 minutes a day to invest in your soul (the one part of you that will matter 100 years from now) is a worthy investment. The pattern of regularly seeking God could be the most transformative thing you do in 2021.

I’m so happy you’ve joined us and made it through the first week. Each day we have been considering a different aspect of prayer. And today we are looking at the significance of confession and repentance. Yuck.

I don’t like confession because I don’t like to admit it when I’ve done something wrong. As a perfectionist by nature, acknowledging my sin, mistakes, and failures is just shy of volunteering for a root canal. But here’s why it’s so very important: Sin separates us from God. That’s true theologically in that God is holy and cannot commune with that which is unholy, so spiritually, we remain disconnected from Him. That’s why Jesus died as a perfect, atoning sacrifice for our sin, to restore connection between God and humanity.

But sin also separates us from God in a practical sense. When I have unconfessed or hidden sin in my life, I avoid God. I don’t want to pray or read the Bible or go to church. If God is light, then when I don’t bring my sin before Him and expose it to Him, I’m living in darkness. My shame grows, and the distance in my relationship with God grows too. A fog of heaviness, guilt, and even depression can settle over my life.

King David expresses this feeling is Psalm 32:3-4 when he says,

“When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.”

Ugh. That’s a bad feeling. And if you’ve ever lived with a “secret sin” or a pattern of sinful behavior, you know exactly how that feels. The great news is that we are one prayer away from fully restored fellowship with God.

David says in verse 5,

“FINALLY, I CONFESSED ALL MY SINS TO YOU AND STOPPED TRYING TO HIDE MY GUILT. I SAID TO MYSELF, ‘I WILL CONFESS MY REBELLION TO THE LORD.’ AND YOU FORGAVE ME! ALL MY GUILT IS GONE.” -PSALM 32:2

Friend, forgiveness is yours! Jesus died so that you could experience the grace and forgiveness of God. Experience the JOY of having the Lord clear your guilt. Let’s live before Him in complete honesty.

Take a moment now to sit quietly before God, asking Him to bring to mind anything that might be separating you from Him. Confess it as we close out our first week in prayer so that you may walk in the light of His forgiveness and grace.