Prayer-Lesson 4

Confession- The Act of Declared Admission

I John 1:8-10, Proverbs 28:13, Psalm38:18, Psalm 51

Having honored God with vocal praise and silent love, we find the door now opens for truly effective praying. Immediately we must now deal fully with the matter of personal sin.

“God cannot hear the prayers on our lips often because the desires of our heart after the world cry out to Him much more strongly and loudly than our desires for Him.” —Andrew Murray

An awareness of our past failures especially tends to inhibit our praying as our thoughts dwell upon them, suddenly we feel hopelessly unworthy of offering our petitions.

Too often the devil gains a victory because we allow the guilt and shame which accompanies our sin to cause us to cease from praying altogether.

To combat these spiritual attacks we must take at face value all the promises of God concerning confession.

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.”

If unrighteousness renders our praying ineffective, then confession is the solution to the problem of sin-guilt in prayer.

What then does confession involve?

The New Testament Greek word that is translated confess means “to agree with God” concerning His opinion of a matter, it also means “to admit guilt.”

When we “confess our sins”, we are agreeing with God concerning the sin in our lives, as revealed through His Word by the Holy Spirit.

Confession is to verbalize our spiritual shortcomings and to admit we have sinned against God—simply put confession is the act of declared admission.

At no other time in prayer does a believer look so carefully at his own spiritual condition as during confession.

Both King David and Solomon spoke of this as communing with their own hearts.

Psalm 4:4 “Stand in awe, and sin not: Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.”

Psalm 77:6 “I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: And my spirit made diligent search.”

Ecclesiastes 1:16 “I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”

D.L. Moody spoke of it as “a personal debate betwixt ourselves and our hearts” and defined this aspect of prayer: “Commune—or hold a serious communication and clear intelligence and acquaintance —with your own heart.

Heartfelt Recognition

Confession is a heartfelt recognition of what we are, it is important to God because it indicates that we take seriously our mistake and our failures.

God does not ask us to confess our sins because He needs to know that we have sinned, but because He knows that we need to know that we have sinned—God is already fully aware of our failings.

The fact is that our prayer life will never rise above my personal practical life in Jesus Christ—if my personal life touches too much of the world, my prayer life suffers.

Psalm 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear me:”

According to scripture there can be no effective prayer life where sin maintains its grip in the life of the believer—this is why confession is critical to our praying and should be implemented early in prayer.

Confession clears the conscience of faith killing guilt and opens the heart to truly believe God will hear our petitions.

Confession is often difficult because if forces us to reckon with our faults and failures in the presence of God and the moment that we admit that a particular act displeases God, we recognize the responsibility to change it.

Immediately upon confession an inner battle of the will begins to take place as we take personal responsibility for sin and purpose to address it.

“This period of our devotions must contain a moment of pain. It is not God’s intention that we should writhe under it, or linger in it, but specific sincere confession of our own sin is no joyous exercise; self-contempt, however salutary, is not pleasant. But let evil conduct, thought or motive be brought into the open, fully, without excuse, and under proper names. It is of no use, after all, to pose before God.”

Spiritual Surgery

This act of declared admission gives God access into the heart of a believer, removing all hindrances to effective prayer—it could well be described as an act of spiritual surgery.

“It works healing to the wound incurred in the heart—Just as the surgeon lances a boil to permit the infection to drain and to heal from the inside, so confession opens the sore, drains the poison, and heals from within.”

There can be no healing within until there is first confession without—confession is conditional to cleansing.

Until known sin is fully dealt with, we are not truly ready to pray.

As Christians our ultimate goal in prayer must be to glorify God by changing the world—God desires to pour Himself through us into our world, thus bringing about this change.

The problem then is that a holy God cannot pour Himself through a believer whose life is clogged with the filth of this world.

Psalm 139:23–24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.”

We should daily invite God to search our hearts so that we may know where we have failed and so that we may become aware of the sin that is present in our lives.

The scriptures show a pattern that those most willing to confess their weaknesses tend to be those who are most mightily used of God.

Isaiah 6:5—10

Daniel 9:20–21 “And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God; Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation.”

These godly servants of ancient days had learned an important secret of power—the Holy Spirit works best through a clean vessel, and confession begins the process of cleansing.

The Necessity of Confession

Confession is not optional to spiritual growth—it is absolutely necessary.

Isaiah 59:2 “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, And your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Confession is crucial for all spiritual growth, not merely for effective praying—it is that necessary first step to repentance—before we will ever willfully turn from sin, we must first admit that what we are doing is sin.

During your times of confession especially be on guard for little things—those unseen sins that grow to cause such severe damage—every major spiritual failure begins as a tiny seed of misconduct.

The How of Confession

Psalm 51 forms an excellent pattern to help us to understand what confession involves and how it should be done.

In this Psalm we find a practical pattern for daily confession:

David cries our for divine holiness by the words “create in mea clean heart”

We cannot be cleansed or forgiven by our own actions—forgiveness is a work only God can do.

During confession we should elaborate on areas that we believe need improvement in our lives—quietly asking God to show us what needs cleansing.

David cries out for a divine attitude by the words “renew a right spirit within me.”

Whereas David’s first petition concerns a right relationship with God, this second petition concerns a right relationship with others.

One’s attitude is crucial to dynamic praying, bitterness toward others drains prayer of power.

David confessed his need for divine guidance by the words “cast me not away from thy presence.”

Here we confess our need for God’s presence in our lives throughout the day, especially to defeat the temptations that come.

Finally David cries out for divine unction—almost desperately he confesses his need for the Holy Spirit saying “take not thy holy spirit from me.”

This is a renewed affirmation that we cannot accomplish anything meaningful apart from the influence of the Holy Spirit within us.

It is to admit that without God’s Spirit operating in and through us all our efforts will be hopelessly ineffective.

Temple Cleansing Time

To a great degree confession in prayer is meant to be a time of spiritual cleansing.

Throughout scripture we see that it was often necessary to clean and restore God’s temple because it had fallen into disuse or a state of disrepair.

Concerning the revival and the restoration of the temple under Hezekiah the scripture states:

2 Chronicles 29:16 “And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron.”

Today the dwelling place of God is not a temple of brick and mortar but the inner soul of man.

1 Corinthians 6:19 “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”

Confession is necessary to private prayer because it initiates the process of cleansing our spiritual temple.

Allow enough time during prayer for a thorough cleansing and remember that confession in prayer is that final step that leads to confident praying.

Confession: The Third Step in World-Changing Prayer

Following your time of silent waiting, immediately ask God to search your heart for any unconfessed sin.

Mentally examine your recent activities to discover possible areas of spiritual failure that need to be confessed.

Confess any specific sins that you may be guilty of, either against God or your fellow man.

Confess your need for specific divine guidance and supernatural unction.