Sermon Tone Analysis

CONNECTING WITH GOD

THE PRAYER OF CLEANSING

Sunday March 7, 2021

Scripture Reference: Matthew 6:9-13 (NLT2)

"Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

10 May your Kingdom come soon.

May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give us today the food we need, 12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

13 And don't let us yield to temptation but rescue us from the evil one."

Matthew 6:9-13 (NLT2)

Intro.

A. Welcome to week five of our series on Connecting With God.

So far, we have looked at the Prayer of Connection, getting connected with God.

We looked at the Prayer of Surrender, asking God to take total control of our lives.

Last week we looked at the Prayer of Dependence where we are asking God to be the one who provides for what we need.

I said in the second week of this series that The Lord's Prayer is a challenging prayer and today I will tell you that I believe we are about to face the Lord's greatest challenge to us.

1.

So far in the Lord's Prayer the things we have done have pretty much what we do between ourselves and God.

We might share with someone else about the decisions we made in these other parts of the Lord's Prayer, but today we are going to see where the Lord tells us we need to not only confess to him but to others as well.

Frankly, this part of the Lord's Prayer is very humbling but remember God's promise.

"As the Scriptures say, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

James 4:6 (NLT2)

2. I know that we do not always realize this but what holds us up and impedes or even stops our moving forward in our relationship with God and others is not something external, but internal.

We are prone to blame this lack of progress on things like the economy, our spouse, our boss, or our opportunities, but the truth of the matter is that what is stopping us is something that is entangled inside of us and we are going to address that today.

3. I don't know if this will surprise you or not, but the Bible reveals to us that what holds us back more than anything else is unconfessed sin, which usually breeds in us an unconscious guilt.

When we are holding on to those hurts and hang ups from our past, they produce guilt and shame in us that deeply hurt us.

Let's look at our verses from Hebrews 12 for today.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:1-2 (NLT2)

4.

There a few things I want to point out to you that the God is telling us in these verses.

First notice that God tells us that He has a race planned for us.

The Bible says is it already marked out for us.

Another way we can state this is that God has a plan and purpose for our lives.

We read in Psalms 139 that we are uniquely made, and you have heard me say many times that something will be left undone in this world if we do not follow God's plan and purpose for us.

Here is the problem that many of us have to face though and it is the fact that while God has a plan for our lives, so do many others.

Your parents might have a plan for you.

Your spouse might have a plan for you.

Your friends might have a plan for you.

You have probably heard this before God loves you and everyone else has a plan for your life.

God didn't create you to fulfill someone else's plan, He crated you to fulfill His plan for you because His plan for you is the only one that fulfill us.

5. Now notice though that these verses tell us that we are to throw off the things that that hindering us and holding us back from living out God's plan and purpose.

Certainly, one of the things I have to throw off are the expectations of others, but V.1 specifically tells us that the big thing that we have to get rid of, that is holding us back is sin.

It is that unconfessed sin that is creating unresolved guilt in our lives and preventing us from being all God wants us to be and doing all that God wants to do through us.

When we hold on to sin it results in regrets, remorse, guilt, and shame.

All of these things are internal as I said earlier and are preventing us from experiencing the abundant life the Bible promises us.

These things are keeping us stuck in the past.

6.

Now most of the time we know we are guilty, but we try to deal with that guilt in ways that just don't work.

Here are a few.

We try and deny it.

We try to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Sometimes we try to suppress it.

We try to keep it a secret, but the one person other than God who always knows its there is you!

We try to excuse it.

This is normally where we use the blame tactic.

"It's not my fault."

"They made me do it."

Then we try to rationalize.

Do you know what it means to rationalize?

Here is what it means, "Rational Lies".

When we rationalize, we are trying to convince our minds that our hearts are wrong.

Rationalizing is actually a battle between the heart and mind, but the end result is always guilt.

7. Do you think God wants you walking around with all this guilt?

A lot of people think this is God's purpose, to make us feel guilty, but guilt is not a Christian emotion.

The truth is guilt is the most worthless, unhelpful, destructive emotion out there.

It destroys your confidence; it defeats your potential and worst of all it damages your relationships.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the guy who wrote the Sherlock Holmes novels was quite the prankster and one time he wrote an anonymous note to some well-known people in England.

All the note said was, "All is found out, flee at once."

Within 48 hours half the people he had written to had fled the country.

B. Listen to this proverb, "People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy."

Proverbs 28:13 (NLT2) This is the prayer of cleansing.

This is a prayer that can revolutionize your life like nothing else can.

If we can learn to practice this prayer it can open the door to a life free of guilt and give us a life filled with joy, peace, blessing and a life God can use.

1. Friends God wants to use you and I in ways that right now we cannot even imagine, but God can and will only use clean vessels.

If we want God to use us, if we want to finish that race, He has marked out for us we need to pray, "Forgive us our sins."

Trans.

What I want to do with my remaining time is give you six steps that are necessary in releasing the guilt we carry and to begin being used by God in powerful ways.

So, let's get started.

Step one is:

I.

I NEED TO REVIEW EVERY AREA OF MY LIFE.

We will call this step:

A. Making A Personal Inventory.

1.

What we are talking about here is making a personal spiritual assessment of our lives.

In this part of the process, we want to get alone with God and ask Him to reveal things in us that are hindering our lives with Him and others.

The book of Lamentations says this, "let us test and examine our ways..." Lamentations 3:40a (NLT2) What we want to do here to ask God to reveal any sin we may have in our lives.

Again, the Bible tells us to do this.

Here is what Psalms 139 tells us.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life."

Psalms 139:23-24 (NLT2)

2. Once again I will point out that this is certainly not the easiest thing for us to do.

To say to God. "I want You to search the innermost part of me and reveal what displeases you."

"I want You to reveal the sin that is holding my life and my usefulness to You back."

But this is absolutely necessary if we want to stay on the course God has marked out for us.

3. Now let me say that we need to take our time in doing this, even if it means several sessions.

Do not go into this process telling God you only have a few minutes to do this.

You don't take clothes to a cleaner and say, "Just get most of the dirt out."

NO, you want those clothes to be thoroughly cleaned and the same needs to be true of our hearts.

Now you might be wondering, "Why do I have to write this down?"

"Couldn't I just ask God to reveal it and be done?"

Here is the reason you need to write this down.

Writing makes things specific.