Sermon Series: “Connecting with God: The Lord’s Prayer” Part 4
Message Aim: God’s cure for a clear conscious.
Sermon Title: “The Prayer of Cleansing”
Scripture: Matthew 6:12
“Forgive us our sins (debts/transgressions)” Matt. 6:12
Message Synopsis:
What’s hindering your progress in life to be all God created you to be? Growing closer to the Lord? Growing closer to your family? Growing closer to other people? What’s holding you back? A lot of times we want to blame external things. It’s my boss, it’s my relationship, I don’t have enough money – etc. But the truth is what holds you back in life is almost never external. It’s internal. The things that hold you back are inside you. Something gets entangled up inside you.
What it is may surprise you. But the Bible tells us that what holds you back more than anything else is unconscious guilt from unconfessed sin. You may not even realize that.
Did you know that when God made you, he had a plan for your life? God has a purpose, a plan for your life that is unique and nobody else can fulfill that plan and purpose. The problem is everybody else has a plan for your life too. And maybe your mom, or your dad, or you’ve got a boss or a friend or a neighbor or a spouse or somebody. God loves you and everybody else has a plan for your life. God says, no, no. I didn’t make you to fulfill somebody else’s plan. I put you on this planet for the one that was marked out for you.
The fact is none of us are faultless. We all make mistakes. We all sin. But what happens is as a result of that, because we make mistakes, we have regrets, guilt, and shame. That guilt and shame keeps us stuck. A lot of times we know we’re guilty but we try to deal with it in ways that don’t work. We deny it. We repress it. We excuse it. We rationalize it. Yet we feel bad about it. We feel guilty about it.
The truth is God doesn’t want you walking around with a load of guilt. Guilt is not a Christian emotion. In fact, it is the most unhelpful, destructive emotion out there. It damages your relationships in ways you don’t even realize. And it defeats your potential.
The Bible says this in Proverbs 28 “You will never succeed in life if you try to hide your sins. Confess them and give them up and then God will show you mercy.” When you understand the prayer of cleansing and you practice it, it opens the door to live a life of freedom, a life of blessing and a life that God uses. I want to give you six steps on the path to a clear conscious. How do you do it? Six steps:
- I review every area of my life.
Make a personal moral inventory or a personal spiritual assessment. You make a list of anything that’s between God and you that’s wrong in your life that you feel guilty about. The Bible says in Lamentations 3 “Let us test and examine our ways.” You get off by yourself with a pen and a notepad where you’re totally undisturbed. You ask God to reveal your sins. You say, Lord, clear my mind.
- I repent of every sin.
What does it mean to repent? It means three things. It means first, I take responsibility for my sin. I’m not blaming anybody else for this. Second, it means I turn away from those things. And third it means I turn toward God and his grace. The Bible says this “Let us turn again in repentance to the Lord. Let us lift our hearts and …say, ‘We have sinned and rebelled.’” You write it down. You accept responsibility. Don’t you think it’s time to finally deal with it and get it out of your life?
- I resolve to make restitution.
As you go through your list you find somebody that you have hurt and they know it then you go and make restitution. If you’ve hated them, if you’ve hurt them, mistreated them or you’ve cheated them, if possible you make restitution. Sometimes it’s not possible. They may have died. They may have moved away and you can’t find them. They may have remarried and it would be not a good thing for you to open an old wound. So in some situations you can’t make restitution. But anything you can do to make it right, you do so. There’s a story in the Bible about Zacchaeus, a tax collector who was a cheat. He was so touched by Jesus that he said “If I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to your house.’” I resolve to make restitution.
- I receive God’s forgiveness.
Don’t be shy about coming to God for forgiveness. He says “Let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God and there we will receive his mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it.” When we come to God with our sin, we receive his mercy and we find his grace. God says you come to me with honesty, with all your sins, the bad and the ugly in my life, and I will have mercy for your past and grace to change in your future. The Bible says “Since we are justified through faith, let us grasp the fact that we now have peace and reconciliation with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
- I reveal my faults to a friend.
You don’t have to reveal them to a lot of people. But you need one person that you come clean with.
The way God wired us is that we need other people in our lives for healing. God wired us that we only get well in community. The Bible says “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing. When we don’t have one person in our lives that we’re completely honest with, we wear masks. And we pretend and we fake it and we’re dishonest with each other and we play games and we’re hypocrites.
- Repeat these steps regularly.
Repeat the other five regularly. Friends, God wants to bless your life. God wants to use your life. He wants to bless you and he wants to make you a blessing to other people. The scriptures say, “Let us test… Let us turn… Let us come boldly to find grace… Let us grasp the fact that we now have peace, reconciliation… Let us draw near to God, with a sincere heart and full assurance having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscious. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful and let us consider how we may spur one another on to love and good deeds. And let us not give up meeting together as some are doing but let us encourage one another.” We are to do this together.
0 Comments