Have you ever avoided prayer because you knew you sinned and didn’t want to face God?

This passage is probably very familiar to you. It’s the part of the Lord’s prayer that deals with forgiveness. I find it amazing that this is part of the prayer Jesus taught. It not only tells us what we ought to do but reveals something about God. It shows us that Jesus wants us to confess our sins and that He WANTS to forgive us.

It’s not that we have to convince Jesus to forgive us, he wants to do it.

Sin separates us from God. Sometimes, when we sin, we may feel afraid to pray about it. Like Adam and Eve, after we sin, we try to hide from God. We may think that we’ve really blown it this time and gone too far. Or we’ve done the same sin too many times and we figure Jesus is only going to forgive us so many times, but that’s a lie. Jesus wants to forgive us.

What if we don’t want to confess?
Sometimes, however, it’s not guilt or fear that keeps us from confessing our sin, it’s that we don’t really want to let go of the sin. Truth be told, we kinda like the sin and we know that if we come before God in prayer, we’re going to be faced with our sin and will need to confess it and turn from the sin. However, we need to confess it and we need to turn from it.

Amazingly, even in those moments, Jesus wants us to come to Him. Sometimes our confession needs to go something like this,