Psalm 106 – Confession Guide

You cannot expect God to work among you in raising up a movement for Him if there is continued, known sin in your life or in the lives of those who have joined with you. 

If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.  Psalm 66:18

Of course you want the Lord to work in you and answer your prayers for Him to work on your campus, to use you in bringing His kingdom to your university.  He will gladly work through those who are cleansed vessels, ready for Him to shine His light through.  As you begin to think about what He has in store for you this coming school year, take some time now to ask Him to make you that clean vessel.

As you go through the confession guide in the next blog, do not be afraid to be honest about your sin.  The Lord already knows all about it and has forgiven it!  He won’t hold it against you.  As a believer your sin won’t keep you from having a relationship with God, but it does prevent you from having direct fellowship with Him, in much the same way disobeying your parent doesn’t prevent you from being their child, but it does affect how they relate to you.

Take some extended time to ask the Holy Spirit to bring any unknown sin to mind.  Ask Him to give you the courage to confess and turn away from any sin you have not been able to turn away from.  Don’t force yourself to find something to answer to every single question in the guide – you probably will have areas that are totally in line with the Lord and so there is nothing to confess.  You might go along through the guide with the Spirit remaining silent through most of the time of confession, then, perhaps you will find one big area that you have not given thought to.  The idea is simply open yourself up to the Lord to examine your heart to show you if there is anything in your life that is displeasing to Him. 

Remember that your relationship with Him is assured.  He will not hold your sin against you.  Spend some time meditating on the following word pictures of what God does with your sin:

Heb.10:17 (God promises to completely forget our sins)

Ps.103:12 (find a globe and trace your finger from the north pole to the south pole – there is a point where ‘north’ meets ‘south’; now place your finger on the equator and trace it eastwardly until hits ‘west’ – east and west never, ever meet!  He has placed your sins in a place that is as far as east is from west!)

Micah 7:18-19 (He throws our sins into the deepest part of the sea – there are places in the ocean, not to mention in Baikal, where no one has ever found the deepest point of it – God puts our sin in a place that cannot be found!)

Is.38:17 (He has put our sins behind His back…on a physical level, where is a place on your body that you cannot see without the aid of a mirror or other device?  It is your back – it’s as if He put our sins in a place that He cannot see)

Is.43:25 (God wipes out our sins – it’s like highlighting our sins on a computer screen and pushing the delete button with no ‘undo’ option – they’re gone, never to be retrieved again)

Is.44.22 (it’s as if He has made our sins like the morning mist which completely disappears into nothingness as soon as the sun appears)