Day 7: Fessing Up!

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, …’” (Matthew 6:9-13, NIV)

Chapter 6 of Too Busy Not to Pray is entitled: A Pattern for Prayer. In this chapter, Bill Hybels teaches us a simple format to help us begin having a prayer time with God. He uses the acronym “A.C.T.S.” to describe each step we should take in order to have “balance” in our prayer lives. And though he refers to confession as the time in prayer that we admit and confess our sins to God, I have an additional thought.

Now notice: I used the word “additional” as opposed to the word “another”. I believe that we should confess our sins. However, I believe that we do not take enough time during our prayer time to confess something else. We need to confess God’s Word. The word “confess” in the Greek means “to assent”. The etymology of the word “assent” means “to agree with”. Confess is actually a compound word which means “to be together with the word.”

When we pray to God, yes, we should agree with Him when He exposes the sin and failures in our lives. However, we need to also confess God’s Word back to Him. For example, we need to confess and agree with God in prayer before our day even begins that “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). We constantly ask people to “agree” with us in prayer. Maybe it’s time that we learned to agree with God in prayer. Confessing His Word brings us into that place of agreement. So fess up!