Confession of Our Sins

 God commands us to confess our sins before He will forgive us. This is true when we trust Christ as our Lord and Savior. We must admit that we have sinned, and we must repent of those sins by changing our behavior. It is also true after we have trusted Christ. Our sins must be confessed because they harm our relationship with God.

Nehemiah showed us the importance of confession of sin when he heard about the condition of the exiles who had returned to Jerusalem. (Nehemiah 1:6) He asked God to listen to his prayer, and then he pointed out that he had been praying night and day for God's people, Israel. He confessed that they had sinned, even his own family and he had sinned. He did what we should do.

Confession of sin is when we not only feel sorry for our sins, but we take time to pour out our hearts to the Lord because we see the seriousness of our sins. When we see God's punishment, and we know it is because of our sins, then we confess those sins of others and for ourselves. This allows God to see our repentant heart.

 Also, we need to be specific as we confess. (I John 1:9) We must not just confess sin in general, but confess specific sins, like we read in Ezra. Each specific sins gets between us and God, so we need each one to be washed away and our fellowship restored. We are still His child without confessing if we have trusted Christ, but He can't bless us with unconfessed sin in our life.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Nehemiah 2-4.