I wrote listening, I wrote listening down.
Someone told me I was asking,
sometimes you get good sermon content by asking questions.
I asked this question to somebody who's in the office
and he said, you know, humor goes a long way.
And it does, not making fun of the person.
Laughing with them, not at them, that can be good, right?
So that's good.
If you have a long-term relationship with somebody,
do you have a chance that they're going to offend you
or you're going to offend them?
Yeah.
And whenever that happens, what kind of communication is needed?
Forgiveness, does anybody agree with that?
What about if you have a situation where you catch somebody
saying something about you or doing something wrong
to you or whatever, and you catch them doing it,
or if that's one scenario, the other scenario is they do it
but then they feel bad about it and they come tell you.
They say, listen, I did this and it was wrong
and I want you to sorry, which one do you trust more?
The one you catch or the one that tells you?
The one that tells you, right?
It still may not be good, but it's definitely better
if they come and they fess up.
You ever have kids that come and tell you they did wrong?
Did that make you feel a little bit better about the kid?
There's a little bit more trustworthiness that happens
when the kid fesses up or owns up to what they did.
That was wrong.
I think a part of a good relationship long-term
is if there is confession, there is repentance
and there is forgiveness in that relationship.
Well, if that's true in human relationships, it's also true
in our relationship with God.
God didn't have anything to confess to us
because he's perfect, he's sinless, he didn't do anything wrong.
But if you're gonna have a good relationship
with God long-term, what are the different aspects
that we have, for instance, in our prayer life?
When we have a good relationship with God,
there should be an honor and a respect and with God,
it goes even beyond that to worship, right?
To rightly understand who God is,
we begin to understand that my role as a worshiper
and his role is to be the one that's worshiped
and to honor him and to know him for who he is.
So part of our prayer life ought to be worship.
Thanksgiving ought to be part of my prayer life
and communication with him.
Do you agree with that?
Because every good gift and every perfect gift
comes from above from the Father of Light,
and in him is no variableness,
neither shadow or turning, James says.
So part of my relationship with God
should include part of my communication with God
ought to be Thanksgiving.
I know that everything that I need,
God is the one who supplies it.
So one of the verses I've been quoted to a friend
lately a lot is, be anxious for nothing,
but in everything through prayer and supplication
with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding
will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
So there's a sense in which that we gotta ask God for things
and he supplies those things and he's like a Father
who likes to give us things when we ask him, right?
But there's also one more kind of communication
that we're gonna have with God.
If we're gonna have a good relationship with God,
the name of this series is staying true
in a world far from God.
If we're gonna stay true to God in a world far from God,
there's times where we're gonna realize we wander,
we do wrong.
And to have a good relationship with God,
there ought to be confession.
Now some may say, well Pastor Ben,
when I got saved, Jesus already forgave me of all I sin.
And I want you to know he did.
How many of your sins had you committed
when Jesus died on the cross, right?
We all sinned and at him,
that's part of that federal headship,
that's part of that imputed sin that we have, original sin.
But in terms of actually in time doing wrong,
I hadn't done anything wrong because I hadn't been alive yet.
And Jesus, when he died on the cross,
he died for sins that I would commit.
They're past, now and present and future to me now.
But when he died for all of them.
So when we're confessing, you say,
well, what do you mean I gotta confess my sin?
Well, it's not about staying one of his kids,
it's about having a good relationship with them.
It's about agreeing, what is repentance?
Repentance is agreeing with God about my sin.
I see my sin the way God sees it.
That's what repentance means.
My mind is changed and my heart is changed
and my approach and my perspective on my sin
is the same as what God has.
And if that's the case, I'm not trying to confess my sin
so that I can stay a child of God,
I'm already a child of God.
I'm confessing my sin because I wanna maintain
my relationship with God.
And if I'm gonna have a good relationship with God,
here's the thing I know about you.
You sinned today, so did I.
If you don't think you you sinned today,
you need to read 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, right?
Because he says, if you think you have no sin,
the truth isn't in you, right?
We sin, we're good at it, right?
And the closer we get to the Lord the more
we'll recognize our sin.
We can sin less, but until we get to see Jesus,
we'll never be sinless, right?
And so it's right for us to have,
if we're gonna have a good relationship with God,
it's good for us to confess our sin.
It's good for us, this is what's so good about prayer,
it's a way of aligning ourselves with God.
If you pray every day, it could be like
a little flag, a discipline to say,
hey, have I done anything?
Oh man, I did do that, didn't I?
God, I'm sorry, help me with that.
Forgive me for that.
That can be a part of what we do.
We're in a series called, Staying True
and a World Far From God.
And we were talked about different things
that'll help us to stay true in a world far from God.
And we've talked about prayer,
we've talked about a lot of different things.
Tonight we're gonna talk about confession.
And we're gonna do that by studying Daniel chapter number nine.
Daniel chapter number nine is,
in Daniel's life,
this is during King Darius's reign.
You can see that, where's my Bible?
Oh, here it is.
Bibles are good when you preach, amen.
Daniel chapter nine.
You guys are fun to preach too.
Thanks for being here.
Daniel chapter nine,
verse one and two says,
in the first year of Darius, the son of Jesus,
of the seed, it means,
can I tell you that the key to pronouncing names in the Bible
is to pronounce them however you pronounce them
and just keep going?
And people think, oh, that's how you say it.
I don't know how to.
That was for free.
Okay.
Of the seed of the meeds, which was made king
over the realm of the Chaldeans in the first year of his reign,
I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years,
whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet
that he would accomplish 70 years
in the desolations of Jerusalem.
That gives you right?
There's the context of what's going on.
Daniel, we know Daniel was a bright guy.
He was a man of books.
Anybody here like to read?
I love to read.
Yeah, it's awesome.
I love audio books, podcasts, YouTube, Kindle books, audio.
I love just all that stuff.
It's a good thing too,
because it's kind of what I have to do.
And Daniel was that way.
And Daniel, he's reading and he comes across,
Jeremiah is writing.
And in Jeremiah's writing, Jeremiah prophesied
that Jerusalem was going to get taken over
and that they were going to be taken out.
And that the time of frame from when he's taken out of Jerusalem
to when it's going to be over is how many years?
70 years.
Now, was Daniel a young man when that happened?
He experienced what I mean by this is,
and early if you go back to chapter number one,
when Jerusalem was sacked and they took him out,
Daniel was young.
And so he's reading the Bible
and he's getting to a place in the Bible where he goes,
oh, this is going to be 70 years?
Right?
This is going to be, we're not going,
and he's probably adding up how old he was
and how many 70 years, like, man,
if I'm even alive to be able to go back,
then I'm going to be an old man.
And you can just tell it's pretty difficult.
And so he's reading and he's figuring out
that the length of the desolation of Jerusalem
and the Jewry exile would be 70 years.
And you can read, if you want to write,
if you're writing on your paper, you want to write to the side,
you want to go back and read about that,
he would have been reading probably 70 years ago.
He's reading probably in Jeremiah 25, 11 and 12
or maybe in Jeremiah 29, 10 to 14.
And so since Babylon fell in 539 BC
and since Daniel had been taken captive in 605 BC,
and remember when you're talking about BC,
it's counting down to zero, right?
That's not how they told time, that's how we tell time.
Talking about what happened at year zero
and Odomini in the year of our Lord, right?
So this is, and there's some changes in dating and all that.
But the point is, it fell in 539,
he was taken captive in 605,
and so he calculated that 70 years was almost over.
So thus Daniel sought the Lord for the restoration
of Jerusalem and the return of God's people
to their land.
Daniel's responding to the sin of the nation
and he's doing it here with confession.
He's doing it with fasting and with prayer.
And so Daniel's prayer teaches us something
about what true repentance looks like.
Here's my big idea, here's my objective statement.
The objective I want to give to you tonight is this.
Since confession and repentance keep us close to the Lord,
we should do these actions modeled in the prayer of Daniel,
found here in Daniel chapter nine, verses three,
and we're gonna go all the way to 19.
Here's the first action that we need to take
and it says here, it's to practice confession to the Lord,
practice confession to the Lord.
Here's what it says.
And by the way, our internet went out today
and Jeff Wagner has been here since like three working on it.
And he's worked all the way up to about now.
And so my wife prepared this really nice PowerPoint for me.
She's so nice, but the internet wouldn't let us get it.
So we've had one made, which I'm really excited about.
So that's pretty cool.
So let's thank the sound people back here
for making our good job, everybody.
Okay, so that's cool.
So I'm really thankful for that.
Verse three, and I set my face, it says,
under the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications
with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
And I prayed unto the Lord my God
and made my confession and said,
oh Lord, the great and dreadful God,
keeping thy covenant and mercy to them that love him
and to them that keep his commandments.
Now, before I keep moving, before I read the next few words,
somebody sum up what he just said.
What does he call his prayer in verse four?
A confession, you see that?
He's, I'm praying and I made my confession.
Confession, in a prayer you can have,
we talked about worship, we talked about confession,
we talked about thanksgiving, we talked about requests.
Can you have a prayer that's just requests?
Can you make a prayer that's just asking for things?
That's kind of like my flera prayer today, right?
God, could you just help me out?
Could you have a prayer that's just thanksgiving?
You have a prayer that's just worship, right?
This is a prayer, he's saying this is just a confessional prayer.
I'm just confessing.
That's why the theme of this sermon is about confession.
He says, I made my confession and said,
oh Lord, the great and dreadful God,
keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him
and to them that keep his commandments.
What does he sum up what he just said?
What does that mean?
I'll call you out.
What do you think, Jimmy?
This is verse four.
Oh Lord, the great and dreadful God,
keeping the covenant and mercy to them
and to them that keep his commandments.
To them that love him and keep his man.
I mean, Jimmy doesn't have to do it, I put pressure on him.
Yeah, who agrees, this is talking about promise keeping God?
I don't know, I don't know.
Who agrees, this is talking about promise keeping God?
Covenant, what's a covenant?
It's a promise that he's made.
What are some of the promises
that Daniel would have known that God made?
What does the Abrahamic covenant include?
Land?
Well, they had had it.
They were in a land that they just got exiled out of
and that's kind of my point.
They haven't had all of it yet.
Yeah, that's right.
So in the Abrahamic covenant, he promised a land.
What else did he promise?
A lineage.
And he promised that he would be their Lord.
So there's your three, right?
So that in him, I'm gonna bless them that bless you
and curse them that curse you.
I'll make your name great and in thee shall the nations
of the earth be blessed.
So that's one of those,
that's one of those covenants that have been made.
Anybody think of any other covenants
that Daniel would have known about?
The Davidic covenant, what was the Davidic covenant?
The David would always have a king,
there would be a king on David's throne.
Does, what is he trying to,
what was he reading in Jeremiah?
What was Daniel reading about in Jeremiah?
The Dejah Shruginah Jerusalem
and then being taken out of Jerusalem.
So when he starts praying to God, a confession back to God,
what's one of the first thing he brings up?
Oh, Lord, the great and dreadful God keeping the covenant.
You think he's bringing this up?
And mercy to them that love him
and to them that keep his commandments.
So he, is he, he's bringing up covenant for a reason.
That's all I'm trying to say.
Okay, then what does he say?
Verse five, we have sinned.
And I've committed iniquity and I've done wickedly
and I've rebelled even by departing from thy precepts
and from thy judgments.
Neither have we harkened and devised servants the prophets
which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes,
our fathers and to all the people of the land.
What's the nature of Daniel's confession?
In this particular passage, it's a national confession.
Daniel had actually been a pretty upright guy.
We learned last week that how,
the only way they could convict him,
but the gentry taught us was that they convicted him
for being someone who prayed, right?
We learned a few weeks ago that Daniel purposed in his heart
not to be defiled by the king's meat.
You guys remember that.
So Daniel's a pretty upright guy,
but he's reading Jeremiah and he's realizing we've messed up.
We've messed up.
We went against God's revelation.
We've gone against God's commandments.
We've gone against God's judgments.
And part of that is that we didn't believe in follow
and obey the people God sent, right?
That's what verse six,
neither have we harkened unto thy servants the prophets
which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes,
our fathers to all the people of the land.
Do you have a thought?
Go for it.
Jerusalem?
Yeah.
Culturally, probably that's true.
Right.
And I think it's pretty fresh.
Right.
I'm not saying, and I agree with you
in what you're trying to kind of push back a little bit.
And I agree.
I don't think Daniel's perfect.
And I'm sure he found in this where he's been a part of that.
And if there's anybody that understands I think this kind
of idea, it probably is us as Americans.
That when I look at our nation and some of the things
that are going on, and I certainly don't agree
with everything that's happening in our nation.
Does anybody, I think that's one thing we can all agree on
is that we don't agree on everything.
And I don't agree with everything.
But I also am a product of this culture, right?
I also probably, if there were people outside of this culture
to come examine my life or your life being Americans,
they might think, man, those are some pretty spoiled people.
We get a lot of, you know, maybe they haven't,
they're not praying like they should.
They're not doing what they should.
And that's where I think that's where Daniel is right here.
And that's what I want to talk about, okay?
How do I know, have you ever been stabbed in the back?
That ever happened to you?
Where somebody hurts you, they were disloyal?
What's happened to me?
There's probably been a time where I've done it
to somebody that's been a part of me.
There's probably been a time where I've done it to somebody else.
How do you know that they're really, truly repentant?
How do you know that they're a confession?
Because you ever have this with your kids?
Are you crying because you got caught?
Are you crying because you're repentant?
Because you realize that your sin was wrong in your,
are you with me?
Are you with me?
How do you know that someone is truly repentant?
Well, the truth of it is,
in the moment you don't know totally,
one of the ways you can tell that repentant is true,
is a long obedience in the right direction afterwards.
I was going this way, I was thinking this way,
and now I'm going this way, and I'm thinking this way.
But one of the things you know,
this is probably the best way to say this.
One way you know they're not repentant,
not truly repentant, or not as repentant as they ought to be,
is if they make a whole bunch of excuses
as to why they did what they did.
Yeah, I did wrong, but you,
yeah, I shouldn't have done this thing,
but I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't of,
are you with me?
I don't see any of that in Daniel's confession.
He's just saying, we messed up.
We're wrong.
He doesn't say, my people, the people, yeah, God, these Jews.
Right, he says we, right?
And so there's an extoling of God,
there's an understanding of who God is,
and then there's an enumeration,
a discussion of the sins.
We must own our sins and the sins of the people
that we lead even at times.
The Bible teaches us that when we conceal our sins,
we will not prosper, but when we confess and renounce our sins,
we find mercy from the Lord.
Proverbs 28, 13 says this,
he that covers his sins shall not prosper.
Think about that.
He that covers his sins shall not prosper.
Proverbs are probabilities, not promises.
What he's saying is, if you have a habit and a lifestyle
that you're always constantly covering your sin,
that's not a road to prosperity.
Why?
Because you gotta have a good memory
if you keep concealing everything.
You gotta remember who you told what when.
If you just remember what happened and say that,
that's a good thing.
Whoso confesseth and forsakeeth his sins, them,
shall have mercy.
Who are you more likely to forgive,
the person you catch or the person who confesses?
That's what it's trying to say.
So if we wanna have a close relationship with the Lord
and if we wanna do the right thing,
and here's the thing about God,
does God know what we've done?
He knows everything we did.
He knows why we did it, right?
He knows the wins, the where's, the how's.
He understands it all.
It doesn't do you any good to cover it up.
Pastor Ben, it doesn't do me good to cover it up.
It's time for us to practice confession to God.
Since confession, repentance keep us close to the Lord,
we should do these three actions,
model in the prayer of David.
Number one, practice confession.
And it's probably not something that you just do once.
How often do you sin?
That's how often you ought to confess.
And the good news is God forgives us for things
that we don't even remember what we did.
Praise the Lord for that.
Here's the number two, and these are all kinda related.
I'm just trying to put labels on what he's trying to say
to kinda give us a summary.
Number two, pursue closeness with the Lord.
Pursue closeness with the Lord.
Look at verse seven.
Oh, Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee,
but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day,
to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
and to all Israel that are near and that are far off.
Though all the countries, whether that has driven them
because of their trespass,
that they have trespassed against thee.
Oh, Lord, to us belongeth confusion of faith,
to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers,
because we have sinned against thee.
To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness,
though we have rebelled against him.
Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God
to walk in his laws, which he set before us
by his servants, the prophets.
This is a lot of the same kinda thing,
but there's this definite kind of allusion to the fact that
they're not close to the Lord because of their decisions,
they're not right with the Lord.
They're even from a...
He's using the language of how far they are from the land
as also how far they are from God.
You see that kind of in the narration there.
He says, we're not close to the Lord,
even the ones in Jerusalem and the ones that are far off,
we're just not close to the Lord.
Oh, Lord, to us belongeth confusion of faith,
to you belong mercies and forgiveness.
When Daniel says to the Lord that righteousness
belongeth unto thee, or compassion and forgiveness,
we want to the Lord our God,
he was seeking the righteous compassion
and forgiveness of the Lord.
These are the means to close us with him.
Granted, we can never lose our relationship with the Lord,
but sin destroys our fellowship with the Lord.
Our recognition of our infractions towards God
is the first step to be restored to intimacy with God.
The classic verse on that is 1 John 1-9.
If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and to lead us to all,
and to cleanse us from all righteousness.
Increase and guard your closest with the Lord
by confessing your sin and asking for his righteousness,
compassion and forgiveness.
This is a preview for a couple of weeks from now,
but this is what I was journaling in my devotional time
this morning.
Go to Hebrews chapter 12 real quick.
Hebrews chapter 12.
And look at verse 7.
If he endure chastening it says,
God deal with you as sons for what son is he whom
the Father chastened it not.
You know what I'm saying?
Good fathers discipline their kids.
Good dads discipline their kids.
If you don't ever discipline your kids, you're not a good dad.
That's what good dads do.
That's what bad dads do.
More on that here in a second.
But if you be without chastisement,
where of all of partakers, then are you bastards and not sons?
He's saying you're illegitimate.
If you don't experience chastisement.
Verse 9, here it is.
Here's what I want to point to.
Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh
which corrected us.
Who are the fathers of our flesh?
Our dads.
And our dads have corrected us.
Anybody have a dad that ever corrected you?
Yeah.
Told us good things to do, bad things that corrected us.
And when they did that, what does it say?
Verse 9, we and we gave them reverence.
So what are you saying?
This is a basic thing to understand.
If you ever feel like there's something in my hair?
Do I have like a spider on my hair?
Is it the cord?
I think I'm going crazy.
Okay.
A common response.
It'll come one day guys, if you have young kids,
it's gonna be eventually.
Lord help us.
When you correct your kids and you correct your kids
and you do it in love, eventually your kids
are gonna realize, oh, that was good.
I'm glad that helped me, right?
And you're gonna get reverence or respect from your kids.
I'll even say this, the dad who corrects his kids,
at least gets reverence by like,
eventually they go stop and the kid will stop
because he's been disciplined enough to know
that when dad says stop, I better stop
because discipline's coming.
You guys with me?
So when we receive discipline from our earthly fathers,
we gave them reverence, he says this.
Shall we not much rather be in subjection
under the father of spirits and live?
If you were obedient to your earthly father
and that brought about reverence and helped you,
don't you think you ought to listen to your heavenly father?
And that you'll live when you do that?
He goes on.
Verse 10, for they verily for a few days chastened us
after their own pleasure, what does that mean?
I'm looking around the room and I'm guessing
that not everybody here was chastened
by their earthly father today.
Anybody in here got a spanking lately from their dad?
Right, no, because it was for a few days.
I was in my parents' home from zero to 18, right?
And my dad's no longer disciplining me, right?
So he's saying, for they verily for a few days chastened us
and it says after their own pleasure, you know what that means?
That means they did it according to their own discernment
for their own reasons, their own purposes.
Not every dad was always exactly right in their discipline.
Sometimes they tell you to stop doing something
because it's wrong and they need to help their character.
Sometimes they're telling you to stop doing it
because it's annoying and I want you to stop, right?
Do you get it?
Right?
Be quiet, I'm trying to hear the game, right?
That's what he's saying.
They did it for just a short time for their own pleasure,
but he, who's he?
The father of spirits, heavenly father,
for our prophet that we might be partakers of his holiness.
His holiness, do you get it?
When God chastens us as our heavenly father,
he's doing it because he wants to make us into,
he's not doing it for his own pleasure,
I mean, it is for his own pleasure and that's what he,
it's all in a righteous way, but he wants to make us
into something that we ought to be and do things for holiness.
So what he's saying is, don't hate chastening.
That's what he says in verse 11.
Now no chastening for the present,
it seemed it to be joyous but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth
the peaceable fruit of righteousness
unto them which are exercised thereby.
Now I'm getting into my sermon a couple of weeks from now,
but what he's saying is that when you,
here's what kids don't understand.
When I'm telling you to get a bed on time
and not to eat only sugar for your meal every day
and to do your homework,
it's not because I'm trying to make you suffer.
I'm trying to teach you how to be disciplined
because all of those disciplines,
if you get them into your life, when I'm not around
and you're going to bed on time
and you're eating a well-balanced meal
and you're not stupid because you've done your studies
and you can actually have a job that produce,
it's good for you.
It produces the peaceable fruit of righteousness, right?
It's good, it's a good thing.
You guys aren't, it's good, right?
You're like, I feel bad because I stay up late
and I'm eating a little dubby too much, right?
Like that's what you're thinking.
And if you're doing that confess, right?
Okay, anyway, so there's this idea that like,
what happens when you realize
that God's trying to help chasing me
because he loves me
and he's trying to produce a peaceable fruit of righteousness,
then there can be an intimacy with God
because I'm realizing he's doing this
because he loves me and he cares for me.
And so I saw this meme the other day.
There's like two kinds of kids' relationships with dads.
One is I messed up, I gotta avoid dad.
I messed up, I can't let dad know,
I hope my dad doesn't find out.
Then there's the kid, I messed up,
I gotta go talk to dad, right?
Two different ways of thinking.
We have a heavenly father who already knows.
And confession is not something that's,
it's not fun, but what confession does is it gets,
it cuts the time that I'm not right with God down
and now I can pursue my relationship with God,
pursue closeness with God again.
Does that make sense?
That's what God wants.
Here's the last three.
So how does that happen?
Here's number three, pray confidently in the Lord.
Pray confidently in the Lord.
Verse 17, here's what he does.
Verse 17, now therefore, oh God,
hear the prayer of thy servant and his supplications
and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary
that is desolate for the Lord's sake.
Oh my God, incline thine ear and hear open thine eyes
and behold our desolations in the city
which is called by thy name,
for we do not present our supplications
before thee for our righteousness,
before thy great mercies.
What are you saying?
I'm asking you to restore us not because we're so good,
but because you're so merciful.
That's what he's saying.
Oh Lord, hear, oh Lord forgive,
hearken and do, defer not for thy own sake.
Oh my God, for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.
Jimmy just told me just a few minutes ago,
he said, get my dad, he used to tell me all the time,
remember your last name.
Your last name is tied to my last name, right?
And what Daniel's saying is, I'm a Jew.
The covenants you've made, the things you've said you would do,
God do those, I'm confessing,
I want to be restored to you, I want to be right with you,
and I'm praying according to your name.
Daniel sought the Lord based on his character,
God's character, God's compassion and God's covenant,
all three of those you'll find.
You can go through those last few verses
and find where he's appealing to God's character,
God's compassion and God's covenant.
When we pray, we ought to have confidence in God's character.
God, you are a merciful God, you are a righteous God.
When we pray, we ought to come to him
on the basis of his compassion.
God, you said you would be merciful,
you're a merciful God, you're a forgiving God,
and I am appealing to your mercy and your forgiveness.
And we got to go on this covenant.
God, you made these promises
and I'm going to trust in your promises.
If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just
to forgive us our sins, right?
For whose service shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved, this is what God's promised.
So when we pray, we ought to come on the basis of that
covenant.
Daniel took refuge in the covenant the Lord made
with Abraham, he took refuge, we take refuge now
in the new covenant that God made in Jesus.
God loved us so much that he made a promise to us.
He sent his son who died on the cross for our sins.
And when we put our faith and trust in him,
he saves us.
It's the only shot we have at heaven.
It's the only way we're going to get to eternity.
And so if God already gave his son for you to die for you
so that you become a part of his family,
and he already sent his son to die for you
and rise from the dead to get you to heaven.
And if Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us
to come again and receive us to himself,
that where he is, we would be also, if that's all true,
stop hiding when you did something wrong.
When, stop having distance between you and the Lord
when you've done something wrong.
He's already forgiven it.
Just agree with him about what it is
and pursue him in prayer and say, God, I've messed up,
but I know you're a forgiving God.
You're a loving God.
Help me to learn how to obey you,
to learn how to trust you, to pursue God in prayer
through confession.
You engage in authentic Christian living
when you practice confession to the Lord,
when you pursue closeness with the Lord,
and when you pray confidently in the Lord.
Isn't that good?
I love this prayer from Daniel,
and we can only say true in a world far from God
where by realizing that when we are distant
from God in our relationship, we pause and stop,
and we ask God to forgive us based on the fact
that we confess what we've done to him.
Here's all that you do.
It's 749 till 751, 752.