A Model Prayer of Repentance – Ezra 9
‘I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. 7 From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today.
Ezra 9:6 New International Version – UK (NIVUK) Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, ‘I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.’
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
Psalm 32:5
Repent
Not such a P.C. word these days. Yet the first words of Jesus recorded in Mark’s Gospel are “Repent and believe the gospel” – Mark 1:15. It means turning around and going back.
Ezra gives us a model prayer for repentance.
The Problem
The people had intermixed and intermarried with the pagan nations around them. God wanted them as a light to the nations, amongst them but different, as oil droplets in water.
The Prayer
- Acknowledge the wrong doing
- Be thankful for God’s grace, greater than our sin
- Recognise God’s commands (why wrong doings are wrong)
- Resolve to obey
The Present
Daily we too need to be repenting, turning back to God. It is the daily life of the Christian, yet with joy at God’s amazing grace to forgive us through Jesus. Remember the runaway waster of a son in Luke 15:11… His father ran to embrace him!
