Six Prayers of Repentance

In chapter twenty-six of Soul Physicians, I outline a biblical theology of putting off the old manner of life (compare Ephesians 4:17-19). I embed within that theology a “Prayer of Repentance” related to each of six areas of our spiritual life:

• Our Relationship to God

• Our Relationship to Others

• Our Relationship to Ourselves

• Our Rational Beliefs/Mindsets

• Our Volitional Behaviors/Motivations

• Our Emotions

Today’s post shares these six prayers.

A Prayer of Relational Repentance: My Spiritual Relationship to God

“Father, I come home to You. I confess as sin my false lovers. I confess as sin living like the old person that I used to be. I confess as sin my spiritual adultery. I acknowledge to You and to myself that my false lovers are horrible lovers and that my pursuit of them is ugly and putrid. How foolish of me to ever believe that anyone but You could ever satisfy the longings of my soul. How shameful. How disrespectful. Forgive me my relational sin. I acknowledge that You alone are my Supreme Good. I acknowledge that You alone are gracious and compassionate. I return to You as my Forgiving Father. I return to Your Son as my Worthy Groom. I return to Your Holy Spirit as my Inspiring Mentor. I love You, Lord. Renew my vision of You as a totally competent and totally good God—boundless in holy love.”

A Prayer of Relational Repentance: My Social Relationships to Others

“Father, I confess as sin my living for self, loving self. I will put off shepherding myself and focus on shepherding others. I reject all the self sins: self-sufficiency, self-promotion, self-protection, selfishness, self-centeredness. I confess as sin my cruel, harsh, manipulative, demanding, shaming, blaming, maiming way of treating others. Most of all, I confess as sin how far I’ve moved from reflecting You and Your radically other-centered Trinitarian existence. I am putting off the flesh, the characteristic ways I used to relate and I’m putting on the Spirit, the new me created to relate like You.”

A Prayer of Relational Repentance: My Identity in Christ

“Father, I’ve been so like Adam and Eve. Running. Hiding. Defensive. Playing dress up. All because I don’t believe You are who You say You are—the Forgiving Father. What sin! I put off my shame identity. I reject my sense of abandonment, ruin, rejection, and condemnation. I put off my futile attempts to quiet my inner restlessness. Instead, I rest in You. I rest in who I am in Christ and to Christ. It’s ugly of me to try to beautify myself. It’s a slap in the face to Your Son, my Savior. Forgive me. Cleanse me. Enlighten me by Your Holy Spirit to grasp how much You love me and how loving You are.”

A Prayer of Rational Repentance: Putting Off My Old Beliefs and Mindsets

“Father, I’ve finally come to my senses. I confess as sin my foolish belief that I can make life work apart from You. I’ve arrogantly suppressed the truth of how perfectly well You care for me. I’ve denied Your fatherly love for me. I’ve sinned against You by believing Satan’s (the False Seducer) smaller story, fleshly mindset that You are not my Supreme Good. I’ve allowed my view of reality to become filled with contemptuous images of You. I’ve allowed my mind to be squeezed into the mold of this temporal world, living according to the dominant plot theme of the earthly story. I’ve been like a deaf man straining to hear the Gospel story. I’ve denied the Cross. I return to You now repenting of these idols of my heart. Though I am not worthy in myself to be called Your child, by faith I claim my adoption in Christ. Thank You for forgiving me.”

A Prayer of Volitional Repentance: Putting Off My Old Behaviors and Motivations 

“Father, I’ve sinned against You by walking in the way of the sinner, by following the self-centered pathway of _______. I must put off choosing compulsively and put on choosing courageously. I must put off the old enslaved pathways and put on my new free, empowering pathways. Help me to quit coddling, cuddling, pampering, and spoiling my flesh. Empower me to be ruthlessly fierce in rejecting it and nailing it to the Cross. Reveal my secret sins, show me the patterns that I’m blind to, help me to detect my fleshly pathways. I reject my fleshly inclinations, patterns, and character. I put on the new characteristic of _________. I reject my characteristic approach to life of _________ and by Christ’s resurrection power I replace it with my new manner of life.”

A Prayer of Emotional Repentance: Putting Off My Old Mood States

“Father, I’ve sinned against You by worshipping feelings instead of worshipping You. My current mood state of _______ exposes how desperately I’m trying to live without You. My failure to face my feelings expose my distrust in Your ability to care for me. My refusal to soothe my soul in You exposes my doubts about Your goodness. I put off my emotional duplicity replacing it, in the power of Your Spirit, with emotional integrity. I will face whatever I feel and bring it to You. I put off my emotional lasciviousness. I put off indulging my fleshly passions. I confess as sin my addiction to ___________. I recognize it for what it is: a symptom of the deeper disorder within me, a spiritual, relational, mental, willful disorder. Forgive me. Empower me to manage my moods for Your glory and the good of others.”

The Rest of the Story

The Bible never tells us to put off without also telling us how God empowers us to put on the new person we are in and through Christ. Tomorrow we share six prayers of renewal.

Join the Conversation

Which of the six prayers hits home the most for you today? How would you word your prayer in that area?

Returning Home to Father

Note: The following material is taken from Soul Physicians. Today you’re reading Part Four in a series on putting off the old me and putting on the new me in Christ. Read Part One, How to Break the Stranglehold of Strongholds. Read Part Two, Christian: Do You Know Who You Are? Read Part Three, Returning to My First Love.

“I Annul My Attachment to Alluring Lovers”

Divorcing the adulterous lovers of our soul is the principle we follow for putting off false lovers. What is the process? It involves annulling our attachment to our alluring lovers, or what the Puritans labeled “the mortification of our sinful affections.” The process includes:

• Relational Return: Returning Home to Father

• Relational Dissatisfaction: Acknowledging Our False Lovers’ Faults

• Relational Contentment: Reveling in Our True Lover’s Fullness

Relational Return

Repentance is not only a change of mind, but also a change of love and longing. Motivated by a vision of the majesty and beauty of God, I pine after a different relationship, life, and world. In repentance, I acknowledge that God is my first love. Thus repentance removes the barriers to seeing, experiencing, and enjoying the face of God.

The Scriptures consistently portray repentance as relational return. I put off my old adulterer’s clothes and return home. The Prodigal repented and returned home. Christ commands the lukewarm Laodiceans to repent and then invites them to open the door of their soul so they can return home to sup with him. When the floundering Ephesians left their first love, Jesus tells them to remember, repent, and return. Desperate, despairing, depressed David repents and then pleads that he could rest in the presence of his forgiving God. Repentance is relational return in which we first turn away from our false lovers and then return to our heart’s true home.

Hosea 14 provides a classic biblical picture of relational return. Building upon the imagery of Gomer’s unfaithfulness to Hosea as a symbol of Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness to Jehovah, Hosea concludes with the words, “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God. Your sins have been your downfall” (Hosea 14:1). Hosea uses this same word “return” sixteen times in fourteen chapters beginning with Hosea 2:7, “She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back (return) to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.” Mortification of false lovers calls for a return to God our true Husband.

Relational Dissatisfaction

Something else in Hosea 2:7 and 14:1 may not be quite so obvious. In both cases we find a recognition of our false lover’s inability to satisfy. Our sinful lovers are our “downfall”—a word suggesting weakness, lack of strength, inability, and insufficiency. Gomer says it even more clearly when she realizes that she was better off with her true husband than with her false lovers. Relational repentance is always relational return and relational dissatisfaction.

The Prodigal came to his senses realizing that even his father’s hired servants were better fed than he. Jehovah urged Israel to recognize the futility of her false lovers and to acknowledge that they could neither save her nor fulfill her (Jeremiah 2). Hosea counsels Israel along identical lines telling them to say to Jehovah, “Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war horses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods’ to what our hands have made” (Hosea 14:3).

Relational Contentment

We mortify our false lovers through relational repentance which includes relational return, relational dissatisfaction, and relational contentment in God our true Lover. Returning to Jehovah, Hosea offers us words to say to him, “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips . . . For in you the fatherless find compassion” (Hosea 14:2a, 3b, emphasis added). We return content and amazed by Father’s grace and compassion.

Hosea’s “process” counters Satan’s strategy. Satan belittles Christ and magnifies the other lovers. Relational repentance belittles the other lovers and magnifies Christ.

To uproot the flesh and fleshly affections, walk through the process of relational return. Mortify your false lovers through relational return in which you confess to God the sin of your false lovers, acknowledge to yourself and to God your relational dissatisfaction with your false lovers, and share with God how He alone is worthy.

A Prayer of Relational Repentance

“Father, I come home to You. I confess as sin my false lovers. I confess as sin living like the old person that I used to be. I confess as sin my spiritual adultery and whoredom. I acknowledge to You and to myself that my false lovers are horrible lovers and that my pursuit of them is ugly and putrid. How foolish of me to ever believe that anyone but You could ever satisfy the longings of my soul. How shameful. How disrespectful. Forgive me my relational sin. I acknowledge that You alone are my Supreme Good. I acknowledge that You alone are gracious and compassionate. I return to You as my Forgiving Father. Renew my vision of You as a totally competent and totally good God—boundless in holy love.”

Join the Conversation

To portray our sin against God, the Bible consistency uses the language of spiritual adultery. Why do we shy away from that imagery today?

Returning to My First Love

Note: The following material is taken from Soul Physicians. It is Part Three in a series on putting off the old me and putting on the new me in Christ. Read Part One, How to Break the Stranglehold of Strongholds. Read Part Two, Christian: Do You Know Who You Are?

Putting Off Our Old Impure Affections

Satan’s strategy is to belittle Christ’s glory and then to exalt himself, all in the sick hope of causing us to be unfaithful to Christ. He attempts to tempt us with foolish mindsets about God so he can allure us toward false lovers of the soul. Satan shrinks Christ so that we end up with a Lover so small that we fail to relentlessly worship and adore Him and we fail to see Christ as uniquely and supremely worthy.

“I Divorce the Adulterous False Lovers of My Soul”

Rationally, we must put off our old foolish mindsets by saying, “I repent of the insane idols of my heart.” Relationally, we must put off our old false lovers by saying, “I divorce the adulterous false lovers of my soul.” We no longer live like we used to because Christ has returned us to the purity of virgin brides who are motivated by gratitude to passionately love God.

Following Jesus always means not following fleshly affections, impulses, appetites, whims, and dreams. It always means pursuing Him with desperate desire, knowing that He alone quenches our soul’s deepest thirsts. Christ calls us to mortify, crucify, and put to death all fleshly longings.

Affections, longings, thirsts, delights, and desires are “where the action is.” Modern Christianity reduces life to the externals of behavior while the significance of motivating desire is insufficiently emphasized. Our old flesh was habituated not simply to do evil but also and more insidiously, to love evil. Our flesh is ingrained toward patterns of false lovers from its years of disconnection from God. In Christ we have put off these patterns and must daily rid ourselves of any remnants.

Our God-created, renewed appetites face the tension of battling fleshly, worldly, satanic desires. Temptation entices us, awakening the old dead lusts through the attraction, lure, bait, and pull of sin (James 1:13-15). Sin deceives us through its offer of pleasure, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Psalm 1 pictures us as living organisms searching for nourishment. Where do we drink? From the Spring of Living Water or from broken cisterns that hold no water?

False Lovers and Suffering

When faced with suffering, I’m tempted first to think, “Life is bad and so is God.” If I surrender to this fleshly mindset, then I’m easy game for the allure of false lovers who seem to promise protection, comfort, ease, or at least enough pleasure to cause me to temporarily forget my pain.

In divorcing the adulterous false lovers of my soul, I cry out to Father, “I’ve been a relational prodigal. I now reject my past pattern of fearful flight from Father and I put on faith in you as my Forgiving Father. I abolish my fear of cosmic condemnation, of personal and eternal rejection. I return to original trust. When life is bad, I cling to you as my Supreme Good. I say, ‘My flesh and my heart may fail, but God you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’”

When faced with suffering, I’m also tempted to think, “Christ is not worth the wait.” Then I’m easy prey for the roaring Lion who disguises himself as an angel of light promising to guide me in his everlasting way. In divorcing myself from Satan, I say to Christ, “I confess as sin my pursuit of false lovers of the soul and put on sole devotion to You. I put off my spiritual adultery. When life is bad, I remind myself, ‘Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You.’”

When faced with suffering, I’m sometimes tempted to think, “Depending on God is foolish, I had better take care of myself.” Having been strangled by this stronghold, I tumble down into the pit of worshipping false gods of my own invention. In divorcing myself from these false gods, I say to the Holy Spirit, “Dear Spirit, I exterminate my distorted desires. I put off my self-sufficient self-satisfaction. I confess as sin my denial of Christ-sufficiency. My broken cisterns are filthy and useless. I’ve sinned by forsaking my Spring of Living Water and I now acknowledge this for what it is—spiritual adultery.”

False Lovers and Besetting Sins

When faced with a besetting sin that yanks me here and there like a yo-yo and tosses me about like a rag doll in a Doberman’s mouth, I must mortify my fleshly desire. I confess that:

“I’ve allowed my religious affections to grow cold, my love to become lukewarm. I’ve buried the visio Dei—the beatific vision of God. I’ve rejected God as my highest joy, my greatest delight. I’ve replaced God my Hero with false heroes. I’ve replaced God my Lover with false lovers. I’ve not related to You as a good God with a supremely good heart. I have a fundamental worshipping nature, but I’ve not been putting off the fleshly tendency to worship anything or anyone but God. So right now I put off trust in non-God and put on trust in God. In Christ’s resurrection power I put off my false passions, my delighting in lesser gods, my sinfully misdirected longings, and my pursuit of God-designed desires in God-prohibited ways.”

The Rest of the Story

Relationally divorcing the adulterous lovers of our soul is the principle we follow for putting off false lovers. What is the process? Join us in Part 4 for the rest of the story.

Join the Conversation

1. Why has modern Christianity reduced life to external behaviors and reduced the significance of desires of the heart?

2. In what ways have we been habituated not simply to do evil, but to love evil?

How Do You Break the Stranglehold of Strongholds?

Note: The following material is taken from Soul Physicians.

Do you ever wonder why that same besetting sin repeatedly defeats you? Despite your continual decision to stop sinning in that same old way, do you find yourself returning again and again to the identical sin? Why can’t you find the victory promised in Christ?

The Apostle Paul answers your life questions in 2 Corinthians 10:3-7 as he explains that strongholds are fleshly mindsets burned into our minds through the world, the flesh, and the Devil. They are destructive patterns of thinking and habitual false ways of looking at life without spiritual eyes. Over time they become embedded in our minds like a mental fortress suppressing the truth and habituating our wills to evil.

My mental stronghold sin takes a unique shape because I manufacture or carve my idol in my image—according to my non-God story of my life, according to my personally chosen perception of reality. Each particular act of sin is a branch off the tree from which I carve my idol. The root of the tree is my sinful imagination. The fruit of the tree is what I choose to nourish myself with—God or non-god. In the strongholds of my mind I form and shape the very idol of self that I worship instead of God (Isaiah 44:14-17).

Practical Life Questions

Personal sanctification and biblical counseling require us to identify and expose person-specific strongholds. They force us to ask and answer questions like:

 “What is my image of God?”

 “What is my pattern of dethroning God?”

 “How do I typically try to make life work apart from God?”

 “What does my style of relating say about my underlying beliefs about life?”

Since strongholds involve longstanding patterns of thinking, we also need to probe questions such as:

 “Where was I recruited into this false belief about God?”

 “When did I begin to surrender to this lie?”

 “What sinful pleasure have I taken in this lie?”

Repenting of Sinful Strongholds

Repentance literally means a change of mind. I change my mindset from a fleshly one to a spiritual one. I change my mind from a stronghold ingrained in the flesh through the enticement of the world and the allurement of the Devil, to a mindset in which I take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.

Dallas Willard explains the prominence of repentance. “The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon” (Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 95). Repentance is the choice to reject the mental set of our old mind, replacing it with a mental focus in harmony with our new mind.

Repentance and mortification walk hand-in-hand. Repentance is the daily putting off and breaking up of the whole complex of conformity to the world, the flesh, and the Devil. In mortification through repentance, I’m involved in the life-long process of detecting my characteristic fleshly mindsets and turning from them.

Loading the Conscience with Guilt

To repent of a mindset, I must first recognize its insanity, see its vileness, and sense its ugliness. The Puritans labeled this process, “loading the conscience with guilt.” John Owen, in his classic work The Mortification of Sin, describes the process. “Get a clear and abiding sense upon thy mind and conscience, first, of the guilt, secondly, of the danger, thirdly, of the evil, of that sin wherewith thou art perplexed” (Owen, The Mortification of Sin, p. 107). Owen pictures a Christian struggling to defeat a besetting sin. Victory is stalled. The believer is perplexed, feels trapped, senses defeat. How can this Christian uproot sin? What will motivate this believer to hate sin with a holy hatred? Owen suggests the following principles of loading the conscience with guilt.

 Consider the danger of this particular sin. See the danger of being hardened by its deceitfulness (Hebrews 3:12-13) (p. 110). See the danger of God’s discipline (p. 111). See the danger of loss of peace and strength (p. 112).

 Consider the evil of it. It grieves the Holy Spirit (p. 115). The Lord Jesus is wounded afresh by it (p. 117). It will take away your usefulness in this generation (p. 117).

 Charge your conscience with the guilt of law breaking. Consider the holiness, spirituality, severity, inwardness, and absoluteness of God’s holiness (pp. 119-120).

 Bring your sin to the gospel not for relief but for further conviction—look on him you have pierced and be in bitterness (p. 121). “Say to thy soul, ‘What have I done? What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace, have I despised and trampled on! Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for his grace?’” (pp. 121-122). “Have I defiled the heart that Christ died to wash, which the blessed Spirit hath chosen to dwell in?” (p. 122). “What can I say to the dear Lord Jesus? How shall I hold my head with any boldness before him? Do I account communion with him of so little value, that for this vile lust’s sake I have scarce left him any room in my heart?” (p. 122).

 Consider the infinite patience and forbearance of God toward you in particulars (specifics) (p. 123). Remind yourself of his gracious withholding of judgment (p. 123).

 Pray for and pursue a constant longing for deliverance (p. 124).

 Ponder what occasions led to your giving in, and guard against them (p. 128).

 Reflect on the excellencies and majesty of God and how far short you are of him in holiness (p. 131).

 When your heart is disquieted by sin, speak no peace to it until God speaks it. Do not grant grace before you have a distaste for your sin (p. 145).

 Place faith in Christ for the killing of your sin (p. 161).

Expose Sin’s Ugliness

These practices seem foreign to us today because we have lost the spiritual awareness that Owen had. He knew that the defiled imagination glazed, adorned, and dressed the objects of the flesh—making them look beautiful, causing them to seem preferable to God and God’s way. He understood that the fleshly imagination darkened the soul like a thick cloud intercepting the beams of God’s love and favor (Owen, The Mortification of Sin, p. 53).

Since sin prettifies sin, we must putrefy sin; we must expose sin’s horrible ugliness. We must realize that every act of sin reveals a mindset surrendered and agreeable to sinfulness. We need to allow sinful actions to expose sinful imaginations and affections, and then perceive and acknowledge how horribly corrupt it is for a saint to live like a sinner, for a child of God to live like a prodigal (Owen, The Mortification of Sin, p. 95).

Magnify Christ’s Graciousness

To break the stranglehold of strongholds, I must expose my unique strongholds, repent of my sinful mindsets, load my conscience with guilt, and enlighten my mind to Christ’s grace and truth. As important as it is to load the conscience with guilt, unless we lighten the conscience with grace, we would be terrified to ever come before our holy God. Yet we can and should come boldly into his presence having had our conscience cleansed by Christ (Hebrews 10:19-23). Even as I load my conscience with guilt, I do so surrounded by the awareness that God is gracious even when I am sinful. I face the horror of my sin in light of the wonders of Christ’s grace.

A Prayer of Rational Repentance

“Father, I’ve finally come to my senses. I confess as sin my foolish belief that I can make life work apart from You. I’ve arrogantly suppressed the truth of how perfectly well You care for me. I’ve denied Your fatherly love for me. I’ve sinned against You by believing Satan’s smaller story, fleshly mindset that You are not my Supreme Good. I’ve allowed my view of reality to become filled with contemptuous images of You. I’ve allowed my mind to be squeezed into the mold of this temporal world, living according to the dominant plot theme of the earthly story. I’ve been like a deaf man straining to hear the Gospel story. I’ve denied the Cross. I return to You now repenting of these idols of my heart. Though I am not worthy in myself to be called Your child, by faith I claim my adoption in Christ. Thank You for forgiving me and accepting me in Christ.”