The Power of A Prayer of Confession

On this, so if I had to put a title on this, it will be the power of prayer, a prayer confession, um, creating me a clean heart.

We come to this 21 days of old uh church prayer call, and it's such an honor and privilege.

And and once again, thank you guys for letting me share your word, and then also we're gonna be praying for our government.

So we're going out of Psalms 51, uh verses 10 through 19.

And so just a little background on this.

Um, here we have King David, you know, he's crying out to the Lord, such a powerful confession of repentance.

He's humble, you know.

King David, we remember him as this man after God's own heart, a powerful leader, right?

We can say he's somewhat of a government official because for the tribe of Israel, right?

He was the king of, you know, of course, Jesus was a king of kings, but he was just a great king, right?

Chosen by God.

This man was such uh uh ordained man for his time, and this is what the Bible tells us.

And I'm not saying not like the government officials here, not ordained by God, but the Bible tells us that David is all this, right?

And so before we get to Psalms 51, let's just get a background, a back picture of this, um, what uh David is crying out for.

Why is David's heart so so just so repentant, right?

And so we find this in 2 Samuel 12, verses 1 through 7.

2 Samuel 12:1–7

And it says, let's read it.

So the Lord sent Nathan, the prophet, to tell David this story.

There were two men in a certain town, one was rich and one was poor.

The rich man owned a great many sheep, and the cattle, and the poor man owned nothing but one little lamb he brought.

He raised that little lamb and it grew it up with his children.

It ate from the man's own plate, he cuddled it right in his arms like a baby daughter.

One day a guest arrived at the home of the rich man, but instead of killing an animal from his own flock, right, of her or herd, he took the poor man's lamb and killed it and prepared it for his guests.

And David was furious as surely as the Lord lives, who he vowed, any man who would do such a thing deserves to die.

He must repay four lambs to that poor uh man uh for the one he stole and for for not having no pity, right?

And then Nathan said to David, You are that man, the Lord the God of Israel's I anointed you king of Israel and saved you from the power of Saul.

You know, I can't even imagine David at that moment, right?

His heart dropped like dang, oh my God, right?

And oftentimes, and I'm not saying us, right, but I'm saying as believers, because I uh, you know, we all believers like-minded, right?

We can we can see these posts, right?

Like David.

We can we can be like they um posts on about political leaders as well as government mid-establishments, right?

Looking at them through the lens that are dim, right?

Because I believe nobody is not, you know, right, we all fall short of the of sin, right?

No one's worthy.

That's what the Bible tells us, right?

But we are worthy now because of Jesus, right?

But we all far far short.

And so, like I said, I don't I said this before, I don't believe people in government start off wrong or do things wrong, right?

But sometimes it's the hand they've been dealt, some of the favors they put out, right?

Um, as uh I have worked for the government official before, and you know, even with the covenant correction officers, you know, they have been taught to say they they used to be taught to say, you know, you know, the officers used to tell me like this is how they was trained, right?

They on the defensive end, right?

And I thank God for laws like mental health laws, because mental health laws was put into place, and so they can't just do all the stuff they used to do back in the day to these inmates, right?

They have to have compassion, they have to have good evaluations, it's things that's put in place because of somebody's prayers, I believe, and you know, of course of laws concerning you know inmates, because at the end of the day, they are still humans too.

And like I told them, and I'll say this before again, you know, we all right, we all did something, we just didn't get caught, right?

And so, um, so we have King David here.

Remember, he was with Bathsheba, right?

He he was seeing her on the rooftop, and and he wanted her.

He couldn't have, he could have, he could have had any woman he wanted, right?

In fact, he has a lot of wives, right?

But he wanted her, and God was very displeased.

He killed because he she she killed her husband, uh uh Uriah, the king of Hittite.

Uh, I mean, the Uriah the Hittite, right?

He could try to cover it up.

He did a lot of little things and he had repercussions because of his bloodline, you know.

But at the end of the day, God was so is so faithful, right?

He's so forgiving, he's so loving, right?

Because we know that he didn't have the Holy Spirit in him, but he had it upon him, right?

And so the power of a prayer confession, and that's what we see David doing right here.

And I want to start at eight.

I was given, I want to start right here at eight.

It say, Oh, give me back my joy.

You have broken me now.

Let me rejoice.

Don't keep looking at my sins.

Remove the stains of my guilt.

David said, Created me a clean heart, oh God.

Right, David realized he messed up, right?

What he did was wrong, but he acknowledged it.

And he said, Created me a clean heart, right?

We think about this heart.

The heart that the Bible tells us the issues of life comes from the hearts that wears our center of our will, our emotions, right?

That tugs between the soul and the spirit.

You know, I like the way Pastor Carrie, I mean Pastor Kirk put that, right?

It's that soil of that good ground, right?

We want to build up that heart with produce our fruits of the spirit.

He said, Create in me a clean heart.

You know, the Bible tells us a lot about the hearts, right?

We're just talking about above all, guard your heart above everything else, because it flows the issues of life.

He tells us that, right?

People, you know, God, you know, the people look at the outer appearance, but God looks at our heart, right?

Trust God with all our heart, lean not to our own understanding, love God with all our hearts, right?

It's so many scriptures that tell us about the heart.

It's something about that heart, right?

That we have to get a deep cleaning in, right?

Pastor Reggie's favorite verse, don't be anxious for nothing, right?

Right, and what the peace of God will guard your hearts, right?

So, right, he said, I'll give us a new heart.

So God reminds us that the heart is important, it's important what we place in the soil, uh, right, in our soil, in the inner inner uh core of us of who we are.

Like what's it's important, right, to meditate on those love scriptures.

It's important of what we constantly look at, even when it comes to the government, right?

It's important to keep those lens clean.

You know, that's what Jesus said.

You know, we see others as through his lenses because right, our heart can, you know, can be one way or the other.

It can be it's pool, it's constantly poor.

Soul wants what it wants, right?

And the spirit wants that good thing, he wants that heart, right?

That heart posture, because the heart can be hard or it can be softened right and the soft heart responds well to God.

You think about if God asks you to pray for some of your political parties, and I'm not saying us, but I'm saying as it just given contest behind this.

If God asks us to pray for somebody you don't like in a political arena, sometimes you don't even know what God is doing in the background.

Whoever thought the health laws concerning um concerning uh uh uh inmates, right?

Because they deserve the mental health too.

Not all people are guilty, right?

But those type of things, what were what if you wasn't praying for those type of people, right?

You know, and so we see this consistently out the Bible that we have to renew our mind and out of the heart, right?

It produces our words and actions, right?

The Bible says, out of the mouth, the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

So whatever we put inside this heart, right, right, it it produces, right?

And so we're talking about the government, right?

And so, right, we know that no one is perfect, right?

But we know that we have the Bible tells us to pray for our those in authority.

The Bible tells us that, right?

And so we trust the Bible, we believe what the Bible says if it tells us to pray for those who are in authority, and it's and it's for us, so we can live a quiet and peaceful life, right?

So um it's praying for the right the the government leaders, right?

And because it shows us that we we we we need them, we need order, we need law, amen.

And so the by and then so um uh uh David goes on to say, Don't banish me from your presence and don't take your holy spirit from me, right?

And and and so he said, renewable before that, he said, renewing me a loyal spirit, and so with all that, he reminded himself of Saul.

Saul had a tormenting spirit, right?

We know that it said, and the Bible tells us that we know he don't he didn't have any spirit within him, so he probably wouldn't be convicted when he was sleeping with the girl.

We don't know, but now he's convicted because he had it on him and he didn't want that torment spirit like Paul, um like Saul had.

So with that, I just want to remind us to continue to trust God, trust his word, continue to renew his mind, renew our minds to the word of God, plant good soil in our hearts, right?

As he said, forgive me for the shedding of the blood.

That's what David was saying.

He continued on to talk about forgiveness, right?

And and so that allows us to have this heart that can pray for anything that God has us to pray for, even if it's not the likely candidate, even if it's uh for some probably some He'll have us pray for nothing against the Word of God.

Right.

But if He tells us to pray, you know, for the leaders, that's that's gonna be what He's gonna tell us, right?

So just remember to keep our hearts and look soil, look around and I will heal.