Are you are familiar with the way songs dance around in my brain yet? It’s usually two that wind around each other like two colorful ribbons and as strange as it seems, most times one is secular and one is a hymn however this evening they were both hymns!
The first started, “You ask me why I’m happy, so I’ll just tell you why, because my sins are gone”, just that much of the verse and then, “Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them there.” These two kept going back and forth and I wasn’t even aware of it until I began singing it out loud as I cleaned the kitchen. I was thinking about how good it feels to put down a heavy package, especially after carrying it up fourteen steps!
We carry heavy burdens for years, and it is as if we are carrying them up dozens of stairs every day, all day long, and when we lay our head on the pillow at night, these same burdens sit in our heart and invade our dreams. There is a burden I have spoken about and that is guilt. You can find the answer for how to handle that in Proverbs 16:6, Guilt is banished through love and truth; Fear of God deflects evil. So the best way to banish guilt is to admit whatever you are feeling guilty about out loud to God and then let it go.
The Psalmist King just got right to the point with God, Psalm 25:18 Take a hard look at my life of hard labor, then lift this ton of sin. This was his prayer in 86:1-7 Bend an ear, God; answer me. I’m one miserable wretch! Keep me safe—haven’t I lived a good life? Help your servant—I’m depending on you! You’re my God; have mercy on me. I count on you from morning to night. Give your servant a happy life; I put myself in your hands! You’re well known as good and forgiving, bighearted to all who ask for help. Pay attention, God, to my prayer; bend down and listen to my cry for help. Every time I’m in trouble I call on you, confident that you’ll answer.
There might be a time that you want to talk to someone, James 5:16 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Just make sure you don’t tell someone something that can be used against you in case they have the sin of “Gossip” in their life, but someone who will agree with you in prayer.
Are you afraid that you have waited too long, or asked too many times?
Remember this, God never gets tired of forgiving us! Lamentations 3:22-23 Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
Now you can see how the two songs work together! We give our burdens and sins to the Lord, and then we can sing Praise God, my sins are gone!
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