#reflectiondevotional

“Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” - Proverbs 28:13

As much as we can, we always try to hide everything we did, especially if it’s horrible. Yet, no one is actually counting you on that. However, life is easy they say, either you want prosperity and success with joy and peace or you want poverty and failure with pain and misery. Take your pick! Well, of course, we would want joy and peace. Who would not want to pick that? Everyone wants to make that choice and wants to have a life with peace and prosperity. Now, we will then ask ourselves, what’s the catch? 

There’s actually no catch, all we have to do is to be true to ourselves. As sinful as we are, we love to keep to ourselves how horrible we are. As much as we can, we don’t want anyone to know that we are evil. We love it so much if we try to pretend that we are so innocent like we have not done anything wrong. However, our verse today warns us that if we conceal our sins, we will not prosper. We will only have misery and poverty. God does not want us to act righteous and pretend that we are all good where in fact, we are horrible and sinful. 

So, God wants us to confess our sins and renounce them so we will find mercy. God does not want us to be hypocrites, He wants us to accept and acknowledge that we are indeed sinful and in need of mercy. We cannot just walk around proclaiming that we are all righteous even if everything we do is sinning against our holy God. However, instead of feeling righteous we must declare, acknowledge, confess that we are sinful so that we will then renounce our sins to receive the mercy and grace of our God. After all, we don’t have to pretend we are righteous anymore once we receive grace and mercy, because we will be made righteous by God, and we will then be forgiven and renewed. 

Therefore, let us choose to live a life with prosperity, peace, and joy in Christ. Let us confess our sins before God and acknowledge that we need Him. We may die, our flesh may rot but we know that we are going to live forever for we are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Our sins are not counted anymore once we offer them to the Lord. We are granted mercy, pardon, and grace so that we will then have eternal life. All of these are through Christ our Lord and Savior. Thus, we must never forget to acknowledge our sins and accept the forgiveness of God and let His mercy flood into our lives.

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This has been one of the most personal verses in the Bible so far. This just shows complete submission, complete longing and an utter desperation. Adultery and murder has made David lose the joy of God’s salvation in him and got depressed. His sin was overwhelming and made him walk away from God. 

David’s situation was just the same to us. He sinned and it is very overwhelming so it keeps us away from God. It is indeed true that sin causes our cup of joy to leak. As we continue to sin, we can notice that we became more and more depressed because we cannot even feel the nearness of God in our lives. We cannot feel His presence because our sins are very overwhelming. 

This is why this verse is very personal and a desperate call of help. David was desperately asking God to restore God’s joy of salvation in him because he no longer felt glad, joyful and thankful for God’s salvation. Instead, he felt bad, guilty and depressed because of his sin. Indeed, this is the power of sin, it can really make a big wall between man and God. Sin has really become the root cause of our separation from Him. So, David was pleading and begging God to restore God’s joy of salvation. 

He is definitely like us. As sin and death overwhelms us, we often step away from God and run to the corners to hide. We feel so guilty and shame is eating us up. We no longer enjoy praising God; we no longer pray; and we no longer acknowledge God as our source of everything. Instead, we just run to the corners to hide because we are so ashamed and guilty. Our hearts became so far away from Him. 

However, we must remember this verse. Even David, before he became a man after God’s own heart, he was an adulterer and a murderer, yet he still reached out to God and asked God to forgive him and to restore God’s joy of salvation in him. We too, should not just run to the corners and hide but we should reach out to God and beg Him to restore God’s joy of salvation inside us.

We must always pray and just face God with a thick-faced knowing that we are sinful yet we acknowledge that it is only Him who can restore us to His joy of salvation and who can give us our salvation. Jesus said that as long as we abide in Him, He will abide in us. He is our joy, He our salvation. Therefore, we must always abide in Him, so that the joy of His salvation inside us will be renewed everyday.

This is indeed very personal because of the urgency and the desperation this verse shows. We should always pray this to God and to always ask Him to renew our joy in Him. As sins entangles easily, we should also draw closer to Him. We must also pray that God may grant us a willing spirit to sustain us. Now, this is very important because we can never be restored to God’s joy if the spirit we have inside is not willing to leave our old self. 

We have to always remember that as Jesus died on the cross and we received Him, God has given us His Spirit that is continually sustaining and renewing us. So, if the spirit inside us is not willing, then we should ask God to take this unwilling spirit and replace it with His Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that is keeping us in check, renewing our joy and is growing our faith day by day through meditating on His Word. 

Therefore, let us not be ashamed to ask God and pray to Him to restore us the joy of His salvation in us. We must always ask this day by day so that we will always be reminded about the salvation we have that was bought at a high price— Jesus Christ’s blood. Indeed, our joy can be taken away from us for sins can make us numb and hard-headed but God is a loving God and He even died for us, so He is always ready to restore us into the joy of salvation with a repentant heart. 

God will also grant us His Spirit that will make us willing and that will sustain us through our day to day battle against sin. So, instead of running to the corners because we know we have sin greatly against the Lord, we must humble ourselves and run towards Him, be on our knees and desperately call for His help. God listens to our every prayer and He knows our hearts, He will without a doubt, restore us and make us a new creation in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Now, let us all pray this together:

Indeed Lord, I have sinned greatly against You and it made me dumb and it pulled me away from You. But here I am Lord, I don’t have anything to offer and all I did was to sin, please help me. I pray that You will restore unto me the joy of Your salvation. Restore unto me the joy and the thankful heart for the salvation You bought for me. Please grant me a willing spirit— Your Holy Spirit to sustain me and to keep me away from future depression and future battle against sin. I have been so away from You, Oh Lord but You have always been there for me. Thank you for Your grace and mercy, in the name of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. Amen. 

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