How To Ask God For Forgiveness As A Christian Series

NOT JUST WHEN WE'RE SAVED: Asking for forgiveness is supposed to be a regular part of my walk of faith.

- Matthew 6:12a.

- Let me start by saying that we are going to handle v. 12 in two parts. This week we will look at the first half of the verse; next week the second half. I am doing this because the two halves have ideas that are important enough to need a whole sermon to unpack them. They are related ideas but I want to give each the time they deserve.

- This part of the Lord’s Prayer rejects a big idea that some Christians have today: that once you ask for forgiveness at the moment of salvation you don’t have to mess with that again.

- So the picture that some have is that when they came to the altar they got right with God and received His forgiveness, so that's all taken care of. “Jesus forgave me,” so we’re all done with that stuff.

- We will talk more about the specific ways that is a misunderstanding under the first point below but for now simply note that it is a misunderstanding.

- Asking for forgiveness is supposed to be a regular part of my walk of faith.

- Verse 12a invites us to ask God to “forgive us our debts.” Some translations use “trespasses.”

- Neither of those are words we use with regularity about our sinfulness. Because of that, I think sometimes we might read or pray the Lord’s Prayer without thinking about what exactly this means. The Greek word used for “debts” or “trespasses” means “an offense, a trespass which requires reparation.”

- To be clear, we are talking here about our debts to God - the sins we’ve committed (say, over the last day) that we are asking forgiveness for. This is the part of the Lord’s Prayer where we are asking for God the Father to forgive us.

- Confession of sin is not something that is a regular part of most Christian’s prayer life. Because of that, I want to be practical in the remainder of the sermon and walk through what it looks like to ask for forgiveness on an ongoing basis. Some of you might think that the rest of the sermon is too basic. That's ok - if you’ve already got this solid in your prayer life, then just say, “Amen” a lot the rest of the sermon and encourage me in my preaching.

For most of you who aren’t doing this on a regular basis, I want to help you to know how to actually incorporate this into your daily prayer life. Here are four key steps to making it happen.

- One final note: this information is of no value if you don’t use it. This isn’t like memorizing the 12 apostles where knowing it is all you need. This is only of value if you do it.

HOW TO ASK FOR FORGIVENESS ON AN ONGOING BASIS:

1. Understand that this is essential to becoming Christlike.

- Matthew 7:21-27.

- A good place to start is the goal of the Chrisitan life. That's a big issue, isn’t it? In any endeavor if you don’t understand what the goal is, then things are likely not going to go well.

- If you hire a high school basketball coach who endlessly emphasizes rebounding to the point where all he wants to talk about before, during, and after games is how the team is doing in rebounding, he’s not going to be coach for very long. Why? Because rebounding is certainly related to success in basketball, but the goal in basketball is not to get more rebounds that the other team but to score more points than the other team. Not knowing the goal is going to get him fired.

- Sadly, many people don’t know the goal of the Christian life. Let me be explicit in stating it. Many think the goal of the Christian life is being forgiven. “I got saved and now I’m forgiven so I can go to heaven someday.” That is all important stuff: we do want people to get saved, we do want people to be forgiven, we do want people to go to heaven someday. But the goal of the Christian life is to make you Christlike. The goal is Christlikeness. And not just someday but increasing Christlikeness in this life.

- Look with me at Matthew 7:12-27. Note how it makes the dividing line of belief and unbelief the following of Christ’s commands.

- Why is that? Because it is God’s intention through Christ to undo the sin in our lives. He knows how damaging it is - that's why He died for our opportunity to leave it behind. He doesn’t just want us to mouth words of belief and accept an empty forgiveness that leaves us mired in our sin.