Why I pray for mercy

Last night I read a paragraph that sent me immediately to intercessory prayer. This paragraph is from a book by Allen P. Ross called Recalling the Hope of Glory. It is about biblical worship from the garden of Eden until the church was formed, and shows the adoration that God deserves and how easily even His own people fall away from true worship. The paragraph says:

The prophetic denunciation of idolatry (by Old Testament prophets) was important because of the serious consequences of rejecting the sovereign God to embrace idolatry. It was not merely a sanctuary matter, but affected every aspect of society. If there were no sovereign God, then there was not absolute law to obey. (Starting to sound familiar?) The breakdown of morality and ethics and the neglect of social justice . . . is the result of refusing to entrust oneself to the sovereign, loving, and just God. . . . When people believe that the cosmic order is uninterested in human welfare and that those who succeed are those who know how to capture these forces for their own purposes—which is the underlying attitude of idolatry—the more helpless and vulnerable in society are crushed.

In essence, those who refuse God will worship something, in this case, their own ability to manipulate whatever they can to get whatever they want, at any cost. Instead of God, the great “I want” is put on the throne and, as a result, all of society suffers.

As I read this, I thought how our nation, even the entire world, is captured by idolatry. I began asking God for forgiveness and mercy, for me, for everyone.

This morning, my devotional reading from another book is about that very request. The Scripture is Psalm 51, and it begins with these four verses:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight—that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.

There are two players in this prayer. God is responsible for being merciful, loving, kind, and to blot out sin and wash it from my life. I am responsible for acknowledging my sin, realizing that God sees it and that it offends Him, and agreeing with His assessment of it. God is correct when He says that I have sinned, and He is just in His condemnation of it.

What is so difficult about that? The first time I noticed the power of confessing sin was as a new Christian and a single mother. I couldn’t stop screaming at my children and finally confessed this to God as sinful. A few weeks later, I realized that I wasn’t doing it anymore.

Over many years, when I do my part, I have seen that He will do His part. This week, I noticed I had a bad attitude toward my husband. I confessed this to God as sin, and it was gone, replaced by the right one.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Christianity is very practical. When we do what God says, He does what He promises to do as a result.

The rub is having to admit sin. Most people are not like the psalmist. He acknowledged his sins and realized he was accountable to God for them. Most people, myself included, have a lot of trouble doing this. We either don’t notice when we sin, or if we do, we make excuses, shift the blame, or dismiss what we’ve done as “not as bad as so-and-so.”

The paragraph from Ross’s book puts idolatry at the root of things. Instead of worshiping God, who is worthy of our worship, we put anything and everything else at the top of our awe-list. When I assume my sin is nothing, or shift the blame, I’m putting my own opinion above that of Almighty God. When I make excuses, I am saying that God’s ideas about sin are not worthy of my consideration and again am putting me above God and making myself my idol. Once I do that, what else will go to the bottom of the priority list? Everything. If my opinion and ideas are the most valued, anyone or anything else will take second place, unless of course giving them value is to my advantage.

Isn’t that the state of our world? Hasn’t humanity, in general, dropped God as “old-fashioned nonsense” in favor of running their own lives? While not every activity of every person seems totally selfish, God (who knows the heart) says it is. In our smug assessment that we know better, we lose the only opportunity we have to be rid of that self-centered sinfulness.

Until I honestly face the facts of my sins and agree with what God says about what I do, I am stuck with what I have decided is right and stuck with the consequences. This is foolishness.

However, multiply that foolishness by billions of souls. No wonder much of the news is bad. God says our sinful self-worship is as a dark, idolatrous thing that binds individuals, societies, and the entire world in a trap. He says that those who are unwilling to see or confess this as sin cannot experience His forgiveness and cleansing, and without God’s mercy, the eventual outcome is His wrath.