[Gary Petty] Solomon writes in Proverbs 28:13, "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy." Solomon here gives us very important instructions and our relationship with God in the fact that we are sinners, we sin. What do we do with that sin? You know, first thing he says is we don't cover the sin. You and I have to take personal responsibility for our sins. We can't blame it on other people, we can't say, "Well, this person made me do it." We need to understand that when we go before God, we need to uncover our sins. Once we uncover our sins, he says we must confess them. You know, confessing sins is more than just saying, "Oh Lord, forgive me today for I sinned." It is actually going before God after we take this responsibility and uncover our sins. And we go before God and we say, "Here's how I sinned today. Today I said this. Today I did this. Today I hurt other people and I'm asking you to forgive me."

As Christians, we're asking God, "Please take the blood of Jesus Christ and apply it to me," because Jesus Christ is our sacrifice, he is our substitute for our sins, and we go and we confess them. Sometimes we just take our sins way too lightly, we take them way too lightly. And then he says that we are to forsake them. You know, we confess, we uncover our sins, we confess, and then we go back and we keep doing the same sins over and over again without any corresponding change. Now, change takes time, change is hard, but God expects us to forsake them. Forsake, to give them up. What we want to do is confess and receive forgiveness and then hang onto our sins, hang on to them and not let them go. He says we also must forsake our sins. David really had this kind of attitude. And when you look through the Psalms, you see where David, Solomon's father, had an understanding of this type of relationship with God. 

Now listen to this, here's what David said, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." See uncovered, now they're covered by God. "Blessed is a man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and whose spirit there is no deceit." He says, "When I kept silent, my bones grew old and through my groaning all the day long, but for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me." (Psalm 32:1-4) David said until he went through this process of uncovering, confessing, and forsaking his sins, he could feel God's heavy hand upon him.

Is God's heavy hand upon you? Because you are not going before him and accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, uncovering your sins, taking responsibility, confessing them in detail, and then forsaking them, letting God help you overcome them. Use these three steps that Solomon outlines for us and you will, as he said, receive mercy from God.

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