Prayers for confession and repentance
Carrying a sin I've kept secret
For coming clean with God and finding his mercy waiting.
Also for secret sin · hiding something · no one knows · double life · hidden struggle · keeping a secret · afraid to be found out · shame · living a lie · ashamed to tell anyone · secret
When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped in the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you. I didn’t hide my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I will be upright. I will be blameless and innocent of great transgression.
He who conceals his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.
For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. Let’s therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace for help in time of need.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
A prayer
Original writing, not a quotation of Scripture.
God, I have been carrying this alone for too long, and it is wearing me down the way David described, like my strength drying up in summer heat. Nobody else knows. You do.
I'm bringing it into the light with you first. Give me the courage to tell one trusted person too, so this loses its hold in the dark. Thank you that there is mercy on the other side of honesty.
In Jesus' name, Amen.