Broken & Contrite Prayer

Jesus:

Sin, my sin has made me sick.  I am powerless to heal myself.  Jesus, I allow you access to my heart so that I become profoundly aware of the devastation wrought by my sin.  I do not want to remain split off from any genuine remorse.  The deep recesses of my heart still contain at times the will and desire to sin, and at some level have remained open and even playful union with evil.  Father, through Jesus, pierce through my darkness in order to reveal to me my heart.  I honestly admit that at times I have chosen darkness rather than light, rags rather than royal garments and lies rather than truth.  I confess my double-mindedness at the foot of Jesus’ cross, ask Him to grant light into my entire heart, and reveal the true nature of my sin.  Freely now I cry out from the depths of my heart to Your cleansing and deliverance that I so desperately need.

Lord, I confess that I have fed off false images and ideas that imitate life.  Sex became the head of life for me.  I have liked and made friendships with darkness.  There is a part of me that doesn’t want to five up its control over how pleasure is secure.  My mere knowing something is sin has not freed me from choosing sin.  I have chosen it because I wanted it.  I know full well the ultimate vanity of my pursuit yet I opt for pleasure in route to consummating my own moral failure.

Through my own willful engagement with sin, Satan strengthens the tie between false images and my also deceived heart.  I have sacrificed more time, money and energy in devoting myself to idols, and thus a very real form of worship has transpired.  I have bowed down to the Lord of Perversion – he who imitates life, love and creativity via sexual immorality.  I recognize the deep-rooted nature of these practices and the spiritual oppression that accompanies them involves a fear and flight from real connectedness with real people.  I have sought esteem via sexual expression.  I recognize that I have equated sex with intimacy and that illicit sex affords me a kind of control – I need not face the pain and risk involved in being known by others as a person who is strong and gifted as well as a person wounded and needy.  I now know that I have found “cover’ in the flesh and that I have been separated from my own heart.  Heavenly, Holy Father, through your loving kindness, bind away the power of false love and lose true love within me.  I desire from this day forward to choose intimacy, esteem, validation, affirmation, giving, love, worth .. fully clothed literally and in mine and their true identity.

Father, I am willing to have Godly men and women stand with me and help me facilitate the revelation of my own sin and the greater revelation of the Crucified One who wants to bear my sin upon Himself.  I desire the true love of others to coax me out of hidden, walled of fortresses where I have pleasured myself with lies.  In being known by them, I hope to yield more freely to you.  I am willing to make a full confession of my idolatrous history extending back long ways and taking as much time as required at the foot of the cross.  I lay down each occasion for darkness at the foot of the cross.  I allow you to draw nearer in order to draw out the sin.  Those to whom I confess I receive in your name forgiveness.

Sensitized anew to sins destruction, I stand firm with the cross before me and proclaim Jesus’ victory over an unclean spirit seeking reentry into my heart.  I welcome wisdom and discernment in the face of temptation.  I stand guard and battle with Holy Power.  Cleansed and protected I am free to feel the real cry of my heart now, may it be uneasiness, inadequacy, fear, rejection or … .  Father, I realize that YOu have placed a true yearning within me to not be alone.  Naked and uncertain, and yet not opting for the false cover of lust, I allow my true feelings to emerge in Your Presence.  I will open up to you, My Father, and not suppress the pain that results from living in a fallen world.  I will partake of communion with you, My God, via bread and wine and avail myself to the grace you afford me in my pain and that frees my heart to love aright.

Note: I wrote this prayer some time ago after reading an article by Andrew Comiskey.  I can not relocate the article.  I am confident that this prayer in part is text from that article.  Credit to Andrew.