how to pray about sin

Who can discern his errors?

Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;

let them not have dominion over me!

Then I shall be blameless,

and innocent of great transgression.

Psalm 19:12-13

These two verses show us how to pray to God about our battle with sin. We often think of the only prayer for sin as being a prayer of confession and repentance AFTER we sin. But these two verses take a much more proactive stance. They want God’s help BEFORE repentance needs to be our prayer.

First, pray for God to discern your hidden faults. Ask God to work His Spirit’s conviction and Word’s direction to show you where you are prone to be wrong. Everybody has fatal flaws. Confronting and turning from these is growth. Sanctification is about God-directed change to see the influence and pain of those hidden errors exposed and they diminish and die! Such growth is a truly wonderful experience for the Christian.

Secondly, pray that God will help you fight willful sins. Every choice to give in to selfish sin is a presumption upon the grace of a good and loving God. It is damaging. We don’t want to do that. God will help us by His wisdom, through mutual accountability, by our confession, through our putting off sin and putting on right living to grow beyond our sinful, willful wrongs. And His Word will renew our thinking as His Spirit leads us in Christlikeness to forsake our lives of sin and live for joyful, rewarding, holy obedience.

Finally, pray to believe and receive a new driving vision of holy living. Sin needs not have dominion over the follower of Jesus! We long to be blameless. We are thrilled to be free from transgression by the One Who bore our sorrows and carried our transgressions to the cross. We want to be blameless and holy. We want to be like Jesus! We should keep praying for God to do all it takes to align our thoughts, our character, our hopes, and our actions with those of Jesus.