Prayer 5: “God, empower me.”
When we pray for cleansing, we are asking for the spiritual effects of our past sin to be wiped away. When we pray for empowerment, on the other hand, we are asking for God’s help to avoid a repetition of our sin in the future. This is the fifth and last prayer in the process of repentance.
As we have said, the five prayers of repentance are progressively more difficult to say and to mean. So if we successfully make it through the fifth prayer, we can know that our repentance is complete. That’s because to say “Empower me” is to admit that we need God’s help if we are to remain clean after our repentance. Humility opens us up to every grace.
Particularly for the self-reliant type of person, the temptation is strong to try to remain pure through self-control alone. And of course, an exertion of our will is important in avoiding sin; we have our part to play. But in the end it is Christ’s power, through the Spirit whom He has sent us, that will enable us to walk away from sin. The power of sin, no matter how great it may seem to us, is no match for the power of God.
The apostle Paul, suffering from a “thorn in the flesh,” prayed for deliverance. God responded by assuring the apostle, “My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.”
Paul was then able to declare, “Now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses. … For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). Perhaps recalling this experience of strength in weakness, on another occasion Paul declared that we believers have available to us “the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20). This resurrection power is the mighty power that we have experienced many times—and that you can experience too.
“The power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you through Christ Jesus from the power of sin that leads to death” (Romans 8:2). Believe it!
Doing Business with God
Having identified the five prayers, we want to make sure we have not left a false impression with you.
While each of the five prayers represents a crucial part of repentance, we have to remember that repentance is not a mechanical process but rather a personal process and a spiritual process. In practice, the different aspects of repentance blend into a single spiritual turnaround. Thus each of us needs to approach repentance within the context of an honest, ongoing relationship with God.
And since this process takes place within a relationship, it is not one-sided; God has a role in our repentance too. We can be certain that if we are sorry for our sin and want to embrace God, He will embrace us in return. “The Lord your God is gracious and merciful. If you return to Him, He will not continue to turn His face from you” (2 Chronicles 30:9).
Isn’t repentance a marvelous gift of God? He knows we will do wrong, and our sin hurts Him, but He loves us so much that He provides the means to repair the relationship existing between us. Repentance becomes a decisive step in enabling us to resist the temptations that trouble us.
Still, there is one more aspect to turning from our sin that we must consider. It is the companion to repentance and the result of spiritual breathing: apologizing to others.
1 We are not sure what the “thorn” was, though it may have been a persistent temptation.
Select the right arrow (below) to continue reading Chapter 5. Step Three: Turning Around.