The focus of this article will remain with Daniel and his seeking the Lord God in prayer and supplications. As we have tried to press before, it is God Himself who must be sought in prayer or we are praying to ourselves. The acts of fasting, sackcloth and ashes that Daniel mentioned were outward acts of self-denial that pointed to the inner need to die to self in order to seek the Lord. We might also mention that these times of seeking were not limited to a few minutes here and there, but were to be the whole of life. What is called prayer in our day is really prayers for self and the desires of self. But Scripture teaches here and in other places that self must be denied in order to pray. When Daniel prayed to the LORD his God, he confessed sin.
Daniel 9:3 – So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 5 we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. 6 Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.”
What we need to ask ourselves is why Daniel confessed sin. We are told today that if we confess our sin we will be forgiven. That is a causal relation from saying words to forgiveness and is a system of works for forgiveness. If all we need to do is to admit that we have sinned in order to be forgiven, then forgiveness for sin is contingent on saying the words. Surely something deeper is intended. First, what does the word confess mean? The meaning is obvious from looking at the word. It consists of “con” and “fess.” The prefix “co” points to working together or doing something in accordance with a standard or in accordance with another. The word “fess” means to acknowledge. In the past people “fessed up” when they admitted their guilt. If we take the parts of the word and put them together, we have the biblical idea of admitting or acknowledging a crime against God which is sin. But does “co” mean more than that? We are to acknowledge sin in accordance with what God says it is. In a court of law the charge is read against the defendant and s/he is asked to admit guilt or not. If the defendant confesses to the crime, s/he has to confess in accordance with the charges against him or her.
True confession of sin, therefore, is to acknowledge that our sin is as God says. It says that God’s view of sin is correct and that I am guilty of violating His cosmic law and stand guilty before Him as a lawbreaker that deserves eternal wrath for my sin. David’s confession in Psalm 51 shows this. He confessed that his sin was against God and God alone (Psalm 51:4). God is the One that is wronged by sin. The text shows this: “Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.” When a defendant is ready to confess or acknowledge guilt, the punishment for the crime is set out so that the defendant can know the punishment or the crime being confessed to. David confessed his sin and since his sin was against God in the ultimate sin he then says that God is just and blameless no matter what He does with David.
It is imperative that when seeking the face of God that we do not blow off sin as a minor thing. Our sin is against God Himself and to really deal with it requires that view. We can shed a tear and admit that we are sinners to a degree, but for us to seek the face of God requires that we deal with our sin in all of its hideous ugliness. It requires that we deal with our hearts and lives as in the presence of God. It requires us to seek God to give us a deeper knowledge of our sin. If we do not seek to know our own hearts and a deeper understanding of sin as against God, then we do not truly desire God for Himself. In one sense true confession to God is to take God’s side against ourselves and plead with Him to glorify Himself in our case. Ah, some say, surely that is going too far. Why would God want to make us feel bad? The greatest thing God gives to people is Himself. Unless we are broken from our sin which He hates He will not come and dwell with us. When God opens people’s eyes to the horrid nature of their sin, He is acting in accordance with the greatest mercy possible.
We see that from the very beginning Daniel sought God and therefore he confessed his sin and the sins of the nation. By definition sin leads to God withdrawing His face and presence. If sin is the reason that He turns His face, we can only seek the presence of God by turning from sin and by seeking Him and His face. This is why they had times of national mourning in the Old Testament and in the early days of the United States. Time was set aside for national mourning and repentance in order to seek the face of God. Dealing with sin is no easy issue and we have been led astray if we think it is. Dealing with sin is dealing with our own sin, pride, and hard hearts. God judges sin by turning people over to hard hearts and pride, so if we are going to be turned from it we must see our sin and deal with it as it is. When God deals with sin, He brings sorrow and contrition for sin. How many spouses have heard glib apologies that the other person did not really mean? They were obviously not genuine.
What is one real difference between a genuine dealing with sin and one that is not? It has to do with what is going on in the heart. The heart can have a sense of sorrow that is real just over the issue of being caught. That is not having sorrow for the sin itself but is having sorrow for the consequences. Many people within the visible Church have sorrow for sin in the sense that they have been caught and in the sense that they are facing eternal torment in hell. They have a sorrow based on selfish considerations. True sorrow for sin is when we have sorrow because we have sinned against God Himself. True sorrow for a believer is realizing and then having the sense of shame and sorrow in the presence of God because that sin has offended his or her Beloved.
Another reason that God is merciful in showing us our sin and bringing contrition over it is that humility is necessary to receive grace. God is opposed to the proud and He will crush them. If God does not humble a soul, He is opposed to it as His enemy. Pride is a sure sign of being a child of the devil who is pride incarnate. Humility, on the other hand, is the emptiness of self and the pride of self. It is Christ who was perfectly humble and then humbled Himself to go to the cross. Pride is to be like the devil while true humility is the emptiness of self and a false pretense to humility and then to have the life of Christ in the soul. Humility is absolutely necessary to pray in a way that is seeking God Himself. Without humility we will be doing nothing in our prayers but praying for self. We must have the emptiness of self or we will be full of self and seek self while we say we are seeking God.
We must be careful and not limit this to the physical action of using words that sound like humility and words that sound like we are praying for God’s sake. This requires a deep work of the Spirit in our hearts. This is not something that will happen in five minutes and in our spiritually degenerate age is most likely not going to happen without a longer period of seeking the Lord. In order to really seek the Lord, our hearts must be broken and we must become people that truly desire emptiness of self so that we can truly seek the Lord. He has told us that we will find Him if we seek Him with all of our hearts and souls. “But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut 4:29). What will it take to seek the Lord with all of our hearts and souls? It will take a lot of dealing with our own hearts and souls. We have to deal with our pride and self-centeredness. We have to deal with our self-love. We have to deal with our own self-seeking. Seeking the Lord is not something that can be done like turning on a switch, it can only be done when we begin to deal with our own hearts from their very depths.
In order to seek the Lord from the heart the heart has to be cleansed. We have sinned against the Lord and we have been turned over to hardness of heart. We have sinned against the Lord and He has withdrawn His face from us. Our hearts have been turned over to pride and self-centeredness. We have practiced the externals of Christianity out of love for self rather than love for God. We have gone through the motions of Christian acts and yet our hearts are cold and hard. There is no program that we can come up with and there is nothing we can do of ourselves to force God to give us true repentance and to turn His face toward us again. Our hearts stand against us and down deep we like our external comforts and religion more than we want the pain of dealing with our own sin and our own hearts. This is also part of the judgment of God. We prefer Bible studies that fill our heads with knowledge rather than those that deal with our own wicked hearts and are a step to seeking the true and living God. We prefer to pray for the bodily illnesses of our 122nd cousin than to deal with our own sin and cold hearts in prayer meetings. We prefer to pray for people’s temporal welfare rather than their eternal welfare. We prefer to pray for people rather than to pray for God’s name to be exalted and glorified in the advancement of His kingdom. What is our problem? We have proud hearts that are hardened by our selfish desires for our own physical and spiritual comforts. With desires for self like that, we desire God for our comfort rather than desiring broken hearts in order to desire and seek God. Unless our hearts are truly broken and humbled we will not truly seek God in prayer and we will continue our downward spiral. Until we are ready to deal with our hearts and God in truth and reality, our personal prayers and our prayer meetings will be no better than those of the Pharisees. They sought themselves in prayer, but so do we. We must learn to seek God Himself rather than to seek Him for things, even religious things.
God Loves... Himself 
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