I’ve noted before that a prayer of confession is part of my daily routine, and I’ll take this opportunity to elaborate on it a bit. We’re coming up on Lent next week, a serious time, and a brief daily prayer of confession fits in with that.
Now, needless to say, your sins are not my sins, so there won’t be a one-size-fits-all prayer here, but perhaps some of my language will be of some use to you, and I suspect that many of us have some sins in common. So here you go:
Lord, I confess my sins and ask You to forgive them.
I have done what I should not do, and have not done what I should do.
I have failed to keep You and Your will before me.
I have had uncharitable thoughts about other people. And I have failed to have loving thoughts about other people.
In addition: [your sins here!]
I confess these sins, I acknowledge them, I repent, and I ask that You help me to do better. Amen.
Note that I think most of us fail to keep God sufficiently before us (see next paragraph), and I think that most of us think ill of others more than we should — and are even more likely to fail to think well of them. Loving God and loving our neighbors, and thinking as well as acting rightly, were central to our Savior’s teaching.
On last thing: In another post, I suggest that mid-day is a good time for confession. I wrote:
As for confessing in the middle of the day: Well, it’s in our waking hours that we do all our sinning, is it not? Stopping and confessing in the middle of that makes a lot of sense, and pausing and thinking about our sinning might even prompt you to stop some of it. And consider as well what is probably the most common and consistently committed sin of all, namely not keeping God foremost in your thoughts. Confessing that sin midday, as we all probably could and should, may have a self-corrective effect.