The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

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One fun thing about marrying into a family is learning their family lore–that compilation of heartwarming and hilarious feats and mishaps that are retold time and again when the family is together. One of my favorite tales from Schroeder family lore is an infamous incident from when my husband and his twin brother were young adolescents. The two boys were rough-housing and put a hole in the wall. Was their first inclination to confess and seek help in repairing the damage? Nope. Like many of us tend to do, they tried to conceal the problem by fixing it on their own.

The twins scrounged together spare change and loose bills from around the house and walked to a nearby hardware store.With an employee’s assistance, they found a drywall repair kit and got right to work. They thought they did a pretty good job and were satisfied they had gotten away with it. But, of course, when their dad got home, he noticed right away. This wasn’t something two boys of their age and experience could fix on their own. It was something they needed to bring to their father.

There is an infamous incident in 2 Samuel where King David did some serious damage: he got another man’s wife pregnant. David’s first instinct was to do damage control on his own and attempt to hide his sin. He went so far as to have the woman’s husband killed so he could quickly marry her. God, however, wasn’t fooled. He sent the prophet Nathan to confront David. At this point,David had the choice to continue on the path of self-sufficiency or to bring his sin to his Father. David penned Psalm 51 as his repentance before God. In this confessional prayer, David calls his broken spirit and contrite heart his sacrifice before God.  

Oftentimes when I sin, I just want to move on with minimal effort and minimal emotional energy expended. In my pride, I think I can quickly smooth over the damage I’ve done. And in my shame, I am tempted to run from God instead of to him. But like an inexperienced child applying a drywall patch, our self-guided attempts at reconciling wrongs without bringing our sin before God leads to botched results.

Our sin and the damage it causes grieves God, and instead of taking the path of least resistance and hurrying on, we need to allow it to grieve us as well. This doesn’t mean wallowing in shame, it means bringing our broken spirit and contrite heart as a confessional sacrifice before God in repentance. When we do this, God doesn’t just apply a shoddy patch over our sin. In the words of Psalm 51, he renews a right spirit within us and restores our joy! This is such a better outcome than any we could achieve by our own means.

Grief over our sin becomes an opportunity to invite the healing work of God’s Spirit into our lives. Going through the hard stuff together is what really deepens any relationship, and this is certainly true in our relationship with God. You can give into the instinct to cover up your sin and move on. Or, you can go to God with your pain, grief, guilt, and regret. He will renew your spirit, restore your joy, and draw you into deeper relationship with him.

Instead of brushing sin aside, recall a specific, unconfessed sin, whether recent or from the past, to bring to God today.

‍Father, nothing is hidden from you. Thank you for inviting me to confess what you already know and inviting me into a deeper life with you. My heart is heavy from my failure. I have wronged you and am in need of your mercy. Create in mea clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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