The Publicans Prayer

“And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.” Luke 18:13

When you examine the character of Jesus Christ, you will find in him every desirable virtue, among which: love, compassion, courage, discernment, as well as, humility.  Humility is essential to the Christian.  We must have it in our walk with Christ, and have it to begin our walk with Christ (i.e. conversion and sanctification, the beginning).  You cannot be converted and remain determined to be a sinner.  At some point, in order to make it to heaven, one must say, “I am wrong.”  To repent of your sins is (amongst other things) to admit you are wrong.  This takes humility, this takes the abandonment of personal pride and strength, and the acceptance/belief that God is all.

Godly sorrow that worketh to repentance is not something to be repented of. (2 Cor 7:10) When the Holy Ghost convicts and convinces you that you are a sinner.  It is a both a blessing and an act of grace.  You have reached a point where you understand that you are wrong and need to change.  You have reach a wonderful realization, a realization that you are lost.  Think what if conviction was as the lottery.  Only those, a select few, randomly have their number drawn and come to realize that they are lost; imagine if we never knew that we were lost.  If we never knew that, we were sinners.  We would go through our whole life thinking that we were “ok”; living our life as it pleased us, only to die and meet God a condemned sinner bound for an eternity in hell.  What a tragedy!  Though we obtained this worlds riches it would be far better to obtain genuine Holy Ghost conviction and have the opportunity to decide to follow Christ.  I am confident to say that many have felt conviction from God, and reasoned themselves away from it, because they were unwilling to admit that they are wrong.  It is in this light that we find the ugliness of pride revealed.  When you are so confident in your strength and the reasoning of your own mind that you are unwilling to listen to the counsel of God, and a state of repentance will be forever lost to you.  There are far more who will go to hell because of pride than ever did because of drinking, rioting, and such like.  There are many who sit in church, dressed in the finest clothes, driving the finest cars, and are whole heartily convinced that they are righteous; because of pride they cannot see or rather are unwilling to look at the true state of their soul and “examine themselves to see if they are in the faith or not.”  Pride will blind the eyes to the path of God and blind the mind to the counsel of God; pride will condemn the soul as sure as any “substance” sin ever would.  The scripture says “let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.”  That tells me, all you have to do to be wicked is want your way over God’s.  Friend, we stand in constant need of humility.

When you decide to follow Jesus, admit you were wrong, repent and become sanctified.  It does not leave a bitter taste in your mouth.  It does not bring turmoil and bondage; far from it, it brings liberty.  It takes the pressure off you and allows you to live in fellowship with God the Father, and in His will he can bring you into every desirable virtue that the man of Christ embodied.  Perhaps not in one single prayer, it might take a lifetime, but as my minister once told me: “the joy is in the seeking.” However, this cannot begin unless one finds a place of humility and admits they are wrong.