on wanting help and not forgiveness
I must make a lot of lists, because list-making is a game my children frequently want to play. They rustle through the drawers in our dining room hutch for sheets of computer paper, journals, and pens. Then they work very hard: my daughter on making figures that look like letters, my son at writing a few words he’s learned (apples, rice, bananas). Most of the time, they’re crafting a grocery list.
Mine aren’t always a slew of foods we’re missing in the fridge. I’ll throw down a few to-dos on the back of a medical bill, just so I don’t forget; scribble a chore on our weekly calendar in several different places so I make sure it gets done; write out a rough draft of the next few days, even though we have multiple calendars—paper and digital—where I can keep track of our tasks.
I come to prayer like this. Armed with my list, and instead of the items I need to accomplish, it’s the notepad full of the work I’m asking the Lord to do. None of the things on my prayer list are wrong. But I think the way I pray might be.
There’s a lot for me to consider in my own prayer life, but where I keep getting stuck is this: I ask for a lot of help and I don’t ask for a lot of forgiveness.
For example: I mull over how I responded to one of our children. I was frustrated. Impatient. Unkind. I may have apologized to the one I hurt, but when I prayed, I asked for more off my list: help me be slow to speak, slow to wrath. Help me be kind. Help me keep things in perspective.
I don’t start with repentance. I start with the place I failed. I need help getting out of the muck, but I’m not looking to turn around; I’m hoping I’ll be lifted up and plucked somewhere else. Drawn out of my impatience and frustration and plopped down in sweet longsuffering kindness. I don’t approach the throne boldly seeking forgiveness for the ways I transgress against my family, but I do go asking for help.
It’s the same in marriage: help me respect my husband. Help me submit. Help me help him. I don’t think to ask for forgiveness when I fail to respect and submit; I just ask for help.
What it boils down to, for me, is this: I don’t need to be transformed by the gospel, I just need to be assisted by it. I’m struggling, not sinning. I’m mostly there, I just need a little nudge.
Psalm 51:1-2 is deeply familiar but always necessary:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
David doesn’t beg for help. He pleads for mercy, then for cleansing. He understands his condition before a holy God, and when he sins, he knows what he needs is not support, but salvation. My failures may seem less grievous—I’m battling unkindness and impatience, not adultery and murder—but that only strengthens my pride, not my faith.
I do need help. But I’ve already been given it. Jesus promised that “the Father…will give you another Helper, to be with you forever…he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”[1] And while I seek to maintain a posture of repentance in prayer, I’m reminded that “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”[2] My help is promised; so is my forgiveness. All that’s left, then, is to come.
[1] John 14:16, 26
[2] 1 John 1:9
