CRY

Do you know how to CRY?  Today I am going to teach you how.  The first part of CRYing is:

CONFESS

Psalm 66:18 (AMP) – “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me;” 

Regard = cherish (to approve of, to enjoy, to show respect)

What happens when we enjoy sin and pray to God at the same time? We are showing more respect to sin than to God. Would you be under any obligation to listen to someone disrespecting you? Then how can you expect God to?

Dr. Woodrow Kroll writes, “God is under no obligation to listen to prayers that come from disrespectful hearts…we might as well save our breath.”

Is there something in your life that you really love but know it is just not right? CONFESS it to God the Father. Does He need to hear it? No but He knows you need to say it.  We try to hide the things we are ashamed of.  Confession brings those things out of the shadows and exposes them for the truly hideous ugly things they are. He knows you need to bring it out into the open so that you can fully acknowledge it.

REPENT

Acts 3:19 (AMP) – “So repent (change your mind and purpose); turn around and return [to God], that your sins may be erased (blotted out, wiped clean), that times of refreshing (of recovering from the effects of heat, of reviving with fresh air) may come from the presence of the Lord;”

Repent = to feel remorse, turn around and walk the other way

Do you want to connect with God? You must forsake all sin. How can you keep evil from interrupting your connection with God? Abandon all the sin in your life.  Give it up! What if you do that sin again? Then you did not really repent.

Dr. Ronnie W. Floyd once wrote, “All prayer, to be acceptable to God, must be connected with a purpose to forsake all sin.”

YIELD

Romans 6:13 (AMP) – “Do not continue offering or yielding your bodily members [and faculties] to sin as instruments (tools) of wickedness. But offer and yield yourselves to God as though you have been raised from the dead to [perpetual] life, and your bodily members [and faculties] to God, presenting them as implements of righteousness.”

Yield = produce, give up, surrender

Will confession and repentance complete what God is asking of us?  No. To be complete you have to yield to Him. Yield those things that draw your attention from Him. Yield anything that comes between you and God.

Oswald Chambers wrote, “The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.”

Are these steps a once-and-for-all event?

            No, CRYing needs to be done on a regular basis.

Did you…..Confess

Repent

Yield……..today?