Lent Day Seventeen
“The Gift of Forgiveness”
Psalm 32:1–6, 8–10 The Passion Translation
1 How happy and fulfilled are those
whose rebellion has been forgiven,
those whose sins are covered by blood!
2 How blessed and relieved are those
who have confessed their corruption to God!
For he wipes their slates clean
and removes hypocrisy from their hearts.
3 Before I confessed my sins, I kept it all inside;
my dishonesty devastated my inner life,
causing my life to be filled with frustration,
irrepressible anguish, and misery.
4 The pain never let up, for your hand of conviction
was heavy on my heart.
My strength was sapped, my inner life dried up
like a spiritual drought within my soul.
Pause in his presence
5 Then I finally admitted to you all my sins,
refusing to hide them any longer.
So I said, “My life-giving God,
I’ll openly acknowledge my evil actions.”
And you forgave me!
All at once the guilt of my sin washed away
and all my pain disappeared!
Pause in his presence
6 This is what I’ve learned through it all:
Every believer should confess their sins to God;
do it every time God has uncovered you
in the time of exposing.
For if you do this, when sudden storms of life overwhelm,
you’ll be kept safe.
8-9 I hear the Lord saying, “I will stay close to you,
instructing and guiding you along the pathway
for your life.
I will advise you along the way
and lead you forth with my eyes as your guide.
So don’t make it difficult, don’t be stubborn
when I take you where you’ve not been before.
Don’t make me tug you and pull you along.
Just come with me!”
10 So my conclusion is this:
Many are the sorrows and frustrations
of those who don’t come clean with God.
But when you trust in the Lord for forgiveness,
his wrap-around love will surround you.
When Jesus stretched out His arms of love on the cross, He wiped our slate clean. This was God’s great gift to humanity—Emmanuel, God with us—who took on our vulnerability and died in our place.
The cross is the most extraordinary symbol of faith. It represents one of the cruellest tortures ever devised—brutal, humiliating, designed to strip a person of all dignity. And yet, Jesus willingly faced it so that our sins might be covered by God’s mercy, and we could experience the joy of forgiveness. All He asks is that we return to Him, recognise our failings, and accept His grace.
Yet so often, we refuse to confess our sins—an act of remarkable ingratitude given the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice. But as Psalm 32 makes clear, unconfessed sin weighs heavily on us. As David wrote—probably after his sin with Bathsheba—"When I kept it all inside, my dishonesty devastated my inner life, causing my life to be filled with frustration, irrepressible anguish, and misery” (Psalm 32:3). Unconfessed sin gnaws at us, drying up our souls like a parched desert—like a sick patient who refuses the cure.
But—and it’s the greatest but in history—when we confess our sins, refusing to hide them any longer, our life-giving God forgives us. And when we confess, everything changes. Guilt lifts. Anguish disappears. We are restored. Confession clears the fog that separates us from Him. His love becomes our shield.
This doesn’t mean life will suddenly be easy. Jesus said, "In this world, you will have trouble" (John 16:33, NIV). But Psalm 32 assures us that if we confess our sins, even in the midst of life’s storms, He will keep us safe. We no longer have to struggle alone—He stays close and guides our way.
Yet, as the psalm reminds us, we can be stubborn. We resist His leading, especially when it takes us somewhere unfamiliar. We turn our backs on His mercy, choosing instead to struggle alone.
There can be no greater loneliness than facing the storms of life—including illness—without knowing God’s presence. But all it takes to change that is recognising who we are: God’s creation, in need of His grace. When we trust in Him for forgiveness, we are never alone. His wraparound love will surround us—now and always.
Kate Nicholas
As a journalist and communicator, words have always been part of her life but it took a cancer diagnosis to turn her into an author. Kate’s first book, her memoir Sea Changed is an account of her unconventional journey of faith and healing from advanced inoperable breast cancer.
When she was ill she kept on being given a passage from Psalm 188:17 ‘I shall not die, but will live and declare the works of the Lord’ and when I against all odds she recovered she dedicated her life to that mission as a preacher, writer and broadcaster.
Her books include Sea Changed A Companion Guide (Living a Transformed Life) - a reflection guide to help readers understand how God can use all the circumstances of our lives to transform us; Soul’s Scribe – a guide to help readers understand and share their own ‘soul stories’; as well as a children's story Wife of the Wind. Her latest book To The Ocean Floor tells the story of her second cancer journey and how it became a gateway to a profound encounter with God.
Now once again in remission, she is busy working away on my next book and is just so grateful to still be here declaring the works of the Lord.