Category: ESV First Person

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ESV First Person Method for Prayer

Lament and Confess your Sins of Omission

Confession 2.6 | ESV

We must lament and confess our omissions of duty, our neglect of it and triflings in it; and that we have done so little since we came into the world of the great work we were sent into the world about, so very little to answer the end of our creation or of our redemption, of our birth and of our baptism; and that we have profited no more by the means of grace.

I have been as a fig tree planted in the vineyard, and you have come many years seeking fruit from me but have found none; and therefore I might justly be cut down and thrown into the fire for using up the ground: Luke 13:6-7(ESV) You have come looking for grapes, but behold wild grapes; Isaiah 5:4(ESV) for I have been an empty vine bringing forth fruit to myself. Hosea 10:1(ESV)

I have known the right thing to do, but have failed to do it. James 4:17(ESV) I have hid my Master’s money, Matthew 25:18(ESV) and therefore deserve the doom of the wicked and slothful servant. Matthew 25:26(ESV)

I have been an unfaithful steward who has wasted my Lord’s possessions; Luke 16:1(ESV) for one sinner destroys much good. Ecclesiastes 9:18(ESV)

Often there has been money in my hand to buy wisdom, yet I have had no sense to; Proverbs 17:16(ESV) or like the fool my heart has been inclined to the left. Ecclesiastes 10:2(ESV)

My youth and dawn of life were vanity, Ecclesiastes 11:10(ESV) and I have brought my years to an end like a sigh. Psalm 90:9(ESV)

I have not known or improved the day of my visitation; Luke 19:44(ESV) have not prepared bread in summer nor gathered food in harvest, though I have had chiefs, officers, and rulers. Proverbs 6:7-8(ESV)

I am slow of heart to understand and believe; Luke 24:25(ESV) and though by this time I ought to be a teacher of others, I am yet to learn the basic principles of the oracles of God: I have need of milk, and cannot bear solid food. Hebrews 5:12(ESV)

I have done away with the fear of God and hindered meditation before God; Job 15:4(ESV) I have not called upon your name, nor roused myself to take hold of you. Isaiah 64:7(ESV)

I have come to you as your people come, and have sat before you as your people sit, and have heard what you have said, when my heart at the same time has been set after gain. Ezekiel 33:31(ESV) And thus have I brought the torn and the lame and the sick for sacrifice; have presented to my God that which I would not have presented to my governor; Malachi 1:8(ESV) and have vowed and sacrificed to the Lord what is blemished, when I had in my flock a male. Malachi 1:14(ESV)

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ESV First Person Method for Prayer

Lament and Confess the Corruption of your Entire Being

Confession 2.5 | ESV

The corruption of the whole man: Irregular appetites towards those things that are pleasing to sense, and inordinate passions against those things that are displeasing, and an alienation of the mind from the principles, powers, and pleasures of the spiritual and divine life.

I am born of the flesh, and I am flesh. John 3:6(ESV) Dust I am: Genesis 3:19(ESV) I have borne the image of the man of dust; 1 Corinthians 15:49(ESV) and in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells nothing good. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out; for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Romans 7:18-19(ESV)

I have a law in my members my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members; Romans 7:23(ESV) so that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand, Romans 7:21(ESV) and clings to us so closely. Hebrews 12:1(ESV)

The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint; from the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in me, but bruises and sores and raw wounds. Isaiah 1:5-6(ESV)

There is in me a bent to turn away from the living God: Hosea 11:7(ESV) My heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand them? Jeremiah 17:9(ESV) They start aside like a treacherous bow. Hosea 7:16(ESV)

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ESV First Person Method for Prayer

Lament and Confess your Vain Thoughts and Carnal Affections

Confession 2.4 | ESV

The vanity of our thoughts, their neglect of those things which they ought to be conversant with and dwelling upon those things that are unworthy of them and tend to corrupt our minds.

Every intention of the thoughts of my heart is evil, only evil, and that continually, Genesis 6:5(ESV) and it has been so from my youth. Genesis 8:21(ESV)

O how long have those wicked thoughts lodged within us! Jeremiah 4:14(ESV) Like the devising of folly, those thoughts are sin. Proverbs 24:9(ESV) From within, out of the heart, come evil thoughts, Matthew 15:19(ESV) which devise evil on the bed, Micah 2:1(ESV) and carry the heart with the fool’s eyes to the ends of the earth. Proverbs 17:24(ESV)

But God is not in all my thoughts; Psalm 10:4(ESV) it is well if he is in any of them. Of the Rock that bore me, I have been unmindful and have forgotten the God who gave us birth: Deuteronomy 32:18(ESV) I have forgotten him days without number, Jeremiah 2:32(ESV) and our hearts have gone after worthlessness and become worthless. Jeremiah 2:5(ESV) My inward thought having been that my houses should continue forever; this, my way, is the path of those who have foolish confidence. Psalm 49:11-13(ESV)


The carnality of our affections, their being placed upon wrong objects and carried beyond due bounds.

I have set my mind on things beneath, which should have been set on things above, where my treasure is, Matthew 6:21(ESV) where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; Colossians 3:1-2(ESV) these are the things which we should seek.

I have paid regard to vain idols and forsaken our hope of steadfast love; Jonah 2:8(ESV) have forsaken the fountain of living waters, for cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jeremiah 2:13(ESV)

I have trampled the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, Amos 2:7(ESV) and have been anxious concerning what I shall eat and what I shall drink and what I shall wear, the things after which the Gentiles seek. Matthew 6:31-33(ESV)

I have lifted up my soul to what is false, Psalm 24:4(ESV) and set my eyes on that which is nothing; have looked at the things that are seen, which are temporal, but the things that are eternal have been forgotten and postponed. 2 Corinthians 4:18(ESV)

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ESV First Person Method for Prayer

Lament your Disposition to Evil and Confess your Blind Understanding and Stubborn Will

Confession 2.3 | ESV

We must lament our present corrupt dispositions to that which is evil, and our aversion to and impotency in that which is good. We must look into our own hearts and confess with holy blushing:

The blindness of our understandings and their unaptness to admit the rays of the divine light.

By nature my understanding is darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in me, due to the hardness of my heart. Ephesians 4:18(ESV)

The things of the Spirit of God are folly to the natural person; neither can I understand them, in and of myself, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14(ESV)

I am ‘wise’ – in doing evil! But how to do good I know not. Jeremiah 4:22(ESV) I have neither knowledge nor understanding, I walk about in darkness. Psalm 82:5(ESV)

God speaks in one way, and in two, though I do not perceive it; Job 33:14(ESV) I indeed hear but never understand; Matthew 13:14(ESV) and I see men, but they look like trees, walking. Mark 8:24(ESV)

The stubbornness of our wills and their unaptness to submit to the rules of the divine law.

I have within me a mind that is set on the flesh, which is hostile to God and does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Romans 8:7(ESV)

Were you to write for me your laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded by me as a strange thing; Hosea 8:12(ESV) and my corrupt heart has been sometimes ready to say, “What is the Almighty, that I should serve him?” Job 21:15(ESV) And, “I will do everything that I have vowed.” Jeremiah 44:17(ESV) For I have walked in the ways of my own heart and in the sight of my eyes, Ecclesiastes 11:9(ESV) carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind. Ephesians 2:3(ESV)

My neck has been an iron sinew, Isaiah 48:4(ESV) and I have made my heart diamond-hard; I have refused to pay attention, have turned a stubborn shoulder, Zechariah 7:11-12(ESV) and stopped my ears like the deaf adder that will not hear the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter. Psalm 58:4-5(ESV)

How I have hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. Proverbs 5:12-13(ESV)