Lesson 17: Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.
www.bible.com/bible/59/psa.25

O Lord of hosts, my sins and transgressions I do not hide from You but unreservedly acknowledge that I spent my former days after the will of the heathen and walked with them in all manner of ungodly lusts, pride, wantonness, in eating and drinking, and in abominable, blind idolatry. I did all that pleased my wicked flesh; I was a child of wrath even as others were. Your holy name I held in derision. Your word was as a fable to me. In reliance upon Your grace I did all manner of evil. I was as a white-washed sepulcher (Matthew 23:27).

Outwardly in behavior I was moral, chaste and mild. There was none that reproved my conduct but inwardly I was full of dead men's bones, stench and worms. My platter was clean on the outside but within was full of carnage and lust. What I did privately is a scandal to mention; all my thoughts were unclean, vain, proud, ambitious and ungodly. My heart was full of hatred, envy, vengeance and dislike. My thoughts were bent upon all kinds of wickedness. I sinned without bounds. I neither feared God, devil, law, gospel, heaven nor hell. There was nothing that could deter me. I neither regarded You nor Your word. My course was onward to all wickedness.

I sought nothing but the friendship and love of this world. I did not commit adultery, fornication, and such other abominable sins before men only because I feared to lose their favor and my reputation and not because I feared You. Yet my vanity, merriment, drunkenness, sinful lusts, open sins, weakness, pride and idolatry were called the true worship.


My sins separated me from You, hid Your face from me, and brought on Your wrath. I have become a prey and brand of the burning pool, although the longer and more I was grieved, the more I was consoled by Your word (Matthew 5:4) for it teaches me concerning Your mercy, grace and favor, and the remission of my sins through Christ, Your beloved Son, our Lord, not regarding that I neither knew nor feared You before. This promise pacifies and gladdens me. It leads me to Your blessed feet with full confidence and clear conscience, well knowing that You will not cast off from You Your returning son, although I have spent Your paternal inheritance and possessions dishonorably with harlots and rogues in a strange country, devoured it in my unrighteousness (Luke 15:11-32). My God, turn the pleasing countenance of Your peace unto me; I have sinned before heaven and in Your sight. Lay Your hand of grace upon me. Have mercy upon me, a poor sinner, for I am desolate and afflicted.