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Imagine going to a doctor and telling him our symptoms except that we hide what is embarrassing! Are we going to get healed? It is one thing when someone does this with other people because of the shame. But it is quite another thing if we try to hide things before God! Especially when He knows everything about us without our telling Him (He.4:13)!

Forgiveness of our sins is the basic condition that enables us to have a relationship with God. Without our sins being taken out of the way, no one can even stand before Him (Is.59:1,2). How can we ask God to forgive us if we won't acknowledge our sins before Him? This acknowledgement means that we take full responsibility for what we have done, admitting our guilt and taking the blame. But from the time of Adam and Eve, the immediate tendency of us human beings is to find some excuse for what we have done, by transferring the blame to others, our circumstances or God. When we do that, do we realise that we are not giving God an opportunity to forgive us? If we don't tell Him what we did wrong, what do we expect forgiveness for? A general, broad confession saying, "Please forgive all my sins," is not going to work, because God's forgiveness is not just a matter of ignoring our sins or overlooking them, but applying the blood of Jesus Christ over our transgression.

Some people blame their parents for the way they are. It may be true that some mistakes our parents made have affected us adversely. But, if we do wrong now, it is we who are responsible for our deeds, not our parents. Some others may blame some traumatic experience though which others have pushed them. It is many times true that such experiences affect our thinking and attitudes in a wrong way. But, instead of continuing to hold wrong attitudes and behave wrongly, isn't it our responsibility to get over such experiences and learn good ways of thinking and behaviour now?

The man who received just one talent compared himself to the others who had received more, and decided not to do anything at all with his talent. Can we not blame God for the way He has made us, with some limitations compared to some other people, the circumstances in which we grew up, the opportunities we did not get, etc.? Aren't we going to be held responsible if we don't even use the abilities and the opportunities that we have been given? God is not going to demand from us what He expects from others. That was the wrong assumption this one talent man had made against his master (Mt.25:24).

We need to realise that whenever we make an excuse for our sins or our lack of performance, we are actually tying ourselves down from going forward with our life. When we don't confess our sins, we keep our sins from being forgiven, and we continue to have a distance between us and God. Whenever we blame God or circumstances we end up not doing even the things we can do. "He who watches the wind will not sow and he who looks at the clouds will not reap" (Ec.11:4).

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