How to Pray for Forgiveness — Owen on Confession That Restores
⏱ 16 min read
You have confessed the thing. You have said the words. You have asked for forgiveness — properly, with as much honesty as you could manage — and you have stood up from the chair afterwards and discovered that the heaviness was still there. The sin was named. The asking was real. The promise of forgiveness, which you have read a hundred times, was true. And yet the soul did not feel restored. The chair time ended and the weight came home with you, and over the following days you found yourself rehearsing the confession again, asking again, wondering whether the asking had failed to reach Him or whether you had failed to ask it well.
This is the slow version of the question. Not the cross-stitched one. John Owen, who wrote Communion with God in the seventeenth century after spending most of a working life pastoring people through plague and political collapse and the small daily struggles of the conscience, knew the shape of the prayer for forgiveness that does not leave the soul heavy after. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries this kind of slow asking into a daily companion, if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly. The way you have been praying for forgiveness may not be wrong; it may simply be addressing the Father in the wrong tone, and the tone is what determines whether the confession restores or merely repeats.
The modern wellness sibling of how to pray for forgiveness is the self-forgiveness exercise and the therapeutic letter and the inner-critic dialogue. None of these are bad. But Owen is praying for something different. Not the resolution of inner guilt. The restoration of communion. The two are not the same kind of forgiveness. The first quiets the self’s accusing voice. The second walks the soul back into the room of the Father whose tenderness has been there the whole time, and whose face the confession had only briefly turned away from.
What the prayer is not asking for
Before we walk the prayer, name what it is not. The prayer for forgiveness is not the prayer to be punished less than you deserve. The prayer for forgiveness is not the prayer to negotiate with God about the seriousness of what you did. The prayer for forgiveness is not — and this is the line Owen would underline — the prayer of a slave begging not to be beaten. It is the prayer of a child returning to the chest of the Father whose love has not moved since before the sin happened.
Owen would say the heaviness that lingers after confession is, more often than not, a sign that the asking has been the asking of the slave rather than the asking of the child. The slave’s prayer, even when answered, leaves the slave still in slavery’s posture. The child’s prayer, even before the answer is articulated, restores the child to the embrace. The form of the asking determines what the asking returns.
The shift is small in language. It is enormous in posture. The woman praying for forgiveness is not asking to have her sentence reduced. She is asking to be restored to the room of communion, by the Father whose disposition toward her was tenderness yesterday, is tenderness now, and will be tenderness when the sin she is currently confessing has been long forgotten by both of them.
The first passage: eternal tenderness and compassion
“‘They that know thee will put their trust in thee.’ Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. He loseth soul’s company by their want of this insight into his love. They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father, — as one full of eternal, free love towards them: let their hearts and thoughts be filled with breaking through all discouragements that lie in the way.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice what Owen is naming. The reason most prayers for forgiveness leave the soul heavy is that the soul has fixed its thoughts on God’s terrible majesty, severity, and greatness — which are true of God, but are not the part of God the confession is being made to. The confession is being made to the Father, full of eternal, free love towards them. The two pictures of God are both biblical. But the confession is, in Owen’s vocabulary, a movement of communion, and communion requires the soul to address the Father in the tone that belongs to communion — which is tenderness, not severity.
Eternal tenderness and compassion, thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, present gracious acceptance. The phrase is exact. The Father’s disposition toward you in the moment you are confessing is not a freshly-calculated reaction to the sin you just committed. It is eternal tenderness. It has been from of old. The thoughts of kindness predate the sin. The acceptance is present, not future, not conditional on the success of your asking. The confession does not produce the tenderness; the tenderness was already in the room, waiting for the small return of the child.
For the woman whose confession has been leaving her heavy, this passage names the reason. The asking has been the asking of a soul that was picturing God as severity and assessing whether the asking had been good enough to satisfy the severity. The older asking is the asking of a soul that has remembered — by slow daily prayer — that the Father is eternal tenderness, and the confession is not a transaction to be evaluated but a return to be received.
Let their hearts and thoughts be filled with breaking through all discouragements that lie in the way. The line is direct. The discouragements — the inner accusations, the shame, the sense that this sin disqualifies you from approach — are obstacles to be broken through, not honoured. Owen is not asking you to deny the seriousness of what you did. He is asking you to refuse the false picture of God that the shame is trying to keep you trapped in. The Father is not the picture the shame is selling. The Father is the eternal tenderness that has been there since before the sin and will be there long after.
(If the long arc of the shame has been the part keeping you back from rest, how to confess sin to God — Owen on mortification walks the wider question this prayer sits inside. For the related ask — what the right armour looks like for the soul that has been under accusation — what is the armor of God? — Owen on Ephesians 6 walks the same author’s grammar of defence, and what is the meaning of salvation? — Owen on the saving Christ walks the deeper ground the forgiveness rests on.)
The somatic that goes with the prayer
Pause here. Owen’s vocabulary becomes most translatable to a modern week through the body.
Sit somewhere quiet. Notice where the shame is carried in your body. For most women it is in the front of the chest — the breastbone area — and across the shoulders, which curl forward in a small protective hunch that the body has learned to take when it is in the posture of self-accusation. The hunch is the body’s small slave-posture. Take one slow inhale, and on the exhale, let the shoulders un-curl. Not by throwing them back. By letting them drop down and slightly back, into the natural open posture the body has when it is not hiding. Take a second slow inhale, with the same release. Let the breastbone, which has been held in a small protective shield, soften.
The body that is curling forward cannot receive forgiveness in the older sense; it is still in the slave-posture, picturing God as severity and waiting for the strike. The body that has un-curled the shoulders for thirty seconds becomes a body the Father’s tenderness can address — not because the posture earns the tenderness, but because the posture is the small bodily agreement that the tenderness might be real after all.
That somatic minute is what eternal tenderness and compassion feels like in the body. The opening of the chest is the body’s small version of breaking through the discouragements. Owen would not have written about scapular muscles and breathing. He knew the body and the soul were one in this regard, and the small bodily return to an open posture is the entry point the modern prayer for forgiveness most often skips.
Do this once a day, for a week, before the prayer. The body is not separate from the asking. The body is the room the asking happens inside of.
The second passage: an inexpressible mercy
“To give a poor sinful soul a comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections, that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him; to give, I say, a soul an overflowing sense hereof, is an inexpressible mercy.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once at speed, then read it again, slowly.
This is the heart of Owen’s grammar of forgiveness. The work of grace in the confessing soul is not merely the removing of the sin. It is the giving of the comfortable persuasion that the Father loves, delights in, is well pleased with the very soul that has just confessed. The forgiveness is not the bare cancellation of debt. It is the restoration of the soul’s settled inner sense that the Father has not turned away.
A comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections. The persuasion is not just intellectual. It reaches all faculties and affections — the mind, the emotions, the body, the inner reflexes. The forgiveness Owen is praying for is the kind that re-settles the whole woman, not just the part of her that can articulate the doctrinal point. The doctrinal point is true: in Christ, your sin is forgiven. But the comfortable persuasion is what makes the doctrinal point a thing the soul can rest inside of, instead of a thing the soul knows in theory while it stays heavy in practice.
God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him. The three verbs are deliberate. Not merely tolerates. Not merely accepts. Loves, delights, is well pleased. The Father’s disposition toward the confessing soul, after the confession, is not the cool reinstatement of a pardoned criminal. It is the warm welcome of a beloved child. The difference between the two is the difference between the confession that leaves you heavy and the confession that restores.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the line that lifts the weight that lingers. You have not been receiving the comfortable persuasion because your asking has not been positioned to receive it. The asking has been the asking of the criminal, hoping to be tolerated. The older asking is the asking of the child, expecting to be delighted in — not because she deserves to be, but because she has, by slow daily prayer, learned that this is who the Father is.
An inexpressible mercy. The phrase is precise. The comfortable persuasion is not a mood. It is a mercy — given, by Him, to the soul that has positioned itself to receive it. The positioning is the daily small showing-up. The mercy is His.
The mid-article callout
It is worth pausing for one breath. The prayer for forgiveness you have been walking — Lord, forgive me, I am sorry, please do not hold this against me — is not wrong. It is simply the surface form of an older asking. The older asking is Father, You who have thoughts of tenderness and kindness toward me from of old, You who love and delight and are well pleased with the very soul I am bringing to You — I return. I name the thing. I receive the tenderness that was here before I named it. Restore me to the room of communion that the sin briefly turned my face away from. The 140-day version of that slower asking lives inside the Everspring Prayer Journal for Women — a daily page that holds the slow form when the day’s urgency would otherwise push you back into the surface one.
The third passage: the bottom of all peace
“‘Thy Maker,’ saith he, ‘is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.’ This is the bottom of all peace, confidence, and consolation, — the grace and mercy of our Maker, of the God of the whole earth.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
This is the deepest of the three passages. Read it twice.
Owen is borrowing Isaiah 54 to name the relational ground the forgiveness rests on. Thy Maker is thine husband. The image is intimate, and it is meant to be. The relationship in which the confession is being made is not the relationship of subject and king, criminal and judge, slave and master. It is the relationship of the most intimate human covenant Owen could name in his vocabulary — the one in which the failure of the smaller party does not dissolve the bond, because the bond was sealed by the larger party long before the failure occurred.
This is the bottom of all peace, confidence, and consolation. The phrase is the foundation Owen is asking you to build the forgiveness-prayer on. The peace is not based on the seriousness of your confession; it is based on the bottom — the under-layer that does not move regardless of what is happening on the surface. The bottom is the grace and mercy of the Maker. The bottom is the unbroken covenant. The bottom is the Father whose disposition has not changed since the moment you were made for Him.
For the woman whose confession has been failing to produce peace, this is the line that locates the peace correctly. The peace is not produced by the success of the confession. The peace is below the confession — in the unmoved ground of the covenant. The confession is the small return of the surface; the peace is given by the bottom that has been there the whole time.
The grace and mercy of our Maker, of the God of the whole earth. The scale is deliberate. The God to whom you are confessing is the God of the whole earth. His mercy is not a small ration that might run out if your confession is the fourth one this month. His mercy is the grace and mercy of the Maker — vast, settled, available, ancient. The confession that returns the heart heavy is the confession that has been picturing God’s mercy as a small finite pool. The confession that restores is the confession that has remembered, by slow daily prayer, that the mercy is the bottom of the world.
This is also why Owen is so careful about the picture of God the confessing soul carries. The picture determines the asking. The asking from below a small God produces a small forgiveness that lifts a small weight and leaves the rest. The asking from below the God of the whole earth — the Maker who is the husband — produces the comfortable persuasion that restores the whole woman, because the God being addressed is large enough that His tenderness reaches every faculty and affection in her.
How to pray for forgiveness — the slow form
Bring the three passages together. The slow form of the prayer for forgiveness is not three sentences. It is three movements, walked in order.
The first movement is the picture of the Father. Before any naming of the sin, the small re-orientation toward the face you are confessing to. Father, You are eternal tenderness. You are not severity. You are not the picture the shame has been selling me. Your thoughts of kindness have been from of old. Your gracious acceptance is present, before I have done anything well. Let me look at the right face before I confess the thing.
The second movement is the naming. Father, I did this. I said this. I thought this. I withheld this. I clung to this when I knew. I name it plainly, without ornament and without negotiation. I do not minimise it. I do not amplify it. I bring it. The naming is honest and short. It is not the centre of the prayer. It is the small middle.
The third movement is the receiving. Father, You who love and delight and are well pleased — restore me. Not by the cancelling alone. By the comfortable persuasion that reaches all faculties and affections. By the inexpressible mercy that lifts the shame as well as the sin. I sit here in the open posture, with the shoulders down, with the chest soft, and I receive what You delight to give: the bottom of all peace, the grace and mercy of the Maker, the disposition that has not moved since before the world was made.
The prayer for forgiveness, walked this way, does not produce a dramatic feeling. It produces the slow lifting of the weight — sometimes during the prayer itself, sometimes by the end of the day, sometimes by the end of the week. The lifting is His to give. Your part is the slow walking of the three movements, in the right order, with the body un-curled and the picture of the Father corrected.
(For the slow companions in the contemplative-fathers series, how to develop a quiet time with God — Brother Lawrence’s hidden method walks the wider quietness this prayer sits inside, and how to pray morning and evening — Habermann’s daily prayers holds the daily rhythm into which Owen’s slow restoration is most often given.)
What confession that restores will actually feel like over a year
The slow form of the prayer for forgiveness does not produce a dramatic shift on Monday. Owen’s own life was the work of decades of slow watching of the soul. What happens over a year is quieter.
The lingering heaviness after confession softens. The picture of God you carry into the chair, which had been mostly severity, slowly becomes mostly tenderness — not because severity is denied, but because the daily reading of His face has corrected the proportions. The naming of the sin becomes shorter, because the naming is no longer the centre of the prayer; the centre is the return to the embrace, and the naming is the small honest middle. The shame, which used to outlast the confession by days, more often dissolves inside the chair time. The body un-curls more easily. The comfortable persuasion — the inner settled sense that He loves, delights, is well pleased — becomes the bottom of the day, not just of the prayer.
You will still sin. The confessing will still happen. But the confessing will no longer leave you heavy, because the confessing will have become a return to a Father whose tenderness you have been daily re-learning. The bottom of all peace will have moved from being a phrase Owen wrote into being the ground your feet know.
This is what Owen means by confession that restores. Not the technical cancellation of debt. The slow daily restoration of the soul to the room of communion, by the Father whose love does not move, and whose mercy is the bottom of the whole earth.
That is what how to pray for forgiveness actually answers. Not the self-forgiveness version. The older one. The one that ends with the woman lighter than she came in, because the Father she has been asking has been waiting to receive her, with thoughts of kindness that have been from of old.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the small daily anchor that holds Owen’s slow restoration in proximity to the Father whose tenderness has been from of old.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Owen’s slow vocabulary — eternal tenderness, the comfortable persuasion, the bottom of all peace — into a daily companion built for the woman whose confession has been leaving her heavy, and whose asking is, at last, ready to be restored.
