SINS OF OMISSION

1. INGRATITUDE - Take this sin, for example, and write down under it all the times you can remember where you received kindness from God but never gave thanks. How many situations can you remember - some God-ordered events that saved you from ruin? Write down when God was good to you and you were only half-thankful - when you were in sin before your conversion, the circumstances of your turning to God. List the numerous mercies he has given since. How many are the instances where your ingratitude is so shameful that you run to hide your face? Now on your knees confess to God these times one by one, and ask forgiveness. Confession will suggest others to your memory. Write them down. Go over your list three or four times in this way, and you will find an astonishing number of mercies for which you have never thanked God.

2. LACK OF LOVE TO GOD - Write that down, and review all the times you can remember when you didn't give to the blessed God the fervent love he deserves. Think how dismayed you would be if you discovered even a slight wavering of affection for you in your wife, husband, or children - if you saw somebody else capturing their hearts, thoughts and time. You would nearly die with a righteous jealousy! In a far greater way God is a jealous God. Have you given your heart to other loves and infinitely offended him with your adultery?

3. NEGLECT OF THE BIBLE - Put down the spans when for days, even weeks or months, you disdained God's word. If you read it, you did it in a way that was more displeasing to God than not reading at all. Many people read a whole chapter in a way that they couldn't tell what they just read. They pay so little attention that at night they don't remember where they read in the morning unless they use a bookmark or turn down a page corner. This demonstrates how little they take to heart what they read. If you were reading a book or a magazine that fascinated you, wouldn't you remember what you read last? And the fact that you need a bookmark shows that you read as a chore rather than from love or reverence for the word of God. The word of God lays out your duty. Do you regard it so lightly that you forget what you read? If that is the case, it is no wonder that you live so randomly and that your spiritual life is such a miserable failure.

4. UNBELIEF - List instances when you have virtually charged the God of truth with lying, by not believing his explicit promises and declarations. God promised to give the Holy Spirit to all who ask. Have you believed this? Have you expected him to answer when you asked for the Holy Spirit? Haven't you more or less said in your hearts "I don't believe"? Yet God has plainly promised his Spirit and you charge him with lying.

5. NEGLECTING PRAYER - Times when you have prayed in a way that you offended God more than by not praying at all. Or when you have skipped prayer meetings because you did not like them.

6. NEGLECTING THE MEANS OF SALVATION - When you used trivial excuses to keep you from fellowship meetings, just because they did not interest you.

7. THE WAY YOU HAVE PERFORMED THOSE DUTIES - without feeling or faith, with an ungodly attitude - so that your words were just chatter. When you have fallen on your knees and said your prayers so mindlessly that five minutes later you didn't know what you prayed.

8. YOUR LACK OF LOVE FOR YOUR NEIGHBOURS' SOULS - Look around at your friends and relatives and remember how little compassion you have felt for them. You stood by and watched them go to hell, and it seemed you didn't care if they did. How many days have gone by when you didn't even think of their condition and pray a single fervent prayer for them - or even have a burning longing for their salvation?

9. YOUR LACK OF CARE FOR THE LOST - Maybe you haven't cared enough to try to learn about them - not even to read a missions magazine. Examine how much you really care about the unreached and their salvation. Measure your desire for their salvation by the self-denial you practice in giving what is yours to send them the Gospel. Do you deny yourself even the harmful luxuries such as tea and coffee? Do you curb your lifestyle or live any less conveniently to save them? Do you pray daily for them on your own, and do you consistently attend prayer meetings for missions? Do you save something from month to month to give at special offerings for missionaries? If you don't do these things, and your soul does not agonize for the blinded unbelievers, why are you such a hypocrite? Why pretend to be a Christian? Your claim to be a Christian insults Jesus Christ!

10. NEGLECTING FAMILY DUTIES - How have you lived in front of your family? How have you prayed? What example have you set for them? What direct efforts do you regularly make to enrich them spiritually? What duty haven't you neglected?

11. NEGLECTING SOCIAL DUTIES - when you have no love in your heart for your community, no desire for holiness in public places, bible education in schools, and so on.

12. NEGLECTING YOUR OWN LIFE - Times when you have hurried over private duties and did not confess this to God, when you have entirely neglected to guard your behaviour and sinned in front of unbelievers, the church, and God.

13. NEGLECTING WATCHING OVER FELLOW BELIEVERS - How often have you broken your obligation to care for them in the Lord? What do you know about their spiritual lives? Do you care? And yet God solemnly binds you to care about their spiritual welfare! What have you done to get to know them? Go over the list. Wherever you find you have neglected what is right, write it down. How many times have you seen others grow cold toward Christ without saying a word? You saw them lapse in one responsibility after another, but you didn't lovingly correct them. You saw them falling into sin but you let them continue on. And still you pretend to love them. What a hypocrite! Could you watch your wife or child fall into a fire and keep silent? No! What do you think of yourself if you claim to love Christians and to love Christ, even though you can watch them slide into disgrace and say nothing to them?

14. FAILING TO PRACTICE SELF-DENIAL - Many who say they are Christians will do almost any act of faith that doesn't require self-denial. But call them to do anything requiring them to deny themselves. Oh! That is too much! They think they do much for God - as much as he could reasonably ask - if they do only what is painless. But they aren't willing to forsake even one comfort or convenience for the sake of serving the Lord. They will not willingly be mocked for Christ's name, nor will they give up even the luxuries of life to save the world from hell. They are so far from remembering that self-denial is a condition of discipleship that they don't even know what self-denial is. They never have denied themselves even a ribbon or a trinket of jewelry for Christ and the Gospel. How soon such hypocrites will be in hell! Some give their abundance and give much - and readily complain that others don't give more. In truth, they don't give a thing that they need, a thing that they would like to keep. They only give their surplus. The poor woman who gives a dollar or two a month practices more self-denial then they have in giving thousands.

SINS OF COMMISSION

1. A MIND SET ON MATERIAL THINGS - What is your heart's attitude towards your possessions? Do you think of them as really yours, as if you had a right to do with them whatever you want? If you do, write it down. If you have loved property and sought after it to satisfy lust or ambition or to save it for your families, you have sinned and need to repent.

2. PRIDE - Recall all the times when you have been proud. Vanity is one form of pride - how many times have you been vain about how you look? How many times have you spent more time decorating your body to go to church than you have in preparing your mind to worship God? You have gone to God's house caring more about how you look on the outside to human beings than how your soul appears on the inside to the heart-searching God. You have exalted yourself to be worshiped by them, rather than preparing yourself to worship God. You divide the worship of God's house, drawing the attention of God's people to your striking pose. You can't pretend that you don't care about having people look at you. Be honest about it. Would you be so picky about your looks if everyone were blind?

How do you react when people tell you that you are wrong? Do you burst out in anger? This is another form of pride to confess.

3. ENVY - Look at the instances where you envied people you thought were above you. Maybe you envy those who seem to be more talented or useful than yourself. Haven't you envied someone so much that it is hard to see them praised? It makes you happier to think about their faults than their virtues, and about their failures than their successes. Be honest with yourself, and if you have given room to this spirit of hell, repent deeply before God or he will never forgive you.

4. CRITICALNESS - Times you have had a bitter spirit and spoken about Christians in a way entirely empty of grace and love. Love that requires you to always hope for the best the situation will allow and to put the best construction on any behaviour you are not certain of.

5. SLANDER - The times you spoke behind people's backs about their faults - real or imagined - unnecessarily or without good reason. This is slander. You don't need to lie to be guilty of slander: to tell the truth to deliberately injure is also slander.

6. LACK OF APPROPRIATE SERIOUSNESS - How often have you acted lightly before God in a way you would not dare to act in front of an earthly king? You have either forgotten there is a God, or have had less respect for him and his presence than you have for an earthly judge.

7. LYING - Understand what lying is: any deliberate deception. If the deception isn't intentional, it isn't lying. But if you plot to give an impression different from the naked truth, you lie. Put down all the times you can recall. Don't call them anything less than what they are. God calls them lies and charges you with lying. You had better charge yourself correctly. How uncountable are the lies told every day in business and society by words, looks, and actions - each designed to leave an impression different to the truth!

8. CHEATING - Write down all the times you have done to someone something you wouldn't want done to you. That is cheating. God has given a rule: "Do unto others as you want them to do to you." That is the rule; if you break it you are a cheat. Note that the rule doesn't say to do what you would expect them to do to you. That rule would allow every variety of sinfulness. The rule is "as you would want them to do to you."

9. HYPOCRISY - Hypocrisy in your prayers and confessions to God. List the times you have prayed for things you didn't really want. You can know you prayed for something you didn't want if when you were done you couldn't remember what you prayed for. How many times have you confessed sins you really didn't intend to quit?

10. ROBBING GOD - List all the hours God gave you to serve him and lead people to Christ, hours you instead spent in trivial escapes, mindless conversations, reading or watching trash or doing nothing. Or cases where you wasted talents and intellect, where you threw away money on your lusts or spent on things you didn't need and which increased neither health, nor comfort, nor usefulness. Perhaps some have shelled out God's money on cigarettes. Imagine a person who claims to be a Christian spending God's money for poison!

11. BAD TEMPER - Maybe you have abused your wife or husband, or children, or family, servants or neighbours.

12. KEEPING OTHERS FROM BEING USEFUL - Perhaps you have weakened someone's influence by falsely criticizing him. Then not only have you robbed God of your own talents, but you have tied the hands of another. What a sinful servant is the one who is lazy himself and hinders the rest! This is sometimes done by wasting their time, sometimes by destroying confidence in them. You have played into Satan's hands and not only shown yourself to be lazy but kept others from working.