Ezra 9:5-9 “At the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God and prayed: “O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our father until now, our guilt has been great… But now for a brief moment, the Lord our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a firm place in his sanctuary, and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage.”

When the Christians around you do something stupid (and by stupid I don’t mean your garden variety stupid because they were ignorant or careless, but, to borrow a phrase from money guy David Ramsey, this is a special kind of stupid because it’s just mean, gross, and scandalous), when that happens do you…

A) …go to your quiet place–your study, your room, your car–and fume for a while, or cry, or both?

B) …call up the friend, coworker, or family member in whom you can most confide and vent for half an hour about the idiots you have to work with?

C) …close up shop for the day, go home, go fishing, go work out, or binge watch episodes of Yellowstone so that you can numb your mind for awhile? Or

D) …go to church, fall down on your knees, and confess your sins for your part in your people’s behavior and plead for God’s grace?

Yeah, me either. The idea that I need to repent is not the first thing that comes to mind. But that’s what godly leaders in the past thought to do. We see Ezra’s response to his people’s sin in these words from Ezra 9. Do you remember Daniel’s prayer when he figured the seventy years of exile should be up? Do you remember all the first-person plural pronouns he used? “We are covered with shame…because of our unfaithfulness to you…we have sinned against you…we have not obeyed the Lord our God…”

This is Daniel praying, “…confessing my sin and the sin of my people,” he says. You remember Daniel. Of all the people in the Bible other than Jesus, is there anyone you can think of who would seem to have less to confess, less reason to include himself in the sins of the people he served?

Ezra would seem to have no more reason to include himself in his confession of the sins of his people than Daniel. Yet here he is, on his knees, confessing sins and seeking God’s grace.

Our prayers of confession aren’t an end in themselves, because “confession is good for the soul.” They are the prelude to our plea for God’s mercy. They turn our hearts and our souls, our ears and our eyes, to look for God’s grace.

Don’t leave your hearts and souls hanging, like the person waiting for the other half of a high five. Grace, forgiveness, assurances that God has dropped all the charges, paid every debt, and repaired all the damage we have done to our relationship with him—these are the main things. You can read some absolving passages of Scripture to yourself. You can pray some comforting, grace-filled thoughts. But will you? Do you? Or will you leave your parched soul hanging, thirsty for the cool drink that never comes?

Isn’t this why David was “glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord'”? There our prayers for God’s grace don’t go unanswered. Gathered with God’s people, we hear and speak words of pardon. We hear the gospel. We taste and eat the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Frustrated, tired, broken Christian people, your Father still loves you. Like Ezra, gather with his people, and plead his love for the frustrated, tired, broken people with whom you live and serve.