Why is repentance so important to God? Because only it can lead a person to reduce the sinfulness of his life. It reconciles a person with the Creator, testifies to a change of spirit and a desire to live differently than in the past. Confession is created so that a person can start all over again, as if from a clean slate. A rehearsal of confession is a prayer of repentance. What it is?
Psalm of regret of the king
There is no single or most important formula for repentance. In fact, an appeal to the Lord can have very different forms, up to prayer in your own words and a request to forgive a sinner or a sinner. However, the oldest prayer of repentance in the Bible is the 50th psalm of David, in which the Jewish king apologizes for the terrible sin of murder, committed under the influence of envy and lust. It does not describe what exactly David did, so the 50th psalm is a universal formula of repentance. It will be in tune with your misfortune. In the prayer rule, it is usually read not in the evening, but in the morning. But if you feel that you have succumbed to sinful attraction, and it’s difficult for you to fight, then you can memorize it and read it at any time. It’s still good to remember the prayer “May God Risen”, it helps not to sin if you read it when you only want to commit a sin.
Why Orthodox Greeks were ambassadors
In general, almost all prayers from the prayer book have a repentant spirit. An Orthodox person is always critical of himself and knows how to see his mistakes. True believers of this denomination know how to be sincerely diplomatic, although this seems like a paradoxical statement. However, the fact: in the Ottoman Empire, Orthodox Christians were often appointed ambassadors and emissaries. They knew how to create positive relationships, largely because they saw their fallacies. And the prayer of repentance read every day did not allow us to forget about our own imperfection. However, usually she was not alone.
Calling for the Holy Spirit
In the evening rule there are more purely penitential appeals than in the morning. In the third prayer to the Holy Spirit, the believer checks himself for compliance with very high moral standards. For example, even upsetting another person is a serious moral violation. To show anger is to provoke a negative reaction of another person, that is, to make the guilty of an innocent. Of course, the manifestation of retaliatory anger is not only your responsibility, but before God at the Court you will be responsible for yourself, and not for “that guy”. Therefore, to provoke is to "slander with anger." The remaining sins from this prayer are more understandable. For example, to lie, to sleep more than a measure, to incite another person to inappropriate behavior, to think about indecent (if just a thought occurred to you, but you did not focus on it, this does not count). In the same prayer envy, gloating, drunkenness, overeating are mentioned.
However, the most important Christian prayer of repentance is the daily confession of sins. It mentions the most common mistakes, but if necessary, this list can and should be supplemented with your own sins. You can use ascetic Orthodox literature for this. And remember that the Lord forgives only those who repent, however, innocence is better than repentance.