Who can discern his errors?
      Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
      may they not rule over me.
Then will I be blameless,
      innocent of great transgression.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
      be pleasing in your sight,
      O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:12-14)

Vernon, Vermont, Police Chief Ian McCollin got probably the easiest arrest of his police career last week.

McCollin was driving at night on a quiet road when twenty-eight-year-old Brian Condo pulled up behind him, rolled down his passenger window, and said he was looking for a police officer to arrest him. McCollin, unaccustomed to having anyone pull him over and ask to be arrested, called for back-up. "You won't believe this one," he said over the radio. Then he asked Condo why he wanted to be arrested.

"I'm drunk," Condo replied.

A breath test showed that Condo was indeed four times over the legal limit for the state of Vermont. It also turns out he was driving on a suspended license. He was charged with driving under the influence and driving without a license and taken into custody. He was released within a few hours pending arraignment.

I have to tell you, I appreciate what Brian Condo did. Not getting behind the wheel under the influence, of course, but I appreciate that at some point he realized what he was doing and asked a police officer to stop him. Why didn't he just stop the car and get out? I don't know, and maybe he doesn't either. But drunk as he was, he had the presence of mind to do what a lot of people never seem to manage. He asked to be saved from himself.

"Who can discern his errors?" David asked in Psalm 19. That's one of the human race's most fundamental problems. Few of us can. Oh, I'm pretty good at seeing the sins and failures and mistakes of others. I have 20/20 vision when it comes to the transgressions of my friends or my church or my wife or my son. I'm oblivious to my own. How often have I held other people to blame for problems between us and failed to see my own responsibility? How often have a grown impatient with the sins of others while nurturing mine? How often have I picked at the splinter in my brother's eye while looking right past the fence post in my own?

"Forgive my hidden faults," David asks, because he knows that most of us have a better opinion of ourselves than the facts warrant. He knows that we often need forgiveness even when we think we don't.

That's because he knows why.
The other problem, of course, is that sometimes we know what we're contemplating is wrong and go through with it anyway. "Keep your servant also from willful sins," David begs God. "Slap the cuffs on me. Pull me over and arrest me. Stop me from doing what I know I shouldn't." That's a difficult prayer to pray, sometimes, because sin can have such a hold on us. It's tough for an alcoholic to beg God not to let him take another drink when all he wants is another drink. You probably have at least one struggle like that, one temptation so powerful that you're not always sure you even WANT to stop.

I hope you find some strength in this psalm, because its author obviously believes in a God who doesn't leave us to struggle alone with sin. He is able to forgive the sins we don't recognize and he is able to help us defeat the sins we recognize and want anyway.

I don't know that the court will be lenient on Brian Condo, though I suspect it might. But, I know for sure that grace is always the response we get from God when we go to him with our sins, hidden or willful, and ask for his help. He doesn't punish us as our sins deserve. He doesn't berate us. There are no "Why do you keep doing this?" lectures from God. That's because he knows why. In Christ he experienced humanity. He knows first hand the lure of sin and the weakness of flesh and how faint the voice of God sometimes can be in human ears. He knows how easily we can be rendered blind to the condition of our hearts and how much we can want the things we know we ought not to have. So he welcomes prayers like this psalm: the words of a human being who wants to be blameless and innocent even when she knows that ship has sailed.

The cross was about God making that possible. So approach him in confidence, asking him to save you from yourself. That's exactly what the gospel is about: making the words of our mouths and the deepest thoughts of our hearts pleasing to God. He will work with you and in you to do just that.

All you have to do is ask.