Same Prayer: Psalm 25:16-20
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Let's get right to the point. You can ask for forgiveness and help in the same prayer.
Sometimes people think they have to be really good for God to notice them. Or if they are hoping for something big to come, they pray for God to give it based on how hard they've been working, how diligent and faithful. Or they think they can't ask for that big miracle since they haven't been faithful lately. Maybe they should promise to be really good. Maybe they should live really good for a while. Then they can pray. Maybe they have wandered or drifted from God or they recently did something they are really embarrassed about, and they think they have to log some good days before they come to God with that request.
But look at all the different kinds of things (bolded) being asked for in Psalm 25:16-20 (ESV):
Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses.
Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.
Consider how many are my foes, and with what violent hatred they hate me.
Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me!
In the same prayer, you can pray about loneliness, trials, heartaches, forgiveness for sins, broken relationships, actual enemies, a guarded soul, and deliverance for the whole person.
God gave his Son Jesus out of love. Jesus died for us, rose three days later, and then called his killers and deniers and silent non-defenders to come follow him and believe in him. When he rose from the grave, he didn’t have a bitter I-told-you-so mentality, just a loving invitation to repent and believe and be in fully forgiven community with God.
That means, when you pray, you can go ahead and be a whole person. You have your ups and downs, your good deeds and your sins and your troubles and your weaknesses. You can take it all to this amazing God, all in the same prayer.
The reason being: you do not appeal to God based on your goodness. You appeal to God based on his goodness. The same Psalm puts that right up at the beginning of the poem: Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old (verse 6).
It's not: "Remember my good deeds, my good intentions, my good days." It's: "Remember your goodness, God." Be good to me because you are good. In all the ways I need your goodness—both forgiveness and help—let me take them all to you. All in the same prayer even.