|
Journey: Confession
|
Journey From The Cross:
A Time Of Confession
Morning Meditation
Read Nehemiah 1:5-7
Nehemiah 1:5-7 NIV
O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you.
Our God is great and awesome. Enjoy his covenant of love with you.
Ask him to let his ear be attentive and his eyes open to your prayers.
Surrender yourself to the humility of being a servant of God.
Morning Prayer
Take the list “sins” you created during the previous devotion. Confess them before God.
Ask God for the courage to confess these same sins to one of your Christian brothers or sisters.
Tell God your joys, fears, and needs. Praise him in everything.
Pray for knowledge of God’s will for you and the power to carry that out.
Ask the Holy Spirit to interpret the scriptures you are about to read.
Morning Bible Study
The Greek word for confess is homologeo. The meaning that applies to this devotion is “to confess by way of admitting oneself guilty of what one is accused of, the result of inward conviction," It also means “to agree with God.”
(from Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, Copyright (c)1985, Thomas Nelson Publishers)
God defines sin in the Bible. When we confess our sin, we agree with God’s accusation. Read 1 John 1:8-10. If we confess our sin, “God is faithful and just and will forgive.”
1 John 1:8-10 NIV
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
Confessing to God is just the first step of the act of confession. We are also supposed to confess our sins to each other. (James 5:15-16) Some churches have a formal way for confession and others do not. Regardless of who or how we confess to each other, there is something humbling and sweet about Christian brothers and sisters accepting confessions. Humility is a necessary step to becoming righteous. It is worth it. James 5:16 says the prayers of a righteous man (or woman) are “powerful and effective.”
James 5:15-16 NIV
If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
We see many examples of public confessions in the Bible. Paul often confessed his sins to others. At one point, he admitted that he did things he did not wish to do. Read 2 Corinthians 11:20-21 for an example of his confession on behalf of himself and the people he was writing to.
2 Cor 11:20-21 NIV
In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!
Read David’s sweet prayer of confession in Psalms 32:5. Yes, David is confessing to God. He is also confessing to us since we are reading this confession. Reading David’s confessions, allows us to identify with his humanness. The same is true when we hear each other’s confessions.
Psalms 32:5 NIV
Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD" — and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
No one enjoys the humility of confession until the rewards afterward. Confessing to God is usually easier than confession to humans. After all, we know God loves us unconditionally. Besides, he already knew about our sin. What have we got to loose?
Many struggle with the pain of guilt long after they have confessed their sins to God. They know they have grace and yet still feel guilty. Confession to humans is essential for relief from guilt feelings. By confessing to humans, we become a humble sojourner with the family of God. Unwillingness to confess to humans demonstrates a lack of humility. If you are thinking about skipping confession to humans, remember that God tends to get us humble one way or another. I prefer a willing act of obedience to the baseball bat of humiliation. If we “admit our sins and make a clean breast of them, God will not let us down.” (1 John 1:9)
1 John 1:9 The Message
On the other hand, if we admit our sins — make a clean breast of them — he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself.
Application
Karen had a terrible secret. She was 29 and still tortured by it. She continually begged God for forgiveness. Her church taught her grace but she could not release her guilt.
Karen’s story of guilt goes back many years. Karen was a PK (a preacher’s kid.) She was active in church and enjoying being a freshman in high school. She was excited because her father and allowed her to go to a high school football game. It was her first one. She went with her two best friends.
Like many teenagers, Karen enjoyed pranks. During the football game, Karen and her friends left the stands and went behind the bleachers. As Karen stood there, she realized that they were just a few feet from the smaller scoreboard. No one was standing near it. Karen dared her friends to climb the scoreboard, wave at the crowds, and climb down before anyone caught them. Her girlfriends accepted the dare and climbed the pole. As they reached the lights, Karen watched with horror as the lights flickered, flamed, and died. Her friends fell to the ground, dead from electrocution. Karen ran back to the stands in shock.
The entire school grieved the tragic loss of these precious fun loving girls. Racked by grief and guilt, everyone thought Karen’s hysteria normal for losing two close friends. No one questioned her about the deaths. In desperation, Karen confessed to her father. “It was my fault. They didn’t want to do it but I kept teasing them. I called them a chicken.” Worried about the repercussions for Karen and his ministry, her father advised her to keep silent. “You can’t bring them back. Do not tell a soul. The scandal would hurt everyone. Ask God for forgiveness and drop it.”
Karen begged God for forgiveness, night after night, but could find no peace. She began overeating to mask the pain and gained weight rapidly. She became a recluse, focusing only on her studies. “I did not feel worthy of having a friend,” she told me. When she went to college, she began experimenting with drugs. By this time, Karen had lost all respect for herself and had even stopped taking care of her personal hygiene. “At age 29, I was addicted to food and drugs, overweight, alone, and hopeless.”
Someone told Karen about Overeaters Anonymous. “I attended meetings but they did not help. I could not understand why others could recover and I could not. I had not even attempted to deal with the drug use. One of the steps of overeaters anonymous is to humbly admit to God, ourselves, and another person the exact nature of our wrongs.” Out of desperation, she sat down and talked with a Christian woman who was also a recovering member of Overeaters Anonymous. After only a few minutes, the entire sordid story poured out of her. Karen’s new friend held her as she cried. This was the first time she had talked about the incident since the night she told her father.
“As I confessed, I could feel myself getting lighter. We talked about the grace of God. I left the meeting, knowing God loved and had forgiven me. I realized I had forgiven myself for a childish prank that had destroyed over half of my life.” Eventually, Karen even talked to the parents of the girls. Neither parent blamed her. Karen had to go through a process of forgiving her father for his poor and possibly selfish advice to keep silent. Karen lost weight, stopped using drugs, and began taking care of herself. She continued to be active in Overeaters Anonymous and grew active in the church of her childhood.
Secrets kill the soul. Karen’s confession to God and her father was not enough because it perpetuated her secret. By opening up to someone who loved her unconditionally, Karen was able to experience the grace that was already hers. “I think of her as God with skin on.”
Take your list from yesterday. Pray about whom to ask to listen to your list. Pick a loving and discrete Christian. Call and ask if you can read them the list. Do this immediately.
After reading the list, get down on your knees. Ask God for the willingness to allow him to remove all of these sins. Offer them to him in humility.
Keep the list. We are not finished with it yet. Tomorrow’s lesson will be about making amends.
|
|