Confession to God, Who already knows our sins anyway, is humbling. But confessing to others who only see our facade most of the time? Wow, that’s truly humbling!
“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Jas 5:16 NIV
The truth is that, even after we are freed from sin, sin still continues to tempt us, and too often we still fall for it. While our identity has changed, from death to life, from sinner to saint, from enemy of God to His beloved, holy children…we still continue to sin. Sometimes it is because we are being ignorant. Sometimes it is because we are acting immature. Sometimes it is even because we are being rebellious. Confession time: this has been my struggle for several months now. Things in my life have not panned out the way I wanted them to, and so, I have been acting out against God, instead of trusting Him in the midst of the challenges. But this is what children do, right? No excuse. Sin is sin, and it always brings problems, and worse, it grieves the Holy Spirit. (Eph 4:30) This is just another reason to be so grateful for our Patient and Merciful and Loving God. While never condoning my foolishness, God understands and continues to draw me back to His gracious side…and so, by His Grace, I continue to have moments of clarity and peace, where I feel like I can come up for air, just breathe and enjoy the SON.
Since the truth is we will still sin this side of Heaven, we must confess to God in order to restore the flow of His Grace to us, then through us, but we must also confess to each other too. Why you ask? Because we were never meant to walk this journey alone. We need one another because we were created to love and be loved. God first, but then others too. We are relational beings and so we need to have relationships with others, and since we are created in the Image of God, Who has endless capacity to love, we too need others, in addition to God, in order to be fulfilled. When God formed Adam and he still did not have someone else like him, it was the first “not good” of Creation. (Gen 2:18) While we cannot walk apart from God (Jn 15:5), we also need one another to support, to encourage, to offer insight, to comfort, to listen, to affirm, to correct… and to pray for us.
Join me in memorizing 52 verses this year:
January: 1- Jn 3:16; 2- 2Co 5:17; 3- Jas 2:26; 4- Eph 2:10
February: 5- Jn 10:10; 6- Ro 6:23; 7- Rev 21:4; 8- Php 4:13
March: 9- 1Pe 5:7; 10- Jn 8:32; 11- Dt 30:19; 12- Jn 3:30; 13- 2Chron 20:3
April: 14- 2Chron 20:12; 15- 2Chron 20:15b; 16- 2Chron 20:17
May: 17- Ro 8:28; 18- 1Co 13:13; 19- Php 2:12; 20- Mt 5:4
June: 21- Lk 23:42; 22- Jas 4:7; 23- Pr 22:6; 24- Mt 5:3; 25- Jn 14:6
July: 26- Jas 2:19; 27- Dt 31:8; 28- Jn 14:15; 29- Jn 8:11
August: 30- Ro 8:1; 31- Pr 4:23; 32- Pr 18:21; 33- Ps 118:24; 34- 1Jn 4:4
September: 35- Mt 16:24; 36- Isa 53:6; 37- Ps 23:1-6
October: 38- Heb 4:12; 39- Jn 15:5
40- Jas 5:16
<>< Peace, Diane
