My Thirty-seventh Testimony
My Thirty-seventh Testimony
12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, 13 even though I was previously a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; 14 and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost. 16 Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost sinner Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life. 17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. -1 Timothy 1:12-17 NASB
Week 37, see back to our regularly scheduled programming. Time for another hard hitter. At least I feel like this should hit hard. Scripture doesn’t really shy away from having those hard conversations, which you can see how some people react, so learning more about being right with God is not always a walk in the park. Together though I know we can all get through anything and learn to grow.
I’m sure I’ve touched on this a few times but now I think it’s time to make it the main focus. So what do you think of confession? For instance, like the catholics do where they go to confessional, tell the priest their sins and all that. From a biblical standpoint they aren’t entirely wrong. Scripture does tell us to confess our sins to each other. The hail mary’s and the whole only the priest can forgive their sins and stuff though isn’t really a thing. In the old covenant yes the priest played a major role in that process but there were also sacrifices that needed to be made at the same time so there was a whole thing. Now though God removed the need for that process and commanded us to forgive one another.
How do you forgive someone for something they don’t tell you about? Sure we can use a blanket statement and say we forgive people but do you really feel like you forgive people? Honestly chances are you don’t. You say you forgive and you have forgiven some people but there are others you start telling yourself you don’t know if you could forgive them. I’m sure if we sat here for a few moments you could probably come up with a list of things that you would look at that list and go “Hmm, I don’t think I could forgive someone for that.” Or you find something that you know you could never forgive someone for. So we’re already off to a bad start.
If we have this kind of mindset how does that play into our feeling on confession? For some that’s easy to answer. The easy answer is that if you don’t confess something that means no one has to know which means you don’t have to worry if you are on the “I can forgive that” or “I can’t forgive that” list. No one wants to be on the I can’t list cause being on that list means people are going to start treating us different. They’ll stop wanting to be around us, they won’t talk as much, over time our interactions go from natural conversation to practical transactions. So rather than take that chance we decide we don’t need to confess and we can just deal with ourselves and maybe if it comes up we’ll deal with it then.
Now if you have that kind of mindset, how many others do you think have that mindset? Too many is the answer. Confession is an important part of being in faithful covenant with Christ. And I mean that on so many different levels, sure there is a personal benefit but there is so much more to it than that. Let’s first take a look at what scripture says about confessing and then I’ll explain.
13 Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; 15 and the prayer of faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. A prayer of a righteous person, when it is brought about, can accomplish much. -James 5:13-16 NASB
5 This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; 7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.5 This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; 7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. -1 John 1:5-10 NASB
12 When the righteous triumph, there is great glory,
But when the wicked rise, people hide themselves.
13 One who conceals his wrongdoings will not prosper,
But one who confesses and abandons them will find compassion.
14 How blessed is the person who fears always,
But one who hardens his heart will fall into disaster. -Proverbs 28:12-14 NASB
That’s just a few verses but let’s look at them for a second. James 5 says “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.” So there’s just a straight quote showing we should be confessing but look at what follows it. “A prayer of a righteous person, when it is brought about, can accomplish much”. That sounds pretty important already. 1 John “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.” Notice how it says all? And of course proverbs I think is very straightforward “one who conceals his wrongdoings WILL NOT prosper, BUT one who confesses and abandons them WILL FIND COMPASSION.”
Man, that’s such strong wording all started from confession. Now do I mean that we need to do the whole sit in a box confessing thru a hole in the wall and all that, no. But I genuinely believe we need to be confessing things to one another. Starting with the obvious personal reason, it will make you feel better. To finally remove that weight of feeling like you have to hide and you’re so afraid. That feeling goes away and you can truly start to heal. I mean I make jokes about those 12-step programs but I will say accepting and admitting you have a problem isn’t a bad start.
Outside of that though, confessing your sins to others is a great way to gauge where others are spiritually in their walk with God. Here’s what I mean by that. Believers, everyone knows that Jesus paid the price and his blood is enough to cover all sin, we preach it enough on Sundays and in groups, so what is your part in that process? To forgive one another. What does that look like? Well let’s start with the wrong answer. So as a believer if someone confessed to you they murdered someone and they want to repent and get right with God your response shouldn’t be that they are forgiven but you still want to be cautious about it cause who knows they might slip up again so you’ll forgive them for now.
Please find me scripture that says you can do that. Please find me a verse in context that says you can just forgive them in that moment but you are gonna remember what they did and wait to see if they mess up. If we’re reading the bible I can tell you right now you won’t find that verse anywhere. Matter of fact you’ll find lots of verses that say the opposite. We’re told to love our neighbor so we should forgive one another. Does anyone remember how it describes what love is? That’s ok I have a reminder right here.
4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. 5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, 6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. -1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NASB
Love keeps no account of a wrong suffered, it keeps every confidence, it believes ALL things, hopes ALL things, endures ALL things. So if you are just waiting to see if that person slips up wouldn’t that mean you are keeping record of what they have done? If you are waiting for them to fail cause you know it could happen, are you really believing that they have turned around? Do you have hope for them? If you can say yes, I think we need to talk because I don’t see how you could.
So if you are confessing your sins to someone and they start to treat you more at arm’s length, we know that person is struggling to do what God really wants for us. Let’s use the murder example again for a second. Some of you are probably going “oh man spencer how could you ask me to forgive a murderer. I know the bible says Jesus forgives sins but that’s hard” and I mean you’re not wrong it’s hard to think about forgiving someone like that but what if it was someone stealing? They haven’t killed anyone but now we’re dealing with a thief, I can already hear the switch flip that says “Well yeah I could probably forgive him easier than the murderer” Why? They both technically have committed sin and per scripture if you break one law you have broken them all. So the thief is no different from the murderer in biblical terms so why can you forgive one quicker than the other?
Because we as people like to rank our sins. Well at least I’m not an adulterer like so-so, at least I’m not a thief like the ones you see on TV and the list could continue in whatever variation you want but it still doesn’t change that we decided which sins we think are worse. So if someone else is dealing with a worse sin we don’t have to feel as bad about our own sins. We don’t think our sin is that big a deal so we don’t need to share it, everyone can just focus on the other person whose sin is much worse than mine. But that’s not how it works.
We lock away our confession and remove the opportunity to be healed from it because instead of fearing God and wanting to be right with him, we would rather say we are right with God and make everyone else think we are so they have to miss out on our struggles. They don’t get to aid us in our time of need and help strengthen us which could be the difference between a life of peace or a life full of anxiety and what seems like trial after trial. All because we’re afraid to lose the people around us cause we’re afraid that if we lose them then what is the point of believing.
That’s not the way. Let me tell you about confession and the power it has. Especially when accompanied with true forgiveness. Recently I’ve had a talk with two of my close friends that I would consider brothers in Christ. One of which I know is having a hard time. He’s down spiritually and is hurting. The other is one I know is working hard to be right with God has his moments but otherwise seems pretty strong. So both these men are on the path for God but clearly at two different ends.
The one who seemed much stronger, while yes he does have a higher level of faith he opened up to me. He asked to speak in private so won’t go into details cause that isn’t my place. Plus it doesn’t matter what he confessed to me just that he confessed. So he let me know a problem and it wasn’t something he thought of as struggling with but he knew it was wrong and he wants to be better and turn away from that. First off, that takes real courage. To take a moment and just open up to someone and admit there is a problem and that you want to make a change and be better. In truth that conversation could have been a disaster. I could have been super judgemental about it and started to chastise him about it and just try to drudge up that shame. How dare he.
But that’s not the reaction I had. Instead I took that moment to thank God because even though I’m a horrible sinner and I have my own sins to fight, God saw fit to still allow me the chance to hear someone’s confession and practice forgiveness. So I just reaffirmed with him that he has the right mindset, to understand that what he did was sin and while it might not be a problem now he knows it’s not something he could keep in his life. I reminded him of scripture that went along with his issue(another reason I keep encouraging you all to read) and we prayed together. I told him that I forgive him, not because my forgiveness is some magic cure to the problem but because I believe my God when he says he is faithful and will forgive us so we should forgive as well. We have a plan in place to check in on how he is doing since the confession and I have every faith that when I ask again I will hear good news. Why? because I believe in his words, I believe in his confession to wish to be better. So I have every hope in his success.
The other friend, I waited until it was just the two of us and just asked him how he was doing. How was he feeling about things and where he was spiritually. I will say that he opened up to me about being mad at God. Why I won’t say cause that isn’t my story to tell. However it’s a feeling I understand cause I’ve been there. I remembered my days of being mad at God thinking he could have just made things so much simpler and things would have to be the way they are. Which let’s be honest, technically yes he could, God could have chosen to go a completely different path yet he didn’t. Instead he wanted to give us the chance to choose him and that’s a plan I know I can’t fully understand but I can appreciate it because it’s different when you choose to do something versus when you are forced to do something and I know all of us can confirm that.
Now that he has opened up though I know where I can help. I know what things I can watch for to help him along his path and we’ve also got a plan in place for some things to do together that will help to strengthen him in his walk and mine. Cause I too believe his confession and his desire to want to understand and grow. Why would I do all this though? I’m sure it would be much easier if I just acted like this was their problem and they needed to figure it out. I’ll pray about it and the rest is up to them. Sounds like the easier path but is it really that much harder to say “Hey I forgive you, let’s work together on this”?
I’m coming to understand that is much harder to just leave people to their own sins and let them come to terms with them on their own than it is to forgive them and help them to move on from it. I mean I myself am a product of that forgives. I know when I first started wanting to really get back to God and really understand I know there are those that didn’t fully believe someone like me would ever change. I mean I even had a few so-called friends tell me I would fail and revert back to my old ways cause there was nothing wrong with me. But even without them I know there were others who had their doubts I was being truthful in my desire to walk the holy path. Yet I had scripture that told me God forgives us our sins and one person who made sure that he checked on me and listened to me confess my problems along with his problems and not once did he treat me like I would fail. He knew it would be hard but he forgave me for my past and the sins I once held in high regard in my life and believed that I truly wanted to walk this path together and be right with God, the right way.
Here we are 37 weeks into what seems like my 3rd year now since my return to God and I’m still going strong cause I know I have true brothers in faith who practice forgiveness and we are working hard to hold each other accountable to a scriptural standard not our own but the word. So who is your confession buddy? Have you found someone that you feel you can confess your sins to and work with to overcome them with God by your side? If not, I offer my ears to listen. I don’t care what the sin is, how bad you think it is or isn’t. I don’t care if you feel like it’s such a trivial sin that it shouldn’t even be a problem or if it’s something that is life-altering. I’m still going to offer it. And I offer it with one promise to you. I promise you that I will do everything I can to demonstrate true forgiveness like scripture tells me to do and if I don’t ever seem like I am then all you have to do is remind me it’s in scripture. Stephen literally prayed for God not to hold the sins of those stoning him against them. Jesus on the cross pleaded for our forgiveness after he had just gone thru the most excruciating death possible. So if they can do it then we can too.
Think about it and if it’s not me pick someone. Don’t put it off any longer we need to be strengthening each other and we can’t do that if we don’t know what forces we need to ask God to wash away. Peace be with you.
58 When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep. -Acts 7:58-60 NASB