Confession (pt 3)

In my experience, I have noticed that when the need arises for me to confess, I am met with formidable opposition. Just thinking about wording my failures to my wife makes my breathing labored, my heart pound, and my temperature rise. The effect on my mind and body is identical to how I react to an unexplained noise during the night that makes me wonder if someone has broken into our house.

Ironically, Sarah explained to me that when she realizes that I am about to confess, she reacts the exact same way.

In essence, when my sin is exposed, we both feel under attack.

We feel vulnerable

We feel defensive

A recent conversation with my brother has been very enlightening.

He said that when we sin there are two basic consequences; shame and fear (as illustrated in Genesis 3). For simplicity, I will focus on the shame aspect

When we sin, we are filled with shame. At this point there are only three options available to us.

Option 1: Rid yourself of the shame.

This option is often taken even before the sin takes place, but after it becomes clear that our sin is imminent. The only way to do this without exposing our sin, is to rationalize. It is possible for us to convince ourselves that what we have done (or what we are about to do) is not something to be ashamed of and so effectively eliminate the shame.

The main problem with this option is that it lowers our standard of holiness and further separates us from God who is the source of true healing.

Option 2: Hide and fix

This option is best illustrated by the change in parking habit I have noticed when our preacher returns the church bus to its spot. For quite some time he and I would always park the bus in the same manner, backed into the space with the passenger side facing the church entrance. A couple of weeks ago he made a wide right turn causing a driver in the right lane to crash into our passenger side. Since then, I have been parking the bus as I have been, but I've noticed that anytime our preacher drives the bus it is parked with the damaged side facing away from the church entrance where no one can see the damage. This will probably continue until we are able to get the bus fixed.

While this is great way to deal with damaged vehicles, it is completely unworkable for the damaged life. I have tried many times to conceal my sin so long that when I finally confessed my sin, it would only be as a distant memory when I used to be screwed up. As you can probably guess, I never achieved a great enough distance between myself and my sin to be able to confess without shame. In fact, it seemed that when I hid my sin and tried to fix it secretly, my sin only increased. While this option is better than option 1 in that it recognizes the sin and attempts to deal with it, it is not a viable option in dealing with our sin and subsequent shame.

Option 3: Expose

This option is the most difficult route to choose because it makes us incredibly vulnerable and breaks through our facades. More importantly, it is met with the most opposition because it is the ONLY route to true healing, and there are vast forces arrayed against us that do not want us healed.

And so it is that when we seek to expose sin, or when sin is exposed by our loved ones, we feel under attack. But if we have died to our sinful nature, we recognize that it is no longer we who sin, but it is the sinful nature within us. Therefore, when we confess our sin, we are standing with God agreeing that the sin is wrong and shameful, but we do not let it identify us. If we let our standing with God be the source of our identity, we can be free to confess our sin without the attack on our identity, for it is in Christ's righteousness that we stand.

Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ that rescues me from this body of death.

Please continue to share any thougths on the subject as I strive to better understand the nature of sin and confession.

Confession (pt 2)

...the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. (Rom 10:9-10)

If I did nothing else but read this scripture in front of our congregation, it would make many people uncomfortable and nervous...Why?

In a devotional I gave recently, I listed the FIVE STEPS OF SALVATION (the all caps indicates that this phrase sounds best by the horror/ suspense movie trailer guy...you know, "Coming this summer...are you ready for the...) The point I was making in my devotional is how little we actually DO in these five steps. Hear- pretty passive. Believe-unquantifiable. Repent-very subjective. Confess-just words no real action. Then there's the main point that the whole thing is leading up to; BE BAPTIZED-PASSIVE. I have never heard of anyone baptizing themselves, and as John Risse said, "Unless God meets you there, all you have done is taken a bath." The whole point of the devotional was to point out that our salvation is not something our actions, doctrines, or formulas can achieve. That point was apparently lost on one of our older gentlemen (whom I respect and love dearly), seeing as how he came up to me afterwards and congratulated me on giving the FIVE STEPS OF SALVATION.

The reason I tell that story is because we get really nervous and defensive of our FIVE STEP formula when we see a TWO STEP. It is not because God is being challenged; how could he be challenged by his own Word? It is not because scripture is being challenged; it takes a greater respect for scripture to look at verses like this than to skip over them as we are tempted to do. No, we are defensive because our traditions and interpretations are being challenged.

We are afraid that if we admit the validity of anothers stance on baptism, that we will undermine our own confidence in the truth. After all, if we can't confidently stand on our views of scripture, how can we dare to expect others to take us seriously when we teach on it?

Confidence in our interpretation of scripture is confidence in the flesh.

Confidence that God's love and grace can not only cover over a multitude of sins but a multitude of doctrines as well demonstrates a humble confidence in the one who saves.

To confess that Jesus is Lord means we have to:
Confess that our congregation, denomination, our formulas or doctrines are NOT lord.
Confess that we have fallen grievously short of perfect attitudes, perfect practice, perfect behavior, and perfect understanding of scripture and therefore desperately need salvation.
Confess that we have much to learn from ALL our brothers and sisters who seek the ONE LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST.

Confession (pt 1)

Sin separates, confession reunites.

When Adam and Eve first walked the earth, they had an intimate relationship with God, sin destroyed that. They began to hide, put up barriers. They were afraid of being exposed. Every child walks this same path. Children have the interesting habit of saying exactly what is on their mind, regardless of whether or not they should. But then they stumble across sin. They find that they don't want others to know about some of their feelings and actions. This is when they enter into the secretive teenage years. I have heard so many parents complain that they just don't know what is going on in their teenagers life.

These early teenage years can be very lonely, insecure and isolated.

Then it happens.

For me it was about my junior year in high school. There was a shift. I no longer felt ashamed of my acne, my crooked nose, or my gut. I no longer felt ashamed for my shortcomings as a Christian. I began to let people in. I don't think I ever had fun in school until my upperclassmen years at Wylie High.

We are seeing it occur all over our church. There have been several people at our church with secret sin. When we started our small groups, we took turns laying it all out on the line. Afterwards, we made it a point to tell each other we loved them. It has been a freeing experience for all. It is an incredible feeling to be known completely, and still be loved. This is how God loves us, but we can't come to grips with that until we let another human love us completely.

David says it this way:

Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit.
When I kept silent my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer
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
Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found
surely when the mighty waters rise,
they will not reach him.
You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.
(Psalm 32)

Confession (Intro)

You might think by the title of this post that I am about to share with you some dark reason why I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. And while I am sure I could have put something down on this page, the reason I haven't been on here as much lately is because I have been out there much more. It started with spring break. We took a group hiking in the smokies and then took a group to the infamous Bible Bowl. I had nothing to do with planning either trip, but as the youth minister, I get to go along for the ride and take the credit (or blame in many cases). Below are some of the pictures from the week.



After spring break, I have been wrapped up in a Rick Atchley series called United Kingdom. It can be found at the Richland Hills Church of Christ website. Search the sermons back to last spring and summer. It is an 8 sermon series that I keep listening to over and over. I feel there is a great deal in there that needs to be boldly proclaimed in our area churches.

With all of that said, I will be filling in for our preacher on May 6th. He has been going through a series on Spiritual Growth so I asked if I could speak on confession.

I want to pour out some of my preliminary thoughts here, so that anyone who is interested can help me work through this subject.

To Be CONTINUED