Confessing
I've really been hit recently with my sin. Not that i've commited horrible acts of sin in the past few weeks, and i'm really feeling the brunt of that, but just "sin" in general, and how when we confess our sins to God, we see ourselves laid bare in the light of God's word. When we confess our sins, it involves viewing ourselves from the outside and seeing ourselves as we truly are. It involves examining ourselves, uncovering the hidden secrets in the deepest parts of our heart and then finding it stained with sin. That's what i've been dealing with. I'm a sinner, whoever reading this is a sinner, and knowing that, the next step before our Lord is confession.
I'm finding confession to be hard recently, but i'm daily realizing that only the grace of God can bring us to admit our true character. Confession is so hard, because it is so disgusting to the human heart. As finite humans, a lot of times i'm seeing how we'd rather focus on an ideal image of ourselves, and what we would LIKE to think we are. In doing so, we gloss over what we truly are.
When we are faced with our sin, or when somebody confronts us with it, we are so apt to deny it in some way. We either dismiss it and say to ourselves, "it won't happen next time", or we put it in our "Sins I know I have to confess and deal with, but I don't want to worry about it now" part of our brains. However, the teaching of scripture is so contrary to that. This is why John warns us in scripture not to deny that we have sinned. The more we deny parts of our sin nature, no matter how little the sin is we won't confess, the further we get from God. When we take a minute to examine who Jesus directed some of his hardest words to, it wasn't the prostitutes or tax collectors who were looked upon then as "real sinners of the world". That wasn't the case at all. His sharpest words were for those who considered themselves BETTER then the sinners, but who were really "greedy wolves" as he describes inside their hearts.
We don't have to dig around in the muck of society to find those without God. You'll find these people in your local country clubs and respectable churches as much as you'll find them in porn shops and gay bars. "Respectable" sins may be more disgusting to our Lord than those sins of social outcasts. Have you been confessing what you see as your "respectable" sins.?I havn't been as much as I need to. Those of us who call ourselves "righteous" will not make it into the kingdom of God. Only those who CONFESS their sins will be admitted. ( That may sound scary, but take it up with the Lord...I didn't come up with it.)
Another thing that has been made known to me recently is that instead of confessing our sins, we would rather talk about those of others. When we disgregard our sinfulness it only goes to show that we may think we have the truth, but we really dont. Who are we kidding ? John chapter 1 vs 8 says " If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us". We all have sinned and we all have fallen short of God's glory (Rom 3:23), when we really know this, we have the truth. We sin, and we fall short, but God's grace abounds to us that confess our sins.
I'm not calling anybody out in particular about this, i'm examining myself here, and sharing it with you the reader. I don't want to use this blog to spill the deepest longings of my heart. However in my relationship with the Lord, the Holy Spirit will tweek my heart sometimes, and spur me on to share what he's telling me with others who need encouragement. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. What i'm dealing with isn't really deep and personal, but I believe it is something every Christian can relate to. So if you are a Christian and you are reading this, hopefully you can relate to it, and what the Lord has laid on my heart will also touch yours as well. If you're not a Christian and you're reading this, it's my prayer that the Lord would speak to your heart and bring you into a relationship with Him.
It's one thing to be aware of our sin, it is another thing to DO SOMETHING about it. We can take pleasure in our sin, we can fret about it all we want...OR..we can CONFESS IT. And as we read in God's love story to His people "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness". ( 1 John 1:9) Which will you choose ?
I'm finding confession to be hard recently, but i'm daily realizing that only the grace of God can bring us to admit our true character. Confession is so hard, because it is so disgusting to the human heart. As finite humans, a lot of times i'm seeing how we'd rather focus on an ideal image of ourselves, and what we would LIKE to think we are. In doing so, we gloss over what we truly are.
When we are faced with our sin, or when somebody confronts us with it, we are so apt to deny it in some way. We either dismiss it and say to ourselves, "it won't happen next time", or we put it in our "Sins I know I have to confess and deal with, but I don't want to worry about it now" part of our brains. However, the teaching of scripture is so contrary to that. This is why John warns us in scripture not to deny that we have sinned. The more we deny parts of our sin nature, no matter how little the sin is we won't confess, the further we get from God. When we take a minute to examine who Jesus directed some of his hardest words to, it wasn't the prostitutes or tax collectors who were looked upon then as "real sinners of the world". That wasn't the case at all. His sharpest words were for those who considered themselves BETTER then the sinners, but who were really "greedy wolves" as he describes inside their hearts.
We don't have to dig around in the muck of society to find those without God. You'll find these people in your local country clubs and respectable churches as much as you'll find them in porn shops and gay bars. "Respectable" sins may be more disgusting to our Lord than those sins of social outcasts. Have you been confessing what you see as your "respectable" sins.?I havn't been as much as I need to. Those of us who call ourselves "righteous" will not make it into the kingdom of God. Only those who CONFESS their sins will be admitted. ( That may sound scary, but take it up with the Lord...I didn't come up with it.)
Another thing that has been made known to me recently is that instead of confessing our sins, we would rather talk about those of others. When we disgregard our sinfulness it only goes to show that we may think we have the truth, but we really dont. Who are we kidding ? John chapter 1 vs 8 says " If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us". We all have sinned and we all have fallen short of God's glory (Rom 3:23), when we really know this, we have the truth. We sin, and we fall short, but God's grace abounds to us that confess our sins.
I'm not calling anybody out in particular about this, i'm examining myself here, and sharing it with you the reader. I don't want to use this blog to spill the deepest longings of my heart. However in my relationship with the Lord, the Holy Spirit will tweek my heart sometimes, and spur me on to share what he's telling me with others who need encouragement. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. What i'm dealing with isn't really deep and personal, but I believe it is something every Christian can relate to. So if you are a Christian and you are reading this, hopefully you can relate to it, and what the Lord has laid on my heart will also touch yours as well. If you're not a Christian and you're reading this, it's my prayer that the Lord would speak to your heart and bring you into a relationship with Him.
It's one thing to be aware of our sin, it is another thing to DO SOMETHING about it. We can take pleasure in our sin, we can fret about it all we want...OR..we can CONFESS IT. And as we read in God's love story to His people "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness". ( 1 John 1:9) Which will you choose ?
posted by Brandon Zangus at
10:09 AM
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