Find a fellow believer with whom you can share your heart, not just the good things, but more importantly, the sin and ugly stuff from which you’d love to be set free and be healed. Keep short lists with this Christian friend and see how you will be healed like it says in James 5.
SHAUNA: Hi, I’m Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope, reminding us all to confess our sins to one to another, and you will be healed!
JONI: I was talking to my friend Connie the other day and she shared how lately she’s been nagging her husband. She said, “I’ve been awful to him,” she said. Now, I know Connie, and I wouldn’t consider her an “awful” person, and so when I tried to make light of her comment, she insisted, “Oh, no, Joni, I’ve been acting terribly toward my husband and it’s important to me that I let you know.” “Why’s that?” I asked. Well, that’s when she reminded me of an important little verse in James 5 where it says that we should confess our sins to each other so that we might be healed. Connie said to me, “Joni, I really need you to understand my problem with sin, because I want to change. I want God to heal me and make me a better wife.”
Afterward, our conversation got me thinking. Because I don’t know too many people like Connie and I’d venture to say you don’t, either. We just don’t take sin seriously enough – at least to the point where we make it a regular habit to confess our sins to another person so that we might be held accountable; so that we might be healed and changed. Nowadays, confession and repentance just isn’t a very public thing in the church. We’d rather our friends did not know the problems we have or the sinful habits we keep private.
I tell you, it wasn’t that way in olden days. Confession and repentance was very public, it was a community thing, far from private. Let me give you an example from the Old Testament. Because back then, when someone presented an offering before God for his sin, it involved presenting before the priest not a bird, not two birds, not stalks of grain; no, it meant bringing an ox. When you were convicted of sin, you had to bring a bullock, an ox before the priest. I mean, just think of that – a man leading a big, lumbering ox through the streets of Jerusalem to the temple didn’t have the luxury of ‘hiding his sin’ as it were or ‘his need of repentance’ from the rest of God’s people. Because anybody who happened to look out his window and see that neighbor heading to the temple with an ox knew that guy had blown it, and blown it big time.
Oh, friend, how good, how healthy it would be if we really did confess our sins one to another [just the way James 5 tells us to]. Rarely is repentance communal. Instead, our confession and repentance is almost invisible, becoming a tiny, little private matter between us and God, and unfortunately, without public exposure of sin, deception can creep in and the church, as a whole, cannot help but suffer.
If my friend Connie were sitting next to me today, she would be right up front; she’d encourage us to be accountable before another Christian friend. Find someone [perhaps an older Christian you respect]; find a fellow believer with whom you can share your heart, not just the good things in your heart, but more importantly, the evil things; the sin; the ugly stuff from which you’d love to be set free and be healed. Keep short lists with this Christian friend. I mean, we all say that we are sinners, right? Yet when was the last time we detailed our personal offenses to another? When was the last time we said, “I’m not just a sinner; I have specifically sinned, and here’s where.” Well, James 5 says, “… confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you might be healed.” That’s right, healing will come. It’s what happens when you take your ox to the priest.
SHAUNA: Thanks for listening today. Go to joniradio.org and let us know how we can pray for you. Remember, that’s joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends