Believing Thomas

James 5:16 “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (NIV)

It is hard to confess sins. I was not raised in the Roman Catholic tradition of confessing to a priest, so I don’t have any idea what that is like, but I do know that it is very uncomfortable to tell someone you know how you have sinned.

Why would we do something so uncomfortable? What benefit could that have for us?

The benefit that James 5:16 mentions is that when we confess our sins to each other and pray for each other, we can be healed. That’s a major benefit. Is it worth the discomfort of confessing our sins?

Personally, I’ve wrestled with two major obstacles with confessing my sins to another Christian. The first is just the sheer embarrassment. I can’t imagine that anyone else could have such embarrassing sins in their past. You know, because everyone I know must be perfect, right?

So, if I select another growing Christian to make a confession, I shouldn’t have to worry about being embarrassed about my sins. The point of confession is to pray for each other and find healing, so that presumes that we are confessing to someone who is also going to confess to us, and pray for us. This is not likely to be someone who is going to laugh at us, or spread gossip about us. So that rules out obstacle number one, right?

The second obstacle to confessing sin to a fellow growing Christian is that we feel responsible to them not to continue sinning the same sin over and over again. They are not only praying that we are released from and healed from that sinful past, but they are going to be listening to our confessions again in the future, so we feel pressured not to continue sinning the same sin.

In my experience, this is the tougher of the two obstacles. I have a couple growing Christian friends with whom I feel particularly connected, and with one of them, I have engaged in confession and attempted to be the kind of fellow Christian man who can act as a mutual growth-partner. In other words, “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). The only way that my friend and I can help each other, is to trust each other. And the only way we can trust each other, is not to judge each other.  To confess, you have to trust. So, to be healed, you have to trust.

I have gone through some personal challenges over the last year, and the story of Jonah comes to mind. I think that most adult Christians don’t apply that lesson to ourselves, because it is a story that generally gets relegated to children’s church and Sunday school classes–there is something cartoon-like about a big fish story. But Jonah was an adult who ignored God and lived to learn a lesson from it. Even if we aren’t all called to spread God’s word the way Jonah was, I think a lot of adult Christians have ignored God’s plans for our lives.

Nahum 1:7 The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him…

That verse is in the middle of a bunch of doom and disaster warnings against those who do not live according to God’s instructions, and do I not know personally how much the Lord is good and a refuge in times of trouble? Do I not know how much He cares for those who trust in Him? Definitely not something I should be keeping to myself!