Growing up in the church, I saw a lot of people come forward to confess sin, asking for the prayers of the church but rarely did I witness anyone actually doing that. Oh, they went foward and they made a confession of wrong doing, but they almost always left their actual sin hidden behind behind the ambiguous "I have sinned."
Sinned how, doing what, against whom? Information withheld, confession aborted, sinned hidden from sight. Why is that? Why do people respond to the invitation, come before the church and then hide their sin in a cloud of generality? Because they are embarrased, they are afraid, they don't trust the people before whom they stand making a statement of their need to confess but not actually confessing.
This responding to an invitation, going before everyone gathered on a Sunday morning and confessing sin doesn't work because we don't really know or trust all those people out there and it isn't biblical to begin with. The Bible doesn't say to confess your sins before a gathered collection of saints and sinners, friends and foes, associates and strangers (all of which are there on any given Sunday). We have made that scenario up.
What the Bible actually says is: "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective" (Jam 5:16). Notice the "each other" part? Confession is meant to be reciprocal - one to another. The intimate act of confessing requires an intimate relationship between friends that lean on each other and work to support each other in prayer and mutual concern.
We need to build relationships within our church family that promote mutual trust and dependency, allowing us to open up to one another, bringing our sins into that open place of love, support and safety. Then, our mutual prayers go up as a sweet aroma to the Father, who answers them with healing power, which has a welcome community of faith in which to work. Jus' Sayn.
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