And David declared…
1 Oh, what joy for those
whose disobedience is forgiven,
whose sin is put out of sight!
2 Yes, what joy for those
whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt,
whose lives are lived in complete honesty!
3 When I refused to confess my sin,
my body wasted away,
and I groaned all day long.
4 Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.
My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.
Interlude5 Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”
And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.
There is so much incredible truth in his words. When it comes to our faults, our failures, our screw ups, the reality is we’re quick to want to cover up, to want to deny, to want to avoid, to want to blame someone else. We work really hard to shake off feelings of guilt and shame by minimizing and covering stuff up.
There are a lot of things in our lives we keep silent about. Things we feel ashamed of; family problems, compulsive habits, sexual addiction, and while silence in the moment seems like the best, the safest way to handle it, silence always leads to more pain and guilt festering inside. It always corrodes away our soul. It corrodes away our spirit, and it always, always, always begins to affect other parts of our lives.
You’ll say things like “Well the past is the past.” Listen, you past isn’t your past if it’s still impacting your present.
However, the good news is the very moment humanity fell into sin, God’s plan, God’s passion has been to redeem us and restore us to the life for which we are made.
This act of grace, of forgiveness, of restoration God wants to give, it cannot be forced on you. Like anything from God, it has to be received like a gift, freely, willfully, and intentionally. So how do we do this? How do we receive this gift of grace God wants to give?
In a word, confession.
Confession isn’t doing something about our sin; rather, it means admitting that we can’t do anything about our sin. It’s admitting we need a savior. We need what only Jesus can bring us, which is healing.
