Confession

Last night I challenged our home group to a time of honest confession of sin. As we know, sin lives in the dark, thus the first step to restoration is bringing it out into the light. As James tells us to "confess our sins, one to another" we can see the sanctification is a corporate pursuit. We focused on Jeremiah 2:12, 13 which says:

12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
13 for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.

I challenged our group to identify what our "broken cisterns" were and then confess them to God and the group. It was a fruitful time of honest confession and hopefully repentance. I believe this is a great discipline for all of us, "Hey, check me out, I am a Christian and I have it all together" types, of whom I am the chief. People don't want to know how perfect we are. They want to know how needy and surrendered to Jesus we are. Then we can all be quite at home at the foot of the cross.

He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. …The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So, everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together.