Lent day 5

Today I was reading in Psalms 32 about confession and it brought some old memories to my mind that I hadn’t thought about in a while.

N.T. Wright talked about how “confession is facing up to what’s wrong.”

I remember one summer during college, I was home from school and was really feeling convicted about some things that were going on in my life. I don’t remember what they were. But I do remember feeling like they were welling up inside of me.

Then one night I had a long prayer session where I laid all of these things out before the Lord.

I remember distinctly that as I confessed each sin it felt like I was throwing up. I remember it felt like I was releasing demons from inside of my body. That I was now free of these things that had haunted me for so long.

I’m not saying that I haven’t sinned since then or that those sins stayed out of my life. As I said I can’t even remember what they were to tell you if they are truly gone from my life.

But I know that in that moment I felt new and clean.

Lately I’ve wondered about the whole point of confession. It says in the Bible that God knows the things that we do. That He knows the sins even before we know that we are sinning. So, than why should I confess those things to Him if He already knows them?

My pastor was talking about this in church and he said that there is nothing that you can say to God that He doesn’t already know. But that isn’t the point of confession. Confession is for our own hearts. It is for our souls.

When we do not confess our sins, we hold them inside and let them eat at us. We need to bring them up before God and let Him work on our hearts and mind to repair the damage we have done to them.