Confessing Sin...

Last night REVOLVE! Student Ministry had the opportunity to attend the youth service at Tuscaloosa Church of God. They provided the Worship - which was excellent, by the way - and we provided the Word. Which translated to me speaking... always a fun thing for those who listen, right? (please note the sarcasm)

I spoke last night from I John 1:9 - "If we confess our sins...". It was the only sliver of inspiration that I had reading through several books of the Bible and seeking God for, not just a message to preach, but something from God's heart.

In studying, I found that the word confess comes from the Greek word homologeo. Wow! Fascinating, right? Well, like you I had no idea what this meant but upon looking into the word it basically means "to say the same thing to another." So, when John writes, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness," John is saying that we are to say the same thing about sin that God says about sin. Confess.

Most of the time we confess our sin from either getting caught or wanting to fulfill a religious requirement so that we don't die and go to Hell. The latter seems innocent enough, right? But, really it doesn't carry enough force to encourage us to live Holy after Christ. The fear of going to hell is rather dimmed in the moonlight of a parked car on Friday night, if you know what I mean? Sunday morning in church after our Friday night flings we normally become overwhelmed with guilt and then confess that we sinned and go on to worship in church, raise our hands or whatever else we do on Sunday morning to express worship to God.

Then, comes the next Friday night... and we repeat our fling-and-repent-move again and again until we finally marry someone and the sex guilt is over..., right? Well it is until we begin to find the Friday night sin moves to a different venue. Instead of a moonlit back seat, our sin begins to take the form of a moment when our wife leaves for the grocery and we are alone in front of our computer screens watching things we have no business watching. This then develops into another habit that becomes a battle, and on Sunday morning in church we feel remorse, confess that we sinned... again... and begin the worship routine afresh.

What's wrong with this scenario? I'll tell you what's common with it... so many of us have, or presently are, experiencing this same scenario. We then question why we can't get deliverance from sin, and from a true heart we try, confess, try and confess over and over until we secure this sin away in the closet of our lives - as an unwinable battle - and pray to God that no one ever finds out about it.

The truth is we don't rightly confess our sins. We don't homologeo our sin. We don't say the same thing about our sin that God says about our sin. The truth is that we love our sin. We just either don't want to get caught, or we don't want to go to Hell. This is true of so many who attend churches everywhere today.

What if, and this what if is only made possible by the Holy Spirit's power and by our decision to change our mind on sin, but what if sin began to turn our stomachs? Instead of protecting sin or laughing about sin, giving each other the nudge with our elbow and chuckling under our breath about sin and giving our wink and a nod approval to sin, what if we truly got disgusted at the thought of offending God? What if we called sin what it really is and began to say the same thing about our sin that God says about our sin?

It would cease to be our little pet project and would begin to grieve us as it does God's Holy Spirit. This would begin to revolutionize our lives.

Oh, Father, that we would begin to be disgusted by the things that disgust you...! Oh, that our hearts and stomachs would turn at the thought of sin and at the world and churches acceptance of such sin! God help us, your people, to view sin as You do! Not as just something to hide and be successful at not getting caught at, but that we would truly despise wickedness and evil... calling sin what it is instead of giving it pet euphemisms to soften the grotesqueness of its very nature. Deliver Your people God from the notion that Grace is a covering allowing us to sin and show us that Grace is the power to engage in righteousness and live as such... and that to Your glory! Amen.

I challenge You, as I have myself, to begin saying the same thing about sin that God says about sin. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can begin to see it as such and start a path of deliverance where the church walks in righteousness instead of a covert life of covering up its tracks to not be found in the closet of sin. Homologeo...