Confession is a key to success.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
James 5:16
Repentance is built on confession. People in the church have this idea that confession is some big show where you go forward on Sunday, make some vague statement about your sin then everyone hugs you. It is a stretch to suggest that these people are actually repenting or confessing.
We are so weak that we cannot even explicitly say what we are repenting of.
“I want to be a better Christian”. “I have not been doing what is right”. These types of confession take no bravery and do no good. If you are going to make a public confession, you need to explicitly, directly and clearly confess what you have done. This is not the place for vague, ominous confessions. No one respects those confessions either.
If you are confessing publicly, it means your sin was of a public nature.
If you sin publicly and embarrass the church, you have to be willing to state exactly what you have done.
It is better to confess directly to God when you are by yourself if you have a problem with stating your sin in front of the church. In private, men tend to not fear confessing exactly how they have sinned. This is valuable insight into how we see God, and how distant He seems from our heart and from the universe. How is it that we fear what men will think of us but care less what God thinks of us?
Confession is a tool in our belt of improvement, because it forces us to materialize the evil within ourselves by saying exactly what that evil is.
Once materialized, our evil can be destroyed. The thought that we have problems with drinking and sex, or with gambling and cocaine, hyper-judgementality, gossip and poor stewardship of time already exist in our mind. They exist as thoughts alone, ethereal and intangible.
When we confess those sins, we force them into the more physical form of words. Even though words are still invisible and an energy source, they are more material than thoughts alone. Or maybe we write down our sin as part of a confession. Those sins have now materialized on paper, we can touch and feel them, we can see exactly what is wrong with our character in no uncertain terms. This is a massive advantage. We can wage war against the physical. We have the mental edge against the physical and we believe that we can win. This is one of the greatest values of confession.
Confession fails when you are just making some vague statement about your sin and your desire to do better. You have materialized nothing and cannot sense the sin or strategize to crush it. It remains in a ghostly form, unable to be touched. Your sin will continue to shatter you over and over. Materialize the evil and destroy it.
Mantra
Confess your evil, then eviscerate it.
Application
Confession is a tool, gentlemen. Just like all the other tools we have described before, it will do nothing for you if left by itself and if not acted upon. Confession is not salvation, it is a point in the journey to salvation, and it is a point that should repeat itself thousands of times over the course of your life. Confession must be combined with repentance to be valuable at all. Without changing your behavior, confessing your sins is meaningless.
Confession must be acted upon. Use confession to force your thoughts to become tangible, material objects that you can destroy. Confess to other men who will help you destroy them if you need accountability. However, you should be striving towards ownership. Confess. Put your foot to the throat of your sin. Be a Man.
Conduct Yourselves Like Men.
