The Discipline of Confession

Photo by Jean Carneiro.

I never wanted to never read a book so badly. I would find all kinds of reasons not to. And yet, it was required reading for a leadership development time I was engaged in some years ago. Even the title made me shirk away from it: Celebration of Discipline. Who in their right mind would want to celebrate discipline? That's a hot mess. I ran from the book, procrastinated, found reasons to avoid it because the notion of it irked me, and actually ended up not needing to read it at all for my training. Whew. A mighty sigh of relief. But that book continued to make its presence known in my life, always popping up in view as I sorted through items in my bedroom, always laying a tug in my heart to read it, always creating interest in me to really want to know what it was about.

So, I recently put it, this most detestable book, in the one place where I figured I'd always find the time to read it: my bathroom. I doubt I'm the only person on earth that reads while taking care of business. I just may be one of the few who doesn't think too much about saying that out loud to others. Well, reading in this place of quiet and free from distraction is shaking my world. I've intentionally placed the book on my bathroom counter so that it's the first thing I see before the Essence, Ebony and Women's Health magazines, and Hill Harper's The Conversation, and Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest beckon me.

I want to see this book, I need to see this book, I need to be reminded that I need discipline to invade every nook and cranny of my living, even when I deceive myself into thinking I'm managing my life as a believer just fine without it. I need to see past the deceit and see my need for true freedom, and ironically the freedom I need most comes quickest when I submit myself to the discipline of engaging in God's spiritual disciplines:

The Inward Disciplines
1. Meditation

2. Prayer

3. Fasting

4. Study

The Outward Disciplines
5. Simplicity

6. Solitude

7. Submission

8. Service

The Corporate Disciplines
9. Confession

10. Worship

11. Guidance

12. Celebration

I knew I loved to celebrate for a reason. It's a discipline! If I had my way, that would be the only discipline I'd engage in on a regular basis. In my new relationship with this book I once hated to read because of its call to discipline, I now found myself drawn to its chapters, not in sequential order, but through the capricious flipping of pages that would land me in different destinations: one morning, viewing the Discipline of Solitude, another evening, viewing the Discipline of Confession, and it's the latter that recently has brought a shaken-up-of-sorts in my world. Confession, like water, covers and cleanses. It removes the dirty, dissolves impurities and renews and regenerates.

Photo by Piotr Menduck.

This past Monday morning I had a time of prayer with God. The day before, from a conversation I had with a friend, sharing my life with her, I shared things I'd long forgotten. One thing, in particular, came back to memory in the Monday prayer time with God. I was led to scan back over my life, childhood, teen, young adult and current adult years and examine the areas where I'd experienced willful, deliberate sin by commission (sin I purposefully did). I also examined areas of my life where I'd been sinned against by offense, hurt by others and negatively imprinted upon. There's another type of sin, the sin of omission and purposefully not doing things and sinning in that way as well.

I believe by faith that I am fully redeemed, completely forgiven and totally cleansed of all my sins, past, present and future. But there's a deeper reality that also exists: there's a freedom that comes in looking at one's own life through the lens of the gospel, the atonement of Jesus Christ, the holiness of God and seeing anew those broken places, those willful spaces where sin was allowed to dwell. I've encountered feelings of grief, remorse and mourning looking back at my sins of commission, not because I feel condemned, but because I agree with God and experience His heart of sadness and grief over that sin. I also experience His sadness over the sin committed against me by others and the sin I committed against others.

There have been moments where the creepy, crawly, slithering natures of condemnation, shame and guilt desire to overwhelm my heart during such retrospection. But immediately, truth steps in through God's Holy Spirit, and He immediately reminds me what is true of me: Because of Christ and His redemption, I am completely forgiven and fully pleasing to God. I am totally accepted by God. (Excerpt from The Search for Significance).

This truth hits the heart and head immediately. But there is still a walking out that must be done, and above all, a commitment to believe the truth is true, by faith, even if the heart or mind continue to struggle with the past and the present. The truth is true. God says all who believe in His Son are forgiven of their sins and He will not count them against us. In my prayer time Monday, looking back and looking at, I confessed and stated what happened, what I did, what was done to me and what I didn't do.

There came such power and freedom to call by name that sin which I knew by faith was already conquered and disarmed when Christ died on the cross for my sins and sins of the world. But in that moment it became actualized as my sin or how I was sinned against. I had the most awesome privilege of working out my salvation through the authority of prayer and the discipline of confession to put it all on the cross, to call it what it was (death and sin), and call it what it became the moment Christ died for it: forgiven.

There are still more things God is bringing to my memory that He wants me to share verbally with Him in prayer, to confess it, to say it happened by me, to me, or not by me when I should have done something in obedience. And so I know this discipline of Confession is at work in my life right now, in this moment, in this season.

I found myself thinking today in quiet time reflection, "Do I confess enough to the Lord? Do I daily evaluate and review my days at their close each night and ask the Holy Spirit to show me sin, hidden in my heart? Do I search for sin in my life to call it out before God? How does He want me to grow more so that I do?" I already have the answer to the first question: no, I don't. Even now, I see in my heart a sin that has been hiding in me for the last two weeks, one that I felt okay with because it seemed more like an opinion than a sin.

Yet God, because this thing keeps staying on my mind, is making it very clear it is much more than that. It is sin and it can't stay. I need to confess this and I need to do it now:

Father, in Jesus' name, I confess thoughts, feelings and an opinion I've maintained in my prideful, deceitful and wicked heart. My heart is dirty and above all things, it is deceitful. It makes me believe things that are not true to make me appear as better than I am and better than others than I am, and the better choice. You know exactly what I speak of, and now I confess and agree with you that I'm wrong and holding onto that opinion has been wrong. Forgive me in Jesus' name. You are faithful. You forgive. You cleanse me from all unrighteousness when I confess my sin. Thank you for forgiving me, amen.

And just like that, in that moment, I experience the freedom of confession and the healing of confession. This discipline is mind-blowing and soul-shaking. But most important, for me, it's heart-cleansing. I think you would benefit from an excerpt from the chapter on confession in Celebration of Discipline. This section, in particular resonated loudly with me:

Diary of a Confession (Book Excerpt)
Although I had read in the Bible about the ministry of confession in the Christian brotherhood, I had never experienced it until I was pastoring a church. I did not take the difficult step of laying bare my inner life to another out of any deep burden or sense of sin. I did not feel there was anything wrong in the least - except one thing. I longed for more power to do the work of God. I felt inadequate to deal with many of the desperate needs that confronted me.

There had to be more spiritual resources than I was experiencing (and I'd had all the Holy Spirit experiences you're supposed to have; you name them, I'd had them!). "Lord," I prayed, "is there more you want to bring into my life? I want to be conquered and ruled by you. If there is anything blocking the flow of your power, reveal it to me." He did. Not by an audible voice or even through any human voice, but simply by a growing impression that perhaps something in my past was impeding the flow of his life.

So I devised a plan. I divided my life into three periods: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. On the first day I came before God in prayer and meditation, pencil and paper in hand. Inviting him to reveal to me anything during my childhood that needed either forgiveness or healing or both, I waited in absolute silence for some ten minutes. Anything about my childhood that surfaced to my conscious mind, I wrote down. I made no attempt to analyze the items or put any value judgment on them.

My assurance was that God would reveal anything that needed his healing touch. Having finished, I put the pencil and paper down for the day. The next day I went through the same exercise for my adolescent years, and the third day for my adult years. Paper in hand, I then went to a dear brother in Christ. I had made arrangements with him a week ahead so he understood the purpose of our meeting.

Slowly, sometimes painfully, I read my sheet, adding only those comments necessary to make the sin clear. When I had finished, I began to return the paper to my briefcase. Wisely, my counselor/confessor gently stopped my hand and took the sheet of paper. Without a word he took a wastebasket, and, as I watched, he tore the paper into hundreds of tiny pieces and dropped them into it. That powerful, nonverbal expression of forgiveness was followed by a simple absolution. My sins, I knew, were as far away as the east is from the west.

Next, my friend, with the laying on of hands, prayed a prayer of healing for all the sorrows and hurts of the past. The power of that prayer lives with me today. I cannot say I experienced any dramatic feelings. I did not. In fact, the entire experience was an act of sheer obedience with no compelling feelings in the least. But I am convinced that it set me free in ways I had not known before.

It seemed that I was released to explore what were for me new and uncharted regions of the Spirit. Following that event, I began to move into several of the Disciplines described in this book that I had never experienced before. Was there a casual connection? I do not know, and frankly I do not care. It is enough to have obeyed the inner prompting from above.

There was one interesting sidelight. The exposure of my humanity evidently sparked a freedom in my counselor/friend, for, directly following his prayer for me, he was able to express a deep and troubling sin that he had been unable to confess until then. Freedom begets freedom. (End of book excerpt)

Photo by Susanne Nilsjo.

Inhale: breathe deeply in. Exhale: breathe deeply out. That is how the confession of sin feels for the soul. It's clean, freshly sweet air, a new wind from a better direction, a calming stream, a cooling, consistent breeze. This little book by Richard J. Foster that I so hated to read because the word "discipline" annoyed me, beckoned me to a greater level of responsibility that I dared not wanted to move towards has now set me free in ways I couldn't believe imaginable years ago. Not because God couldn't do the work of freedom, but because I was too stubborn to walk through those doors on my own.

I am challenged by the author to make myself available to regularly sense any impressions God could be making on me that cause me to ask if something in my past is impeding the flow of His life in me. As He makes those forgotten things known again, I want to call them out, call them sins, call them hurts, and then call them forgiven, call them healed, and call and declare myself more whole than I was before. In one of the most ordinary places of my life, my bathroom, I've met freedom and forgiveness sitting next to a porcelain tub and shower. And I've newly embraced a discipline that's always embraced me: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin." - Romans 4: 7,8

~ m