Confession. One word that people seldom want to talk about. For some with a Catholic background, it connects to a particular ritual of sharing your screw-ups with a priest. For others, it sounds like a police TV show. For others, we just want to avoid thinking about anything that we are ashamed of.
So why talk about it now? Confession is something that has a long and healthy Christian tradition. It hasn't been about shame and ritual. In Romans 10:9 we read, "Because if you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord' and in your heart you have faith that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Wow. This kind of confession doesn't sound too bad! Saying "Jesus is Lord" and connecting it with our belief that God raised Jesus from death gets us salvation? Sign me up!
Paul goes on in verse 10 to explain a bit more: "Trusting with the heart leads to righteousness, and confessing with the mouth leads to salvation." God transforms us when we believe in our hearts, and God grants us the greatest gift of salvation when we use our mouth to publicly confess our faith.
There is still a place for sharing with God our other kind of confession - when we admit to the stuff that separates us from God. The barriers in our life that keep us from letting God transform us and live with grace and compassion.
I encourage you each day to try to see where you are less connected to God. How do you spend your spare moments? Do you give any to God in prayer or Bible reading? What parts of our life have you held back from God? When we start to give God more of our hearts and minds, our confession grows, and God transforms our lives.
Each time we give a little more of our lives over to God, something special happens. We are filled with more love and grace and peace and gentleness and kindness (Galatian 5:22) - the fruit of the Spirit that God promises to give us. This kind of confession works wonders. Maybe we need to spend a little more time confessing "Jesus is Lord" and seeing what God has in store for us. Amen.
Pastor Anna-Lisa Hunter
November 28, 2023
