Learning to be honest often costs quite a lot. Depending on your co-pay, it can cost over $100 an hour in a counselor’s office. Although, it is unlikely that you are honest until the fourth or fifth sessions. If it’s an acute crisis that brings you there, maybe you’ll be desperate enough to be honest in the first session.
Honesty is so hard when it comes to our mistakes, failures, yes, sins. The energy required to hide all of those tings is enormous. Whole lives are built on cover-up or avoidance. And, we become so afraid of who we might really be.
God’s not afraid of who we really are.
God is the best at our worst.
You don’t believe that. And, neither do I.
But, I would like to.
The Bible calls self-honesty confession. It calls the practice of self-honesty ‘walking in the light.’’ Next Sunday we will be looking at 1 John 1:5-2:2. There is an incredible invitation in that passage – to come clean, to step into the light.
It says that our relationship with God will never be right unless we do. And our relationships with others won’t be that great either. We’ll be too busy trying hard to prove how good we are. Or worse, we’ll feel so badly about ourselves that we retreat more and more into our own self-condemnation. Actually, there’s something even worse than that – filling our lives with achievement, performance, the pursuit of things that don’t matter. Ah, yes, the good life. The self-condemning person, at least, is possibly open to their need. The self-assured person is nearly totally unreachable.
God’s goal is not to make us feel miserable about ourselves. Christ came so that we might be free – and that requires being honest.
Loving people incredibly well means that you give them space to be honest. And it means you start first..
What good or bad images occur to you when you hear the word confession?