Confession and Absolution Song

I began composing this song about twenty years ago and finished it as I drove to church for worship on August 16. This completion of songs has never been my forte. That's a confession from me before you read this Confession and Absolution Song. (I have finished some songs over the years. But right now, I have about 180 song fragments recorded on my phone.)

There is a melody for this and all the songs, but since I neither read music nor play it, just the lyrics here for now.

A few years ago, a friend heard a few of my song fragments and encouraged me to finish them. Here's one.

Father, forgive us for all of our sin
Come, Holy Spirit, make us clean within
Through Jesus Christ, we know You're our Friend
Alleluia
Alleluia

A Friend indeed, but also our King
The One to Whom all creation sings
Our needy selves are all we can bring
Alleluia
Alleluia

Now all who call on the name of the Lord
The One Who saints and angels adore
You have new life and life evermore
Alleluia
Alleluia
© 2015, Mark Daniels

Getting Ready for a New Day

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, yesterday.]

Mark 1:1-8

Truth is a rare commodity, it seems... 

From the advertisers who tell us that their products will make us happy, healthy, or sexy to the friend who soothingly says that that article of clothing doesn’t make us look fat... 

From the bigot who claims, “I’m not prejudiced” to the politician who insists that the other guy is a crook...

Truth is often is short supply.

One reason for this is that truth isn't always the socially acceptable option. 

During Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign for president, a reporter visited his mother Miss Lillian in Plains, Georgia. “Miss Lillian,” he said, “your son says that he will never lie to the American people. Has he ever lied?” Miss Lillian replied, “Oh, I suppose he might have sometimes told a little white lie.” When asked what might constitute 'a little white lie,' she responded, “You remember when you came in here and I told you that I was glad to see you?” 

Miss Lillian told her little white lie because sometimes, maybe more often than we like to admit, we would rather be lied to than to be told the truth. The truth can hurt. 

Especially when it tells us things about ourselves, our characters, our actions, or our lives that are less than moral or healthy or wise or Godly.

Today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 1:1-8, brings us face to face with John the Baptist. Even though John lived in New Testament times, he was, in a way, the last of the Old Testament prophets. 

You see, the chief characteristic of a prophet wasn’t that they foretold the future, although their messages often contained such “prophecies.” The main thing a prophet did was tell the truth. Prophets told and sometimes acted out truth that God had revealed to them. 

They shared God’s truth whether people wanted to hear it or not. 

Many of the prophets over the centuries, for example, told Israel that it needed to turn back to God at the very moments when Israel was dividing its loyalties between God and various idols. (Just to cover all the bases.) This message of return to God was the last thing Israel wanted to hear when everything in their lives seemed to be working so well, when the GDP was high, when there was full employment, when their military seemed invincible. 

They believed that their worldly success indicated that God was for them and that the prophets were wrong. 

They couldn’t believe that a loving God would mind it if they mixed in a little self-reliance in with His calls for utter reliance on Him alone. 

They couldn't imagine God being offended when they lied and cut corners to get ahead of those they saw as the undeserving people of their society or those from other countries, religions, and races that they encountered. 

And they certainly would not have liked it when one of the prophets spoke God’s truth to their selfishness, idolatry, materialism, and injustice. Micah wrote: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” [Micah 6:8, ESV]

But there were other times when the truth of the prophets came like healing salve to wounded skin or like living water for thirsting souls. 

For example, in the first two verses of today’s Old Testament lesson, the prophet Isaiah speaks to an Israel that had been conquered, seen its livelihood destroyed, witnessed its best and brightest sent into exile, all because it had arrogantly walked away from God. 

Now, what was left of Israel had humbly turned back to God and through the prophet God said, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” [Isaiah 40:1-2]

Prophets always told God’s truth. 

Prophets called people mired in sin and arrogance to repent, to repudiate their sin and turn back to God. 

Prophets also called people who did repent to trust in God’s forgiveness and grace.

This is exactly the message of John the Baptist. Take a look at today’s Gospel lesson on page 699 of the sanctuary Bibles. Verse 1: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” This is the title that Mark gives the gospel.

I believe that Mark meant this sentence fragment to be the title of his book about Jesus. The story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are only the beginning of the Gospel, the good news, about Jesus. It's only when people come to faith in Christ and only after Jesus has returned to judge the living and the dead and to usher in the new creation, that the Gospel will be completed.

Verse 2: “...as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”--’a voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”’” 

Because Isaiah was considered the more important of the Old Testament prophets, Mark only mentions Isaiah here. But part of what Mark quotes is also from Malachi. No matter, the point is that these Old Testament prophecies said that God was going to send a prophet to get things ready for the arrival of the Savior of the world. 

That prophet--that messenger--they’re talking about would “prepare the way” for the Messiah. 

Malachi said that this messenger would “make straight paths.” That’s road construction language. John appeared in the wilderness to be a bulldozer! 

He came to build a freeway to give the world access to the Savior. 

Through John’s ministry, all that might keep people from seeing and trusting in the Messiah--all their sin, cynicism, despair, and arrogance--was to be cleared away. 

He would clearly speak the truth about what they needed to receive the Messiah’s favor--repentance and faith. 

People would either accept that truth or they wouldn’t. But no one, after hearing John. could honestly say they didn’t know how to prepare for the coming, the advent, of the Messiah. Neither can we.

Verse 4: “And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.” 

Mark is engaging in hyperbole here. He doesn’t mean that every house in Jerusalem and Judea was emptied. We know, for example, that the king who would eventually order John’s execution didn’t go out to hear John’s message. But he did hear about it. Which is what John got in trouble. Kings don’t always like to hear that they’re sinners in need of repentance and surrendering trust in God. Few people do. 

What was it, though, that, despite the distastefulness of his message, attracted the crowds to John? 

It wasn’t because of his dress or diet. Verse 6: “John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” Both his clothes and his food would have been considered weird ven back in first century Judea. 

And it wasn’t because John thumped his chest and proclaimed how great he was. He didn’t promise that his message would make anybody wealthy or healthy or trouble free. Verse 7: “And this was his message: ‘After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.’” 

John was pointing to Jesus. 

At the very moment he did so, thousands of people were hanging on his every word. 

He was the center of attention. 

Some were even claiming that John himself was the Messiah. Heady stuff!

But John says, “I’m just a messenger. I'm an unworthy slave.” 

In those days, tying and untying the straps of a great man’s sandals was the job of the lowliest of servants. John says that he wouldn’t even be worthy of doing that for the Messiah about to appear. 

This is a truth about ourselves that we must all learn to accept. 

And it’s harder for us to accept than it should be. 

I know that it is for me. 

It’s the very truth that the human race has resisted and chafed under since Adam and Eve bit into the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

It’s this : God our creator is infinitely greater than we are and we must submit to His will, not the other way around. 

In the Advent and Christmas seasons, we remember again how great God truly is. 

But His greatness can't be measured by the means that this dying world uses.

Jesus' greatness is beyond worldly greatness. The Savior Who was so great that John couldn’t get a job as his slave, bore the full weight of our humanity, becoming a servant of the whole human race, washed the feet of His disciples, suffered the consequence of our sin by dying on a cross, then rose from the dead so that, despite our unworthiness, all who repent and entrust themselves to Him can live with God forever. It's a truth summarized in the Bible's most famous verse. 

We know it by heart. But I'm not sure how much we take it to heart. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16] 

This describes the great God worthy of our complete surrender!

Verse 8: [John said:] “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 

John’s baptism was a symbolic washing that repentant people underwent to demonstrate to God that they turned from sin and were ready for the Messiah to come into the world. In it, the person who was baptized was the main actor. 

Later, Jesus instituted a completely different kind of Baptism. In Holy Baptism, God sends His Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Who moved over the waters in Genesis to bring the universe into being, and gives new life in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He does this to people who are utterly incapable of helping themselves or of making themselves right with God, whether they're brought to the baptismal waters as infants, teenagers, or adults. God is the main actor. We are the recipients of His gracious will to make us part of His new creation.

The Messiah, John the Baptist was saying, was coming to make people new, to make the whole creation new. 

In Advent, we remind ourselves that the Messiah is coming again. 

We need to be ready for that day. 

We prepare ourselves in the same way that John’s preaching commended: We willingly confess our sins, turn from them, and trust the God we know in Jesus Christ to make us new. 

Confessing sin means accepting hard truths about ourselves. We’re not always the good people we think we are or portray ourselves to be. 

Trusting in Jesus means shelving all pretense of self-sufficiency. That wounds our pride. 

But when, day by day, moment by moment, we repent and trust, we are ready to meet the Messiah, our God and King. 

And that’s the truth about God and about us that will stand for all eternity. Amen

[For a discussion of Holy Baptism, see here. For more on confessing sin, see here. And, to see a discussion of repentance, look here.]

Risking Being Known

From today's installment of Our Daily Bread:

One reason we are unwilling to risk being known is that we fear rejection and ridicule. But when we discover that God knows us, loves us, and is willing to forgive even the worst thing we have done, our fear of being known by God begins to fade away. And when we find a community of believers who understands the dynamic relationship between forgiveness and confession, we feel safe confessing our sins to one another (James 5:16).

Read the whole thing.

Only Sinners Need Apply

If you think a past sin disqualifies you from serving Christ, consider Peter. That's who Joe Stowell points to in this piece, which I recommend you read.

As Stowell points out, over a fire during a session of the kangaroo court that convicted Jesus of a capital crime, he reneged on his pledge of loyalty to Jesus and denied knowing Jesus three different times. Think of that: Peter denied any acquaintance with the One he had earlier confessed to be the Messiah, the Son (or the very image) of the Blessed, God.

Yet over another fire on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus called on Peter to affirm his belief in Jesus--three times--and Peter knew that, leaning on Christ's grace, he could, imperfections notwithstanding, be used for good by Christ.

Some people refuse to worship or get involved in a local church because they feel that they're not good enough. Pay heed to the wisdom of Virgil M., a member of the first congregation I served as a pastor:

"If there weren't any sinners in the church, it would be an empty place."

He's right!

If you're a sinner who can acknowledge your dependence on the mercy God gives to all with faith in Jesus Christ, God has great plans for you!

Learning what they are begins, as it did for Peter, with confession, repentance, and belief in Christ. As with Peter, that happens within the fellowship of Christ's very body on earth, the Church.

If you're an imperfect sinner, I invite you to be in worship this weekend with Christ's fellowship of recovering imperfect sinners, the Church. The Word of God you encounter there can erase the power of sin to keep you from becoming all that God made you to be.

When it comes to church membership, only sinners need apply.

And only sinners who trust that Christ is greater than their sin can be used by God. If you doubt it, just consider Peter.

"So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall."

Those words from 1 Corinthians are part of what inspired today's installment of Our Daily Bread.

Both the Scripture passages on which it's based and the piece by David C. McCasland are worth reading, pondering, and praying about.

One of the primary temptations the devil, the world, and our sinful selves hold out to us is this notion that whatever goodness we may thing we possess is intrinsic to our own natures and personalities. But my observation is that the moment we think we're righteous, we're in deep trouble. No one is more prone to undertaking a whole passel of rotten thoughts and entertaining more poisonous thoughts than those who think themselves constitutionally incapable of wrongdoing.

Hitler never second-guessed himself. Saint Paul did.

Jesus had some interesting things to say along these lines:

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ²For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. ³Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? ⁴Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye." (Matthew 7:1-5)

Do those words make you feel a bit uncomfortable? Me too. Especially when I consider the enormous logs of sin I've often gathered in my own eyes, even in the three-decades-plus that I've tried to follow Jesus. "So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall."

Faith Tidbit #42

We've been talking about using the acronym ACTS to help us when we pray. The C stands for confession. If adoration opens us up to communicating with God, refusing to confess our sins to God is sure to close off our communication with Him.

But we need to be earnest about this. I sometimes find myself simply saying, “God, forgive me for my sins.” At times though, I may not really be confessing at all, just mouthing religious-sounding words. A good rule for effective praying of whatever kind is: Get specific. We might say, “God, forgive me for being such a critical, stick-in-the-mud.” Or, “Forgive me for trying always to get my way.” Or, “Forgive me for cutting off that red Volvo the other day.” Take the risk of inviting God to forgive and help you change in the specific places of your life. “The prayer of an innocent person is powerful and it can help a lot,” the Bible says.

God makes us innocent when we confess our sins in the Name of Jesus. And that gives God's power to our praying.

What is Confession, Anyway?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 3:14-21
Years ago, I fell for an April Fool’s Day joke that paraded as a news story. It was about a guy who had been indicting for making millions of dollars getting illegal inside information on companies, enabling him to buy and sell at just the right times. “There’s no way he could have acquired all that money in so short a time without insiders helping him,” declared an SEC official in the fake news story. The story went on to say that in order to avoid prosecution and imprisonment, the charged man told a judge that he was a time traveler from the twenty-second century and, incidentally, that he knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. This is what made this fake news story so convincing to me: The alleged criminal was more willing to be labeled insane than to confess his wrongs.

Confession is tough, for the follower of Jesus Christ no less than anyone else. It can be embarrassing and humiliating to confess our wrongs, whether we confess them to God, to others, or to ourselves. But followers of Jesus also know that confession is an essential component for healthy living. In confession—owning up to our faults and sins, coming clean—we clear away anything and everything that obstructs our relationship with God or keeps us from living life fully.

In our Gospel lesson for this morning, a man named Nicodemus visits Jesus. Nicodemus was a respected religious authority. But in Jesus, Nicodemus was beginning to understand that all his religious training, all the authority he enjoyed in the society of his time was meaningless. Still, Nicodemus was too concerned for his “place” in society, too worried about what the neighbors might think, and so, instead of owning up to the suspicion he had that Jesus was the Savior of the world, he sneaked to a meeting with Jesus under cover of darkness. He wanted to warn Jesus that powerful men—Jewish religious figures and Roman government functionaries—saw Jesus as an enemy to be killed. But in our lesson, which picks things up in the middle of their conversation, we find Jesus deflecting Nicodemus’ concern; Jesus tells Nicodemus that He has come into the world for the express purpose of dying. It’s by His death on a cross, Jesus says, that He will absorb all the horrors of human sin into His body, killing off its power over us forever. Jesus then turns the focus back on Nicodemus and his spineless nighttime visit when He says:

"..those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

When we are truthful with God, we can come into His blazingly true light, see our faults up close, seek God’s forgiveness, and know that God will light our way to better living. We can engage in confession.

As you’ve already heard me point out countless times, Martin Luther was fond of saying that the follower of Jesus Christ is called to live “in daily repentance and renewal.” We need to constantly re-focus our lives on Jesus, never being afraid to “come clean” about our faults and our need of God’s forgiveness and help. Confession needs to be a daily discipline for us. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about confession?

There are three elements that go into genuine confession. First: There is a genuine examination of one’s conscience. In shorthand, that means honesty before God. Richard Foster is a Quaker theologian and writer whose most famous work is a book called Celebration of Discipline. There, he tells a story from early in his ministry as a young pastor. His work was going well. But he felt the need for more of God’s power in his life in order to meet the almost crushing demand of human need that he confronted each day in his work. He prayed to God, “Lord, 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.”

Over a period of several days during his prayer time, Foster sat in silence, asking God to reveal things to him. At the end of three days’ time, he had filled three sheets of paper with sins and unresolved conflicts from three different phases of his life. He took those with him one day as he met with a trusted Christian friend. He went through each one and was putting the stack into a briefcase when his friend reached across the table, took the sheets in hand, and tore them into hundreds of little pieces. Echoing words that appear in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Foster says that he knew then that his sins “were as far away as the east is from the west.” It was shortly after engaging in that exercise in confession that Foster began to develop a closer relationship with God.

Psalm 139 in the Old Testament says: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Confession begins with honesty, asking God to help us fearlessly face His inventory of our sin. It’s only when we’re honest with God about our sins that He can purge them from our systems.

The second element in genuine confession is sorrow. Sorrow, as it relates to confession, isn’t necessarily an emotion. I was talking with someone about his teenage years once. He told me, “As much as it may make me sound like a goody-two-shoes, I have to tell you that back then, I never did anything my parents didn’t want me to do. If they wanted me to be home by midnight, I was usually home by ten till. If they told me not to hang out with particular people, I didn’t do it.” I asked him, “Were you that afraid of your parents?” “I was never afraid of my parents,” he told me. “I just knew how much they loved me and I never wanted to hurt their feelings.” Sorrow over sin is animated by the same impulse that guy expressed about his parents. The cross of Jesus shows us how deeply and desperately God loves us. Sorrow over sin is a sense of deep regret and revulsion at the whole notion of having done anything to offend the heart of our Father God.

The third element in genuine confession is a determination to avoid future sin. When we confess our sin to God, we ask Him to change our hearts so that we want to avoid future sin. We ask God to change our wills and make us recoil and turn away from the very idea of violating any of God’s ten commandments, the thrust of which Jesus once summed up as to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves.

Writer John Ortberg tells about a mauve sofa that he and his wife bought. It was the first new piece of furniture they had ever owned. After the sofa was delivered, a new rule was instituted in their household, which included several small children. “Don’t sit on the mauve sofa. Don’t touch it, don’t play around it, don’t eat on it, don’t breathe on it, don’t even look at that mauve sofa.” But one day, a terrible thing happened. A red jelly stain appeared on the mauve sofa. Ortberg’s wife loved the sofa and was devastated. She lined up the three kids and told them the stain would stay in the sofa “forever” and asked the kids if they knew how long “forever” was. She then told the kids that they would remain standing forever until one of them came clean, owning up to eating and spilling jelly on the mauve sofa. But the kids didn’t say a thing.

Ortberg knew the kids wouldn’t say anything for three reasons. First, because they’d never seen their mom that mad. Second, because they didn’t want to spend forever in the time-out chair. And finally, because John Ortberg knew that it was he, not his kids, who had caused the red jelly stain on the mauve sofa. He knew that he had to come clean. He might not be able to remove the jelly stain from the sofa, but he could get his kids off the hook and try to start fresh with his wife.

When we confess our sins, exposing our faults in God’s bright light, we remove the walls between God and us, between other people and us, between us and our best selves.

I can't close today without saying a word to those of you who, like me, may be a little obsessive compulsive or even a bit neurotic. If we're in either of these categories, you and I are in good company. Clearly, Martin Luther was a bit obsessive, a bit neurotic, at least as it relates to this issue of confession.

When Luther was a young monk, he would spend hours confessing his sins with his confessor, a man named von Staupitz. Luther would no more than walk a few steps from the confessional when he would recall more sins he hadn't catalogued. Von Staupitz got so fed up with Luther's incessant confessing that he finally told Luther, "Quit coming to me with your puppy sins!"

Von Staupitz wasn't saying that some sins are greater or lesser violations of God's holiness. What he was saying is that confession isn't a religious hoop that you jump through by remembering every sin you've ever committed.

Who could possibly remember their every sin? I myself am often so oblivious to my sins that it isn't until years after I've committed them that I realize the wrong I've done.

You're a human being. God knows that. Your memory is imperfect. God knows that. Your salvation doesn't hang in the balance because of your faulty memory or your faulty sensitivity to sin.

When we confess our sins, known and unknown, we show God our intentions. Through Jesus Christ, we already know God's intentions: God wants us to be with Him for eternity. When we confess, we say, "Yes!" to the "Yes!" God already said to us when Jesus died and rose for us.

Confession is hard. But it’s the indispensable way to experiencing all that God intends for us as His children. Amen!

[The message was inspired greatly by a sermon by Pastor Dan Anderson, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, Minnesota.]

Revealing Our Dark Places: The Privilege That Brings Healing

Interspersed through Philip Yancey's fine new book on prayer is a series of drop-in boxes in which "neighbors, other authors, fellow church members, spiritual mentors, ordinary people" talk about their experiences with prayer, good and bad. In one box, a man identified only as John writes:

My friends in AA tell us we're as sick as our secrets. I know many folks with dark secrets, and nowhere to take them. Sometimes they go crazy, literally insane, because they can't stand being alone with their dark thoughts and secrets. Or they get loaded, or get high.

Even those active in the church can harbor secrets that kill them. John goes on:

An acquaintance of mine ran a street ministry just a few blocks away. He had secrets about failures in his past and financial pressures in his present that he never told anyone. They bottled up inside him. One day his wife walked in the front door and found his body swaying from a rope. I cannot tell you what a blow that was for the people he ministered to.

I agree with John. We can't keep secret sins or fears bottled up within us. It isn't that we should vent everything to the world, engaging in the kind of verbal diarrhea we see displayed on many of the daytime talk shows. But there is something therapeutic about exposing our dark secrets to light.

Doing so can rob our secrets of their power. Once, as a young adolescent, I was dogged by a large and foreboding thought. It haunted me through every waking moment of my day. It was such a horrible thought, one I thought that no good person could entertain. It tripped me into a series of obsessive-compulsive behaviors that, owing to the irrationality that dark secrets can trigger, I thought might fend off the thoughts.

Finally, one day, unable to take it any more, I went to my mother and told her what had been going on inside my head. While it must have been disturbing for my mother to hear, the moment I tearfully got the words out of my mouth, something amazing happened. The dreaded thoughts had no power over me. Exposed to the light, the thoughts shriveled and went away. I literally stopped thinking about something horrible that had hounded me for weeks.

"Confession is good for the soul" is more than a hackneyed saying. It's an unalterable truth.

A man I know, a responsible, loving father, not a Christian, huddled with me one night in a corner at a party. He began telling me about his past history of drug abuse and the combination of guilt and foreboding for his children that personal history caused him. He was afraid that his body had sustained permanent damage, afraid too that his past would become known to his children and blunt his efforts to keep his kids from making the same mistakes that he had made.

But after recounting his concerns, without our discussing any potential solutions, a look of relief crossed his face. With a smile, he alluded to the adage about confession and said, "I guess it's true. Confession really is good for the soul!"

The Bible teaches that confessing to God regarding the ways we hurt God, others, and ourselves, is an essential element to a relationship with God. To those who want life with God, Jesus says, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). The Good News to which Jesus refers, of course, is the message that God gives new and everlasting lives to all who will repent--turn from their sins--and follow Christ.

I find that divulging my secrets to God, secrets that He already knows about but never forces me to discuss with Him, is always the beginning of healing from the things that might otherwise kill me--in body, mind, and spirit.

Israel's King David learned all about the pain created by keeping dark secrets and about the healing power that goes with confessing them. Recalling a time when he refused to discuss his secrets with God, David writes:

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer...

Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. [Psalm 32:3-5]

We Lutherans, like many other Christians, always include confession and the proclamation of God's forgiveness as part of our weekly public worship celebrations. There are several good reasons for doing this, I think:

• First, by doing so, we acknowledge that all of us are part of an imperfect human race, each of us in equal need of God's forgiveness and equally worthy of it.
• Second, we deliberately set aside time to actually confess our sin and receive God's forgiveness.
• Third, we remind one another that confession needs to be a daily part of our lives, regularly acknowledging our secrets to God so that we can experience the healing that comes from His forgiveness.

The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death. Having experienced the heavy weight of unconfessed sin in my life, I know how close to death a person can feel when he or she refuses to acknowledge the dark places. One of the prayers I frequently offer, in fact, is, "Thank You, God for not killing me. Thank You for filling me with Your life!" I agree with John, who writes in that drop-in box in Yancey's book:

The fact that we're still alive shows that God has more tolerance for whatever those secrets represent than we may give God credit for.

There's nothing we can't tell God. He's shockproof and He bears healing in His wings. Revealing our dark places to God isn't some odious duty. It's a privilege that brings renewal and life!