“If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not
hear.”
Psalm 66:18
[notes given out at a
“Planned Famine” sponsored by World Vision]
God desires our walk
with Him to be characterized by intimacy and power. In fact, He created us in Christ Jesus for
such a lifestyle. But in order to
experience the maximum in our prayer/worship life confession of sin is a
must. God knows that unconfessed sin
hinders our relationship to Him. And, as
a loving Father He is willing to point out anything that stands in the way of
that relationship. Perhaps the key
factors in clearing away these hindrances are, first, one’s heart attitude and
second, the art of listening to God.
ATTITUDE
The attitude of
the heart must be similar to the heart attitude of the Psalmist who implored, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test my
thoughts. Point out anything You find in
me that makes You sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”
Psalm 139:23-24 (Living Bible). Of
course, if one understands who God is and what He is like this is a natural
request. Who wouldn’t want to have God
point out anything that takes away in the least from the intimacy and power for
which He created us?
LISTEN
The second
factor is listening. The Christian who
is joyously walking in the power of the Holy Spirit and practicing spiritual
breathing deals with sin spontaneously and consistently as God brings awareness
of that sin. However, it is helpful from
time to time to simply pause, and listen to God’s voice. As we are going through the rigors of daily
life we may not give God a chance to point out subtle attitudes and thoughts
that grieve Him. In fact, we may even
unconsciously ignore hindrances to our relationship with God. Listening to God is often the lost art in our
devotional life. (Note: This is true not only of the confession time
but of our whole walk with God.)
Therefore it is important from time to time to simply pray the
Psalmist’s prayer and then quietly listen for several minutes to God’s
voice. Remember, too, that God uses the
Word as well as prayer and meditation to reveal blind spots in our lives. Therefore, ask the Spirit to lead you to
specific passages that God may want to use to speak to you. As He brings up specific hindrances, confess
them and claim the cleansing promised in 1 John 1:9. After a period of confession simply thank God
for pointing out these hindrances. Thank
Him, too, that because of Jesus, forgiveness is readily available. Then simply move on.
CAUTIONS
A few words of
caution are perhaps in order in this whole area of confession. First, one must be careful not to listen to
voices that are not of God. The accuser
comes to deceive. If you are in a time
of confession and listening to God and you sense a vague burdensome accusation
such as, “You have neglected to seek to be pleasing to God in all that you do”
or, “Are you taken up with the cares of this life?” these are likely from the
enemy. When God points out sin, there is
almost always very clear specific actions or attitudes that He brings to our
attention. God will say such things as,
“Remember last weekend when I told you to help your wife with the children and
you ignored My voice and read instead? I
want you to confess that.” Or, He might
say, “Remember how much time and emotional effort you expended worrying about
new tires for your car? You know that I’ll take care of you
and it grieves Me when your worry indicates your lack of trust. You need to confess that.” In short, make sure that when you are in a
time of asking God to point out things that make Him sad, that it is God, not
the enemy, who is doing the pointing.
The second
caution has to do with the use during your confession time of a comprehensive
list of possible sins you may have
committed. The potential danger of using
lists is that they can point a picture of the phantom Christian. Although these lists are very well intended
by the people that put them together, they can tend towards making a person
self-critical, introspective and performance-oriented. Since God tailor-makes the growth pattern of
each individual, we need to be cautious about putting up some standard that
either is further down the road than God intends us to be, or not as far along
as God intends us to be. Remember, God
is perfectly able to communicate through His word and through His inner voice
the sin in our lives that need confession if our attitude is right.
The third
caution you might consider is the case of the enemy coming to re-acccuse you of
sin that has already been confessed.
Once we confess a sin there is no need to re-confess that sin
again. Do not allow the enemy to dig up
past sins for you to dwell on. If you
have confessed the sin before, there is no need to even think about it
again. Our concentration should be on
moving ahead in our walk with God enjoying His total forgiveness.
The last
caution relates to going beyond the Holy Spirit’s leading in our
confession. Although one needs to be
sensitive to God’s voice and not gloss over sin, we need at the same time, to
be sure that we do not spend more energy assessing our “sins” than the Holy
Spirit would have us do. The psalmist
prays in Psalm 19:12 (Living Bible) “But
how can I ever know what sins are lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults.” Because we are still imperfect people there
are “hidden faults” in our lives that God has not yet prepared us to meet
head-on, but nonetheless, continues to cleanse us from. We need to trust God to make us aware of
those sins He wants to deal with now and simply thank Him for cleansing those
“hidden faults” that we are not aware of.
