Peripatetics: The Art of Walking
Thursday, September 30, 2004
I think that the Christian community is a little fuzzy on the nature of confession. I know people that actually have accountability partners who literally confess sins to one another. I know people that keep it between them and God and they "grocery list" their sins. I have Catholic friends who go to a priest and confess their sins.
I think I'm a little fuzzy on the nature of confession. I've done all of the above. Well, I haven't gone to a Catholic priest, but I went with a friend of mine when he went because he needed to go by there and take care of business on a holy day before we went out to the movie. I didn't go all the way into the confessional, but I peeked around.
Anyway, since we looked at the act of confession and why it is important yesterday I thought we'd look at the content of confession, and Nehemiah 9 is a healthy example.
And I can't really get away from the idea the confession involves us realizing that God is indeed God and we are not Him. It starts in verse 5 and 6, from The Message:
"...You're the one, God, you alone;
You made the heavens, the heavens of heavens, and all the angels...
(then to the end of verse 8)
...And you kept your word, because you are righteous."
They reviewed the faithfulness of God in the history of Israel.
Then the confession of the bullheaded ancestors begins in verse 16. Their arrogance. They wouldn't obey God. They didn't listen. They were stubborn.
They forgot to remember.
But then the focus immediately goes back to God! His grace. His compassion. His patience. His love. In verse 20, God even gave them the Holy Spirit to teach them to live wisely...it goes on for 6 more verses about how great God is!
Then more confession. Mutiny. Rebellion. Killed the messengers. Jaws set in defiance. Turned backs. Again with the failure to listen.
But around verse 31 the focus goes back to God again. Great. Majestic. Loyal.
Then back to confession. Failure to listen. Failure to recognize His faithfulness and provision.
Again, they forgot to remember.
And in The Message, the confession ends with these words: "We're in deep trouble."
In here somewhere, the fuzziness of confession clears up a bit, don't you think? We tell God our shortcomings, our failures, our forgetting to remember. We're in deep trouble.
Then we remember to remember. God is great. Majestic. Loyal. Gracious. Compassionate...the list could go on forever. It will, actually.
But I do believe that even our confession should wind up with praise of God, because He's actually already forgiven us...but we should remember that He is God and we're not, and confessing our sins reminds us of that reality.
Brent 4:00 AM
Comments:
I think this all goes back to how we all go through highs and lows in our Christian walk. We can be walking with Him one minute and life is great, but in the next, we forget how we were doing it before. Rachel, Katy and I (the other Katie) were talking about this the other day. We want to be desperate for Him, but we don't know how to remember to remember that that is what we want. We just forget sometimes. I heard a song the other day that sort of talked about this. She sang, "I think it's time I rediscover all the ground that I have covered, like "Seek Ye first" what a verse. We are pressed but not crushed, perplexed, but don't despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are no longer slaves, we are daughters and sons, and when we are weak, we are very strong." -Sara Groves. We are basically just going through a cycle in life. We remember these things then forget them, then remember again, but how can we force ourselves to remember all the time?
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