Confess

CONFESS! They say. To the criminal on the streets. To the kid unaware that he has been caught stealing. In the bible it says confess your sins one to another. So confessing seems like a pretty scary thing. Then God showed me something that made it even more frightening.

Confession is not required to be of negative connotation. You can even confess positive things. That is not how we usually see it but what I told God is that it would be easier to confess murder than to confess to myself the truth of who I am.

So I looked up the definition. Went straight to Webster: 

CONFESS

1. to acknowledge or avow (a fault, crime, misdeed, weakness, etc.) by way of revelation.
2. to own or admit as true: I must confess that I haven't read the book.
3. to declare or acknowledge (one's sins), especially to God or a priest in order to obtain absolution.
4. to tell or make known (as something wrong or damaging to oneself) : admit
5. to declare faith in or adherence to : profess
6. to give evidence of
7. to admit, own

To acknowledge or avow by way of revelation. But don’t forget to add the negative behaviors into that. But I ask can you not acknowledge good things too? To own or admit as true. This is the hard one for me. This is the one that when I read it I could feel God almost poking me with a stick to make sure that I knew that was what He was talking about. To tell or make known. Why just guilt, can it not be to make know the truth that God has spoken over each one of us? Then we get to number 5- to declare faith. It took until the fifth definition to open the door that confession is not simply an act of reporting bad things that we have done. Sure there is a need and place for that but what if all we confessed were what is wrong with us and what we have done wrong? To give evidence of; to admit, own. And that is it! To give evidence of who I am in my self critical view? No! God calls us to confess the truth. His truth. Who we are in Christ. Sure when necessary God does call us to confess our sins to Him and to another that there might be healing but I ask what do you confess to yourself every day? To others? About others?

I for one have a substantial problem with this. I confess that I am stupid. I am ugly. I am not wanted - on a far too often frequency. Outside of manipulative circumstances I imagine most people wouldn’t confess to a crime that they didn’t do. So who in their right mind would confess to being these horrid things that are contrary to the truth of who we are according to our father who created us and every detail of who we are. So God asked me to be cautious of what I am confessing about myself. There are consequences to confessions. Whether crimes or what we confess about ourselves. If we continue to confess lies we are steadily destroyed. If we confess truth we are built up. God give me the strength to confess your truth and not the lies of this world and my own heart.