Hello Church Family,
We’re continuing our summer series on Spiritual Disciplines, walking through the Bible alongside Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline as we look at ancient practices meant to shape our lives today. This past Sunday, we looked at the discipline of Confession.
Sunday Recap: Confession
True confession is only possible because of what Jesus did on the cross — He took on the sins of the world, past, present, and future, so that we could confess honestly and receive real forgiveness.
We saw this play out in a few ways:
- Confession is personal. As Romans 10:9-10 tells us, confessing with our mouth and believing in our heart is how we’re saved. Much of confession begins in private, simply talking to God — like David did in Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love… Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!”
- Confession is also a declaration of faith — not just admitting fault, but professing what we believe, like the Apostle’s Creed we recited together.
- Confession can be communal. James 5:16 calls us to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” That means finding someone trustworthy — someone who won’t gossip, won’t judge, and will simply listen, pray, and sit with you.
- There’s no formula. Sometimes all we need to hear is that we are forgiven. As Acts 10:43 says, “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
A Prayer for This Week
A prayer of confession from John Wesley (1703–1791):
“Forgive them all, O Lord: our sins of omission and our sins of commission; the sins of our youth and the sins of our riper years… forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all for his sake, who died for our sins and rose for our justification, and now stands at thy right hand to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Take a moment this week to bring your own confession to God, trusting His mercy.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Jeremy