A True Confession

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, April 23rd. The Bible emphasizes the importance of acknowledging our sins. So today we continue our series on helps to holiness by examining the role of a true confession in living a healthy Christian life.

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Now I want to talk this morning about a true confession, and I am addressing this primarily to the believer, but I think there are areas of it that are applicable to a lost person. How many times do you have to confess a sin to be forgiven? Well, your first reply would be just one time. How many times do you confess the same sin before you think or feel that you’re forgiven? How many times have you confessed the same old thing to God over and over and over again? How many times have you come to God and you’ve said, now, Lord, I know that I’ve done this before. I’ve confessed this before. But this time, I really mean business. I mean, I tried over here and I didn’t make it. But this time, I mean, this is for keeps. I’m promising you. I know the Bible says you’re not to make vows, but I’m making a vow. I’m so confident that I’m so earnest and yearning to get this thing settled in my life. I’m eager to be obedient to you. I just want whatever you want. About a week later, you’re down on your knees. What are you confessing? Same old thing. Now listen, it wasn’t that you didn’t mean business with God. When you got on your knees and you told him that you were confessing that thing to him, you were as sincere as you’ve ever been in your life. You meant exactly what you said and God knew that you meant it. And if you confessed it, he forgave you of it. But now I want you to notice something. There are a lot of people who are confessing a lot of sin who are continuously defeated in their life. So that confession is not enough. If my confession does not lead me to release and liberty from the thing that has me in its grip, confession is to no avail. Now, the passages of Scripture we become the most familiar with, we oftentimes become the most careless about. And probably 1 John 1, 9 is one of them. Now we say, well, if you sin, somebody used the term rebound. You just confess it and that’s it. But my friend, there is more to it than just that. Now I believe in prompt confession. But when you look at the Bible to see what the Bible teaches about confession, there’s something desperately wrong with 90% of the confession that’s going on if there’s no more victory in the spiritual life than there is. Because all of us would have to confess the fact and admit the fact there have been times when we have confessed and confessed and confessed that we’ve said, Lord, you must be sick and tired of hearing me confess the same thing. Well, he wasn’t. We were. We get sick and tired of hearing ourselves confess the same old thing and wondering why we don’t have victory in our life. Well, this morning, I believe God has shown me A little something that I want to share with you that will help you move from merely confession to victory and liberty and release from the thing that keeps hanging you up with God. All right, first of all, I want you to get a pencil now. I want you to write this down. But don’t miss what I want to say. I’m going to make it simple and plain. I’m going to give you an outline that you can follow. And then I want to get to one point. I just want to sort of ring that around a few times. All right. The first thing I want us to ask, what is the meaning of confession? To confess sin means that I am in agreement with God about his attitude toward my sin. That is that he and I are saying the same thing. He’s not saying that’s awful and I’m saying it’s not so bad. It is that God is saying that thing is wrong in your life and I’m saying that everybody else is doing the same thing. Why is it so bad? You see, we rationalize. To confess means that I am in absolute agreement with God about his attitude about that thing in my life. Confession means I’m in agreement with him. If I’m in agreement with him about it, I’m going to have some sense of regret in my heart for being disobedient to God. Now, in essence, confession means it implies that the believer eagerly seeks for the Holy Spirit to expose what is not right in the human heart, that it may be written, that it may be exposed, that it may be erased, that it may be removed from that heart. We ask him to forgive us in order to have release, future release of that thing that keeps bugging us. You see? Far too many people want to get rid of the immediate fruit and they don’t want to deal with the root of what’s causing that thing. But you see, a true confession not only wants forgiveness and favor with him and more fruitfulness in his life, but he wants future release, that is release in the future from whatever continually harasses and brings about defeat. And here’s where I think we Christians trip up. We want forgiveness like we want a doctor to write us a prescription. We want him to write us a prescription regardless of how sick we are where we can immediately feel well. Now regardless of what’s wrong, we want to feel good immediately. Get a shot, get one quickly. Something you can take. We don’t want to take the time to get well. We want immediate healing. That’s because we’re a society of impatient people on the run. I understand that. Now listen. When we come to God and we’re asking him to forgive us, you see, if we just deal with the fruit on the tree and we don’t deal with the root beneath the ground, what are we going to do? But we’re going to be picking the same old fruit every day. And even if we escape three or four days, we’re coming back a week later and there it is hanging there, absolutely tantalizing and tormenting the same fruit. The question is, how does the believer confess? and receive forgiveness and favor with God and fruitfulness in his life and at the same time have the promise of future release from the same old tormenting thought or actions or habits in the life. You see, part of our problem is we’re always thinking in terms of the action and not the attitude. And you see, sin does not begin with an action. It begins with an attitude. Whatever I need to confess, I must recognize, first of all, it sprang from an attitude in my mind. It may bring forth fruit in many areas, but this is what I’ve got to deal with. Now, the third thing I must examine are the mistakes that you and I make in confessing sin. The third thing are the mistakes we make. And I think there are some very definite ones. He says, if we confess our sins, S-I-N-S, he’s faithful and just to forgive us for our S-I-N-S. And what? And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. All right. First of all, we confess impersonally. Here’s what we do. Now, I hear folks pray this. Father, forgive us of our sins. We just cannot say I and me. We want to share it with everybody else. You get in a prayer group, and here’s somebody, for example, who’ll confess something’s not right in their life, and then when they talk about it, then everybody gets down to pray. And here’s a fellow who’s talked about all these things in his life that’s not right. Then when he gets down to pray, what does he do? He just shares all that or spreads it all over the prayer group. He says, Lord, we have done this, and we are not what we ought to be. And I want you to forgive us of our sins. That’s impersonal confession, and it is a mistake we make in our confession. The second mistake I want you to notice is this, and that is not only is it impersonal, it’s indefinite. We say, Lord, forgive us of our sins. Well, we and sins are companions in confession for what happens. As long as I’m saying, Lord, forgive us, then I don’t have to face the issue. And as long as I’m confessing sins in general and use that word, I still don’t have to face a thing. What do you think when you think S-I-N-S? What does S-I-N-S say? It doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t say jealousy. It doesn’t say covetousness. It doesn’t say lust. It doesn’t say ill will. It doesn’t say gossip. It doesn’t say any of that. You say, well, doesn’t the Bible say if we confess our sins, that’s right. But he intends for us to face the sin. S-I-N, if I don’t face it, if I keep it indefinite, what I’m really doing is hiding behind the terminology. So our mistake is indefinite. Thirdly, mistake we make, and that is we confess in ignorance. We confess ignorantly. You know what we do? We don’t confess the thing we ought to be confessing. We confess something else. The reason we don’t have release and liberty is we’re over here confessing this, and here’s the problem over here. All right, whatever I confess that’s wrong in my life, God’s going to forgive me for any action that I confess. But you see, actions are not the solution until I deal with the attitude. So oftentimes we confess in ignorance. And we confess the same old fruit over and over and over again. We go and we’re sincere. We’re honest. We mean to do the right thing. And God knows we do. We are meaningful what we’re saying. But he understands that. But just think how patient he’s been with us for so long when he allows us to keep confessing the wrong thing. And you say, well, if I feel this is wrong, isn’t it wrong? Now, that may be wrong. But that’s not the root cause of the problem. So if I keep on confessing the fruit and don’t confess the root, what happens? The fruit keeps popping up. You can pull apples off apple tree all day long. You keep fertilizing the tree and it’s going to keep producing apples. And you see, part of our problem is we keep confessing the actions over here that we know are not right, but we will not deal with the root. And what I want us to do is to see why and how to deal with that root. And then the last thing about our confession, the last mistake is that we confess inconsistently. Now, here’s what we do. We read 1 John 1, 9. We said, now, Lord, you said if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thank you, Lord. And then we get on our knees and we confess what’s wrong. And then we get up and we say, thank you, Lord, that I’m forgiven. About a half an hour later, we think, Lord… Hope you forgave me of that. I know you did. And then what happens? The struggle begins. And before the day is over, you know what has happened? Half the day you have been harassed and tormented by what you confessed to God at 8 o’clock in the morning. You see, we’re inconsistent in our confession. We confess in faith and live in doubt. We tell him we know that he’s forgiven us because the Bible says he’s forgiven us, but then we act like that he’s not forgiven us. We inflict self-torment into our own lives. We somehow cannot accept the total verse. He says our forgiveness is conditioned upon our confession. And I believe that our confession oftentimes is in error because if it were not, Is it not true that every time you pray, you ask the Lord to forgive you, that you confess something? And you see, if our confession is really meaningful to God, and if our confession is meaningful to us, we’re going to have victory. We’re going to be happy people. We’re going to be praising the Lord and not stumbling and tripped up over the same thing all the time. All right, let’s move now to the fourth thing I want you to notice, and that is the making of a confession. How do you confess something? Now, I want to show you two or three things here. How do you confess? He says, now, if I confess, if I agree with him about this action, this fruit that it’s not ought not to be in my life, that he will forgive me. But now watch this. He does forgive you for the fruit that you’ve allowed. He does forgive you for the action. But you see, He wants us to go a step further and deal with the root and the fruit. It’s not that He doesn’t forgive you for that. It’s that God wants us to deal with this and not just that. You need to ask God to release you from what it is in your life that keeps hanging you up and keeps you out there pulling the same fruit off the tree all the time. Now, Let me say one other thing. That is, let’s talk about this matter of how we ought to confess. And let me just give you about four or five things right quickly. And I just call this the method of confession. Number one, if you’re going to confess something, confess it personally. Lord, I. Personal confession. Secondly, to confess it in particular, Lord, this thing, and call it by name. And you will find yourself struggling sometime to name that thing. I mean, it’ll just be a struggle. It’s just a struggle. I’ll tell you why the real struggle is there. Because it hurts our pride, we say, Lord, I just wouldn’t be guilty of that. Just go ahead and say it. I mean, it may be like mush in your mouth, but say it anyway. You need to hear yourself tell God, Lord, yes, I do want you to expose my heart. Reveal my heart. Shine your light into my soul. Let me be willing to verbalize in my own ears here what you have already agreed with. All right? Must be personal. Must be particular. And it ought to be promptly. It ought to be promptly. I do not mean by that just a little casual, you know, 1 John 1, 9. If my attitude toward confession was like the attitude of some people, I wouldn’t even, you know what I’d do? I just, if I did something wrong, not if, but when, pardon me. When I do something wrong, what I would do, I’d just say 1 John 1, 9. That’s all I’d say. Because a confession that is not personal, that is not definite, you might as well just call the scripture reference. It’s like the little girl who gets down to pray and she’s prayed the same old thing. So she gets sleepy, she gets down by her bed, her mother prays, and then she says, Lord, you heard me last night. Ditto. All right. Sometimes our confession is just about as meaningful as that. Lord, 1 John 1, 9. He’s not the slightest bit impressed by my casual, nonchalant confession because there’s more to it than that. must be promptly, and then I want to say two other things that I feel are necessary or will be a part of true confession. One of them is preparation. How do you prepare to confess sin? Well, you need to get quiet. And I won’t go into a long description except to say you need to get quiet. You need to get on your knees somewhere in humility before God. You need to open the Bible. You need to find you some verse of Scripture that that deals with that thing. Or if you want to turn to 1 John, but don’t let that get too casual in your life. You need to be quiet and tell God that you want him to show you that sin in your life like he sees it. And you know what will happen? Friends, you’ll get awfully, awfully disturbed and restless. You won’t just pitch that one out. Tell him you want him to expose it. You want to see it like he sees it. And then call it by name. And tell him that you want the root of that thing taken out of your life. And you’re willing for the Holy Spirit to expose the root, however long it may be, how awful it may be, because you want him to take that out of your life. Not just the fruit. You want him to deal with the root. Now, you can ask God to forgive you. And he’ll forgive you. But he’s not going to deal with the root until you are willing to allow him to do it. And then the last thing I want to say about the method of confession is I just want you to write the word down, painfully. That doesn’t mean it’ll always just rip you apart. But I’ll tell you, if you can live with sin in your heart, week after week, month after month, and it’s not hurting you, you need to examine whether you’ve ever been saved or not. And then if you are living with sin in your heart and you don’t know how to get rid of it, if you do what I’ve told you this morning, you’ll get rid of it. But now watch this. If you’ve got something in your heart that ought not to be there, it dogs your feet, screams at you at night, stings your conscience, tumbles you in the bed, and you don’t have any victory, then I want you to think about it for a moment. Whatever hurts and destroys you tears him apart in his heart. And if you love him, you’ll not do anything to hurt him. He loves you. He doesn’t want anything to hurt you. And true confession is going to include a little pain. And the pain is the pain of the realization that I’m not what I ought to be. I’ve hurt the one who loves me unconditionally. He’s willing to forgive me. Why don’t I settle that with him? God will release you today from whatever has tormented your heart and your mind.

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Thank you for listening to A True Confession. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our 24-7 online station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.