I was six years old, but I can remember like it was yesterday. I had been reading a book from my 1st grade teacher's "special" shelf. It was a big book with chapters. To this day I can't tell you what it was about, because quite frankly I didn't like it, and I didn't finish it. However, that didn't stop me from making up the end of the story when my teacher asked me how the book ended. I was more concerned that she believe I'd actually finished the book than I was about whether or not she'd probably read the book and already knew how it ended.
One night when my mother came to tuck us in for bed, I asked her-hypothetically, of course-the question that had been plaguing me for weeks, "If someone lies to someone else, do they have to tell that person, or can they just tell God?" I don't remember what my mother told me, but I do remember scheduling a time where I could go tell my teacher that I had lied to her. What a feeling of relief swept over me when I'd finally "...confessed my faults one to another (James 5:16)." I had told God countless times, yet relief, peace, and healing came when I confessed to my teacher.
God was preparing my little heart at age six for a huge truth I wouldn't come to understand until I was 33! The truth that AFTER the cross, confession of sins is to each other. AT the cross, my sins were forgiven once and for all!
Confession to one another allows relationships to be mended, private sin struggles to lose potency, and addictions to lose power. Hurts, habits, and hangups become distant memories that only remind us of God's grace, mercy, and power in our lives.
May your healing begin today.
~Rebecca Phillips
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