Sometimes you know what you need to do and you don’t do it.
Sometimes you know what you need to stop doing, but you keep doing it.
For some of you, when you saw these lines, you knew the thing in your life that I was talking about – something hidden, but just below the surface.
A recent blog post here reminded us of God’s power to break strongholds. For many, the strongholds that are most durable are secret places – secret from our co-workers, our friends, our family, even our spouses. Sometimes we can even manage to keep them secret from ourselves. The human heart is, as the Bible says, “deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). It is not too difficult for us to justify or gloss over the violent outbursts with the kids, the late-night online poker games, the pills that are hidden away, the deleted internet history, the drinking while the family is out of the house, the personal receipts submitted for business reimbursement, those chats or texts you know you shouldn’t be having, and on and on.
If you’ve been in that situation, you probably understand the guilt. You know what it feels like to say that “this is the last time,” and then to fall again and again. You might even know that feeling of having your heart start to get hard and calloused – to not care anymore, or to give up. The pain and the burden is even greater when you profess to be a Christ-follower and you feel like you are supposed to have victory. Strongholds of sin are enslaving. You feel mastered by something other than obedience to Christ. You no longer sense God’s leading – a “quenching” of the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). What is more, you are unable to truly follow Jesus because the need to safeguard your secrets controls you.
Take heart! There is good news. God is forgiving and gracious with us. The Father is patient, longsuffering. The Son is the compassionate Brother and our ever-present sacrifice for sin. And the Spirit is drawing us, seeking to keep us uncomfortable in our disobedience. God forgives. If he told Peter to forgive someone who asks for it seventy times seven times, surely he matches and surpasses that. When we call out, he hears us.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
We need no intercessor but Jesus Christ. The promise of forgiveness is steadfast and true, but the process of turning from sin is difficult and comes at a cost. Breaking free of long-established patterns is a hard road. Though forgiveness comes through God alone, breaking with strongholds of secret sin most often requires something else. You need to confess your sin to someone. James writes: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). Protestant traditions do not have a formalized process of confession. This stems from the core theological truth that only God Himself (and not any other person) can dispense forgiveness.
The Bible makes it clear, though, that confessing our wrong actions and patterns is crucial to healing. There is no way around it. We catalog all of the reasons that we cannot bring these deeply embarrassing and shameful actions to light. We rationalize this failure to come clean because of the pain that it will bring others in our life even though the duplicitousness is already wounding those relationships. But perhaps most of all, we fear the consequences for ourselves – it will impact our finances, our career, it will change the way that others see us. But to be free from the chains that hold you is worth all of it. Your honesty will be restored, even if you must come to terms with who you really are and fully own the darkest places in your soul. Forgiveness from others may not happen in the way that you hope, but it is in confession that God offers the potential for experiencing the profound possibilities of grace within Christian community.
Confession is important, but it is not a path without dangers. If your offense is going to be painful to someone very close to you, it is wise to seek a spiritual advisor first so that you can be guided through that process and provided with the support and strength that you need to follow through with what must be done. Email or call a pastor, a small group leader, a trusted and spiritually mature believer. If you are local, HighPoint Church hosts a ministry that can help. Celebrate Recovery meets on Sunday afternoons at 4:30 PM. There you will find a supportive place to guide you through this process. Another local resource is Recovery Church, which meets on Wednesdays at 6:33 PM in the old Johnson Funeral Home. For those not local, you can find a nearby Celebrate Recovery group here: https://locator.crgroups.info/
It is not easy to gain courage to confront the truth and admit the lies surrounding secret sins. If you wonder whether all of it can really work and whether God is powerful enough to forgive and restore, it might help to hear some stories from others about their own journeys. Celebrate Recovery can connect you with some of these stories. I would also recommend a podcast called Compelled. This podcast is full of encouraging, immersive testimonies and I believe will bless anyone who is at any place in their spiritual journey.
On the topic of destructive secrets, though, there are several to note:
I pray that these stories will be a catalyst to freedom for someone who is reading. Today
is the day for you to respond to God’s call to turn away from what has you enslaved.
May the truth win in your life!
Daniel Julich
