Confess to Each Other (James 5:16)

Welcome to uh 915 devotional. It's now 9:17. We're a little late. Sorry, new tech. We'll figure this out. Um today, and then we let me go ahead and uh let me go ahead and share this scripture. So, yesterday we were in John uh uh 1 John 1:9 and we were talking about uh for we were talking about uh confession. Uh and and 1 John 19 says if we were if we confess our sins and we talked about what that meant and then today I said we were going to roll into another verse which takes it from a different perspective. And so here we're here we're in the book of James and we're in as you can see we're in James 5 and 16 and it says therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

It goes on to say the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. And this scripture starts off with therefore. So James is really talking about the couple of verses before that and he talked about whether you're sick or you're happy or whatever circumstance you're in. What James is saying is it's we want to get healing. Healing doesn't just come from prayer. Our church is awesome. At the end of every service, there's a prayer team up front and you can come on down for prayer. But what James is saying is that prayer is great and we have to um but we have to combine that with confession as well too.

And let's talk about that for a second. Uh sin hides in darkness. And so if you just continue to pray, which we should do, but you don't voice that sin, if you don't have those people in your life, you you shouldn't be airing your your laundry out for everyone. That's that's not what James is going to ask you to do. But if you have that accountability partner or your spouse or or those people that you're very close to, James is saying, "Confess your sins to each other." And why? Because when you do that and you put it out in the open, uh it's in the light.

And the and the and the sin can't live there. It can't stay in the light. It won't. And so we we need to do both of those things. We need to not only pray, but we need to confess our sins to each other. And it says that you may be healed. That healing I I I know that I know that most times when we think about healing, we think about we broke our arm. We we hurt our leg. We we have a a chronic illness. We have cancer. And we think about this physical healing. But but that's it's not just physical. It's also the emotional side. And when when you don't confess those things, it can affect your sleep.

It can affect your mood. It can affect your marriage. And so it's important for us to not just say, "Hey, I'm going to pray for you or let's pray." It's, "Hey, let's talk about confession. Let's talk about airing this out. Let's talk about putting that sin and bringing it to the light where it won't survive." That every time I think about that, this is crazy. I think Hollywood, I think vampire, right? Vampire's evil. And what happens when when the vampire goes into the light? The light destroys the vampire. And so that's just the mental image that I have in my head when I think about this process.

When I think about this verse and this scripture, the end of this verse says the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Other translations will say the fervant prayer uh of the righteous is a effectual and and what what we're talking about here is a righteous person. That doesn't mean a perfect person. No one on this call is perfect. But there's probably quite a few of us on this call, if not all of us, who who could consider ourselves righteous. We're right with God. And so that's the important thing. So what it's saying is is that if you're standing right with God, your prayer is powerful and effective.

It takes away uh it takes away Well, well, let me let me not say it takes away. Uh first John 1:9 is forgiveness that come when we when we confess. That's forgiveness from Christ. That's forgiveness from our Lord. When we confess our sins to each other, that's that's making us whole. So, so they do different things. And it's important that we do that. It's important for us not to rely solely on our pastor. We don't have to. This is what this verse says. It's the church. It's the body of Christ. And so, Jimmy's a good friend of mine. Neil's a good friend of mine.

If I have something and I and I confess it to them, I'm taking that sin. I'm putting it into the light where it can't survive. And that's what James is talking about here. That's when you start to heal. That's when you start to be made whole. It's not just the prayer. It's the confession of that sin one to another as well, too. And I've said this before, the Bible's full of formulas. And right here, we have exactly that. Confess your sins to each other. Pray for each other. And when you do that, that's when the healing starts. All right. So, uh, I did this entire time and never took the scripture off.

I'm so sorry. So, here you get to see me now. All right. So, uh, thoughts, comments, suggestions, and you have to unmute yourself at the bottom. It's always good to find Kathy You know, you've always you've always said about a less mummy and a mummy. Uh for us to be able to work in that area of of the be able to confess the sins, it's somebody you got to trust with too because um the sin can be something very deep, something very uh personal, you know, that an individual is going through. So you got to know who like you said you have good friends but at the same time you have a spiritual person in your life that you can trust you know that's person you work with to help you with that.

Yeah, the church the church is not made of perfect people, right? And so you guys have probably all heard that, right? If you find the perfect church, you should probably leave because you'll make it not perfect, right? So So no one's perfect. And and so you have to be you have to use wisdom and discernment to know who those people are that are near you that can share your story. Everybody on this call has a past. And that doesn't mean that we share that with everyone. We have to be we have to we have to use godly wisdom to to discern who those people are that are in our in our camp that we we can feel comfortable sharing and confessing those sins to.

You're absolutely right. it's what James was talking about that the sin can't survive in the light. It just doesn't it it grows in darkness and then when we when we put that out into the light, it kills it. It dies. It's dead. Amen. Anybody else? Yeah. I found that that confessing our sins to to our friends who, you know, someone asks, "How can I pray for you?" And we share something with them, it it actually blesses them because a lot of times I'll be like, "Man, I'm I'm struggling with anger or I said something to my kids I shouldn't have yesterday.

I'm really frustrated with my spouse or whatever it would be. That person on the other line is typically dealing with something very similar. So to hear that you're struggling with it almost encourages them in some ways many times. Hey man, it allows people to know that they're not that I I joke and I laugh and I tell people I I know your mom told you you were you were special. You're not, right? Because we we all we all deal with stuff. It all happens. If you think you're the only one going through that, please ask. He says there's nothing new under the sun.

There's nothing that you're dealing with that God hasn't already dealt with, seen, and and uh and and fixed many times prior to what you're walking through. But it's always comforting to hear someone else doing that, right? We I think that may be where we where we get that old adage, misery loves company, right? It needs we need to know that there's someone that's walked through this thing because it gives us encouragement to know that we're not alone in that process. Anyone else? 30 seconds. Uh, all right. So, let's uh let's pray out. Let's bow our heads.

Father, thank you so much for today. Lord, thank you for uh for putting other people on our path, Lord, that that we can get close to. Those those people that we can confess those things that are difficult to do. And there's some things in our past that um that we that we probably are holding on to and your word tells us not to. Your word tells us to confess those things. It tells us to bring them into the light. They won't survive there. Um our sleep will get better. Our relationships will improve. Um we will heal if we not just pray, but if we confess as well, too.

And and that's what your word says. That's that's a promise right there from from James. And so, Father, I just pray that we would do that. I pray that we would uh lead this call and and if we don't have that person or two that we would identify them that we would seek them out uh and that we would have a conversation that we would we would confess the things that we know we need to Lord so that that healing process can start not just the confession but the prayer that goes with it. Lord give us the courage and the strength to do that. It can be a tough thing to do to dig up an old wound u but we know that healing happens when we do that.

Father, we just thank you for this simple passage, this uh this this process that uh that we can continue to go forward, that we can move forward, that we can become closer to you, closer to those around us, and allow this body of Christ to grow. Father, we love you, we praise you, and as always, in your son Jesus name we pray. Amen. All right. We will see you guys tomorrow here. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly edited for readability.