The
purpose of admitting our wrongs to God isn’t to enlighten Him by filling in the
gory details of our life, as if anything were a surprise to Him. After all, He
knows the whole story better than we do. When we admit the exact nature of our
wrongs to God, we consciously and purposefully bring ourselves into agreement
with God, Who is our Hope for Life. We accept the facts of our lives just as
they are without argument, aligning ourselves with God and His Truth.
This our right place before God, our right place in His universe. Where before,
we had aligned our lives with self-rule, deception and secrets, we now align
ourselves with God’s truth, and this leads to the recovery of our heart, soul,
mind and our true strength as men and women of freedom. Ultimately, no one
escapes the truth, but by admitting the truth about ourselves we move toward
the wholeness we have been searching for all of our lives. We are simply taking
the “bull by the horns” and taking responsibility for our lives and our future.
Which
is better — to die with secrets and then face our Creator in arrogant
deception, or to seek Him now and humbly reveal ourselves, which is a way we
ask for mercy? God gives real mercy to real people. If we want life, mercy and
life, we have got to get real.
Luke 12:2, 3 NLT
My false and
private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and
God’s love – outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot
help but be an illusion.
Thomas Merton in
James Findley’s, Merton’s Place of
Nowhere
In the past, we used self-deceit and
manipulation of facts much like Adam and Eve used fig leaves to avoid exposure.
But to live, we step out from our hiding places and reveal our naked
vulnerability. We make ourselves accountable for our lives, and trusting in
God’s mercy and care, we become ready for God to reveal His loving and
compassionate nature to us. Our movement toward God is in response to the call
He’s been making to us all along. We respond to The One who continuously
invites us to become fully alive in Him. Our identity of origin — made in the
image of God — finds rebirth as we connect with God in this intimate way. In
our honest admission to God and learning how to relate to Him as Father, we are
becoming the most blessed of all people.
Only now,
however, is the evangelical church beginning to realize that without spiritual
direction, without one-on-one or small group conversations where our lives are
laid open in the presence of a person gifted to discern the workings of our
inner life, the disease of deception will not be cured. Without spiritual direction, millions of
Christians will continue to walk the “OLD WAY,” thinking they’re on the path to
knowing God well.
Larry Crabb, The Pressure’s Off pg 42
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