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I woke up this morning dragging myself out of bed. My beautiful, bright, sunny day is no where to be found, yet I still found a way to give thanksgiving to God. While driving my husband to work, Nate turned to me and said something that caught me off guard. He thanked me. Well, it wasn't any old thank you for either of us. It was the kind that really got you to think of where you were in your life. Let me back up a little to explain. Last night, after I took our daughter to a friend's house, he gave me the disappointing news that this year's merit increase wasn't coming. Apparently, the company my husband works for has set higher standards to receive them and Nate fell slightly below that expectation. Needless to say, he was feeling very low and while consumed with human emotion, he immediately sought out excuses and reasons to explain away his shortcomings. I sat there listening and thought to myself, how important are all these reasons any way. They can't change the present or the future. What about now - in this moment? Although, I love and respect my husband and I know how terribly hard he works, I couldn't help but think of God and how so many times we act this way to our own Heavenly Father. I encouraged him to continue to push on, to try harder, and to allow God to take control. I reminded him of his own accountability to God and questioned him on how he was doing spiritually. In the end, it really got me to thinking.. how often do we really hold each other and our families accountable before God? Are we just going through life without feeding each other? Are we asking questions and allowing God to use us to strengthen our families, home, spouses, and church? Is God really in the "bigger" picture of it all? It is so easy to know we are God's children, yet so easy to forget the things that help nurture us along the way. It's like a newborn baby as the mother feeds, cleans, and cares for him/her every day. You wouldn't leave the child to fend for him/herself, just as you shouldn't leave your family or soul mate to do the same. Spiritually, we are all like that little baby or child - yes, some may be a little older and more mature, but does that mean they can never fall down or stumble? We do, quite a bit, and it is so easy to find excuses or complain. While my husband was explaining everything to me, I thought about how God must feel every time we come before Him in that way - giving reasons, as if we had to explain it to Him. We so quickly forget that He is the God of everything and we don't need to tell him what he already knows. When we slip or fall below where we know we should be in our hearts, we should take ownership of it and push forward while allowing God to work it out within us. Too many times we try to take the reigns and not allow God to really work in our lives. We get lazy spiritually and become second class christians (a term I learned from Chapter 4 in our dialogue series "Growing Season") So, my challenge to you today is to evaluate your own christian walk, seek out someone as an accountability partner, work together in strengthening each other, and confess everything to your loving father who wants only the best for your life. May God go before you today in love. Missy Twelve Steps to Christian Living Part 5 Confession Time The first four steps can be found at http://www.cfdevotionals.org/links/authdave.htm Step 5: We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I hope you are still with me on this journey through the Twelve Steps. In Step Four, we began the process of implementing our decision to turn our lives and will over to God. This is a lifelong process. We will grow, plateau, and then grow some more, all in God's time and His will. We wrote down all the stumbling blocks in our lives that keep us from a right relationship with God. Step Five is a confessional step. This confession helps to relieve us of the burdens, bindings and baggage we uncovered in Step Four. To implement this step, we must have a most trusted person who will hear and listen to our written personal inventory from Step Four. Why confess to another person, you ask? Can't I just confess to God? He knows all my wrongs. Well, I can't trust this mental playground called my mind, to just myself. I may secretly confess some wrongs to God, but without another person, I am prone to beat myself up over and over again for what my mind and the evil one will lead me to believe is an unforgiven and unforgotten sin. James 5:16 (NLT) Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results. Proverbs 28:13 (NLT) People who cover over their sins will not prosper. But if they confess and forsake them, they will receive mercy. The person with whom we share our shortcomings is not the object of our confession; God is and we are. And He does want to hear our confessions. But we need a mentor to keep us on track and be non-judgmental. This mentor must be a very trusted, seasoned and spiritually mature person. And when we wallow again and again in our past foul-ups, our mentors can remind us that we confessed and that we were forgiven. Step Five is not only a step of confession; it is also a step toward healing. The 5th Step also helps break the isolation we feel from others, not just God. When we are vulnerable and honest, deeply honest, with another human being, somehow that experience makes us less fearful to be of use to others. Farther along in the Steps, we will plow through the wreckage, weakness, worries and wrongs that keep us apart from God. Our goal is rightness with God, and in turn, our lives can be lived the way God intended -lives not bound by past resentments and fears. We are only as sick as our secrets. When we admit our wrongs to another person, we no longer fear our secrets, nor are we immobilized by them. We are now ready to move to make more progress in our journey to becoming more like Christ, by turning our lives and will over to the care of God. Jesus states in Luke 12:2-3 (NLT) The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear! Friends, the time has come. The time has come to quit hiding behind a false façade, a mask that we put in front of our true self. The time has come to break through the prison that we place ourselves in by hiding and quivering in fear.
Lord, give us Your strength, Your courage and Your wisdom to confess our sins not only to You and ourselves, but to another person as well. Thank You for being a God that forgives, no matter how bad we think we are. You love us in spite of ourselves. We long to be right with You and those around us. In Jesus' name, Amen. Author: David Massey Parts 1-3 can be found at http://www.cfdevotionals.org/links/authdave.htm [Source: EDevotions, Author: David Massey http://www.cfdevotionals.org/pages/testdave.htm, 2002-10-09 - Twelve Steps for Christian Living, www.cfdevotionals.org]
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