Celebration of Discipline Week 9: Confession
This is week nine of our 12-week series exploring Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.
Join us as we journey through the twelve spiritual disciplines found in the book choosing to go deeper with Jesus and grow in our spiritual lives. It’s not too late to join us – so grab a copy and dive in!
Here’s last week’s blog where Becky shared her thoughts on service. You can also watch her video update too.
Discipline Nine: Confession
If we know that God forgives us, why do we need confession? Surely God just knows?
This week’s chapter, exploring the spiritual discipline of confession, is a heavy yet eye-opening journey into why confession is such an important part of the Christian life – especially for those looking to lead. It comes down to this: there is freedom in confession.
I wonder if you can relate to me when I say that confession isn’t a massive part of my life. It really isn’t a big part of our world as a whole. Yes, we may be alright at saying sorry when we do something wrong or hurt someone else. We may even be good at praying and asking God for his forgiveness. However, I suspect not many of us are good at confessing every sin in our lives. Perhaps we are just too ashamed to share some things, even with ourselves, and so we suppress them and act like they aren’t a reality or haven’t even happened. This can snare us, damage us and ultimately restrict our relationship with God. The discipline of confession is a way of freeing ourselves from those things, small and large, and inviting Jesus to restore, heal and forgive us.
‘At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive. It’s who God is’
What I love about this chapter is that, although at first glance it can seem really scary, Richard Foster eases us in with some truths we need to know before we really grow in this discipline. The opening sentence is: ‘At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive.’ It’s who God is.
It’s so much part of him, that he created this grand cosmic scheme to help us be forgiven, ending in the death and resurrection of Jesus, where sin was beaten, and our slates wiped clean. That is what we are working with and where our hope should come from when it comes to this, quite honestly daunting, discipline.
Foster identifies two types of confession: corporate confession, which involves you and another trusted person, and private confession, which is between you and God.
Corporate confession
Foster reminds us that we can often fall into a hole where we think that everyone else is super holy compared to us. In turn, this leads us to even more guilt about our sin and results in us hiding away, living a veiled life that inevitably is full of hypocrisy.
The solution? We have to accept that we are a fellowship of sinners, who are all in this together, and who are all just as good or bad as one another. This puts us on a level playing field, and (ideally) leaves us no room for judgement.
Then we each need to find someone we trust, who we know isn’t going to judge us, who’s a good listener, and who follows Jesus. Ask them to sit down with you and start learning this discipline. If you are struggling to think of anything, or if you are struggling to say anything, Foster suggest two exercises:
Spend some time beforehand, maybe across a few days, picking different stages of your life and spending just 10 minutes in silence asking God to reveal things from that stage of life. Write down whatever comes into your head, no matter how crazy it is. Then after you’ve gone through each stage, meet with the friend and read it to them, confessing.
If you’re struggling to actually share, get your friend to ask you questions. If even this isn’t working then go to ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions, where you simply have to nod or shake your head. Eventually this should lead somewhere.
Right now, the thought of this might seem really uncomfortable, and it likely will be. But the end goal is that we gain freedom – a freedom only found in the realigning ourselves with God.
Private confession
The second type of confession, private confession, seems a lot easier. It’s about regularly spending time with God just simply confessing your sins and asking for forgiveness, just him and you. Simple.
If you’re like me, this seems like the much less daunting option, but really we need to do both. Although, as Foster says, ‘It is a wonderful truth that the individual can break through into new life in the cross without the aid of any human mediator.’ Private confession is great.
‘It is a wonderful truth that the individual can break through into new life without the aid of any human mediator’
To conclude, here are the four things that the Foster lays out as the fundamentals of confession:
BE SPECIFIC
Confession is all about being as specific as possible. It’s easy to say, ‘God, please forgive me because I was bad today,’ rather than, ‘God, today I hurt … and I was also thinking horrible things about … when they annoyed me. I also struggled with …. today. Lord please forgive me and help me to grow into being more and more like you.’ People came to Jesus with obvious sins and then were forgiven and healed, so we should too.
BE SORROWFUL
This doesn’t mean wallowing in our sin. This doesn’t mean letting our sins control us and eat us up. It’s just about having a healthy amount of regret, and a regret of having ‘offended the heart of the Father.’ Really it’s just about being sorry that you strayed from the father’s heart.
HAVE A DETERMINATION TO AVOID SIN
The whole point of confession is the free us from our past sin and give us a yearning for a holy life, that means having a determination to avoid sin. This means really trying to live a life in which we avoid sin as much as we can. However, we must know this is done in God’s strength, not ours alone.
END IN JOY
The whole process is done for the sake of living a life full of joy, aligned with the Father. When we’ve done this well there is almost inevitably joy at the end of it.
So, now we know what confession is all about, let’s have a go! Here are a few ways we can get started…
Text or ring a friend who you trust and ask them to engage in this with you. Take some time before you speak to reflect and pray, asking God to reveal things to you and then share and feel the freedom
Spend some time alone, write those things you may be feeling guilty about down. Pray over it. Then tear the piece of paper up into as many pieces as possible. This is a physical act of that sin being taken away.
Spend some time praying. Being in God’s presence and take that first step in sharing with him your sin and asking for forgiveness.
Richard Foster recommends these daily scripture readings as explore confession this week:
Monday: The need for confession and forgiveness – Isaiah 59:1–9, Romans 3:10–18
Tuesday: The promise of forgiveness – Jeremiah 31:34, Matthew 26:28, Ephesians 1:7
Wednesday: The assurance of forgiveness – 1 John 1:5–10
Thursday: Jesus Christ our adequate Saviour, Mediator and Advocate – 2 Corinthians 6:21, 1 Timothy 2:5, 1 John 2:1
Friday: A parable of confession – Luke 15:11–24
Saturday: Authority and forgiveness – Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18, John 20:23
Sunday: The ministry of the Christian fellowship – James 5:13–16
Video Update
Here’s Ash’s video update from the end of the week:
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We’ll be sharing blog posts, encouraging quotes and video reflections on each chapter of Celebration of Discipline.