Ok here’s my premise…

The longer you are a Christian the more sin you ought to see in yourself. Therefore the longer you are a Christian the more you ought to confess. Mature Christians are confessing, repenting Christians.

But why should we confess to “one another” if only God can forgive sins. Here are at least 5 good reasons to confess sin to “one another”.

Confession is good for…

Accountability

• One of the ways we are deceived into not overcoming sin is to think we can do over come this on our own. What feeds this idea is that we don’t really want anyone to know we struggle with these things. We don’t want anyone to know, but the truth is we can’t do it on our own. We NEED accountability. The whole point this verse implies that we need “one another.” When we confess to our Christian friends or church family, we are giving them permission to pray for us, ask how we are doing, and help keep us accountable. When we confess we are saying, “I want to overcome this sin so desperately I don’t care what other people think of me, I need help.”

Responsibility

• Confession shows responsibility. When you are willing to own your sin, spiritual progress is being made. It’s not the way I was raised. It’s not the culture we live in. It’s not the parents I had or didn’t have. It’s not my spouses fault I am the way I am, its my sin. I am not going to ignore this anymore. I have chosen to sin. I know better. It’s my fault. You have to own it. You’re responsible to deal with the consequences and give it to God

Repentance

• Confession is part of true repentance. If we are not willing to confess we are generally not truly repenting. Confession alone is not enough, but confession that leads to turning from sin is God’s design for your life. God has given us “one another” to help get us from just confession to overcoming our sin against him. Maybe you’ve been struggling with a particular sin all of your Christian life because you haven’t tapped into the resources God has given you to truly overcoming this sin. Confess to one another.

Prayer

• It joins others in prayer for you to overcome. Many Christians can quote the second half of this verse but most don’t realize that it’s connected to “confess your sins to one another.” That’s right. James is reminding us of the power of prayer in order to help us see the need to confess to each other. If you are struggling with a particular sin, you need prayer, so confess.

It expresses the gospel

• Confessing sin is simultaneously confessing the amazing grace of God. I believe the failure of mature Christians to confess the things they struggle with leads others to misunderstanding the gospel. Here are three ways not confessing leads to misunderstanding.

1. It leads people to think they are the only ones who struggle. It can also cause them to wrongly doubt their salvation. If confession were happening then they would realize they’re not the only one. And they would be more willing to confess themselves.
2. It leads to misunderstanding sin. Many people only think of sin as big things. But if mature Christians were broken and confessed their sin more often, it would help with a more correct understanding of sin.
3. The gospel already tells us that we need Jesus because we are sinners. But the way we live sometimes gives the impression that we can handle it all on our own, which is the opposite of the gospel. We can’t handle it. We need Jesus. Confessing reinforces the gospel. It says we need Jesus just as much today as the day we were converted. It says in a non cliche way, “I’m not perfect, and I need Jesus.”

• Leaders evaluate to discern some of the misunderstanding ahead of time. Leadership is about knowing you are going to be misunderstood and attempting to address it before it even comes, though this is not always possible. In some ways we are all suppose to “count the cost” before we act (Luke 14:28).

A leader should ask more questions than anyone else.

Leaders should ask question like….

1. Is there something we could do different to achieve a better outcome?
2. What is my reason for wanting to accomplish this?
3. Am treating people better than the product/service?
4. Do I have other peoples best interest in mind?
5. What are the long term and short term consequences of doing it this way?

Evaluation is a Great thing!

• It doesn’t always feel like a good thing. Because leaders do this they often think people just don’t get it! “No one else is even considering the good and the bad of this.” Some people think it is actually a hindrance to progress, to ask so many questions, to evaluate critically, so they ironically evaluate and criticize your desire to examine things. The Bible even teaches that self evaluation is good.
• 2 Cor. 13:5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
• Lamentation 3:40 Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!

Important things should be evaluated more often.

• Evaluate your marriage, how you interact with your children, your job situation or the business you operate. Evaluate your motives.  Everybody evaluates.  Not everybody evaluates the right things.  People evaluate their video game performance and their sports performance more than their relationships.  We think about our physical lives and often don’t even consider how it effects our relationship with God.  Leaders evaluate the important things.

Don’t evaluate to criticize others, evaluate to be a better leader.

• We are always better at criticizing others than we are at criticizing self, but the purpose of leading is to help others. Maybe helping others includes changing the way we are going about helping them. Maybe the way we discipline our children is actually not helping them overcome a weakness. Maybe the attitude we approach people with is not displaying true leadership. Maybe there is a another way to address your employees to create better morale and less turnover.

• Mark 9:35 “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”
• 1 Peter 4:10 “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
• Gal. 5:13 “…through love serve one another.”

RaeAnn, my daughter, and I brainstormed some ways of serving last night. She said serving is helping. Of course there are many ways to serve, but here are some we discussed.

First, here are 3 everyday ways to serve.

Serve by cleaning.

• Yep, you guessed it I brought this one up! We have been blessed a few times by people coming over and cleaning our house in times of need. Cleaning is a wonderful way to serve others. Be like Martha and serve.

Serve by giving gifts.

• It’s Valentine’s Day so this one is obvious. Beyond that, give gifts to people you know will never repay you. Maybe your heard someone say they like something that you own. Give them yours or better surprise them and buy one for them. Give gifts at odd times to people who would never expect it. It’s fun that way!

Serve by teaching.

• I think one of the reasons Jesus loved children is that they were teachable. Teaching people to do things takes time. Teaching is serving. You can teach someone to cook, ride a bike (even if its not your kid), fix a problem with their car, operate their phone, or how to study the Bible.

The next 2 we usually don’t think of when talking about serving, but are actually great ways to serve someone.

Serve by listening.

• People go through a lot and often need to someone just to listen to them. Listening helps us be understanding. Listening often displays compassion. Listening is also serving because in our world of social communication, it is more easy to want people to listen to you than to listen to others. We want to be heard but its harder to hear. What we have to say is more easily received when we have listened first. Listening first also helps us better know what to say, if we need to say anything at all. Serve someone by listening today.

Serve by overlooking weakness.

• Paul became “weak to the weak” when sharing the gospel (1 Cor. 9:22). “The Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Rom. 8:26). “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died.” (Rom. 5:6). These verses tell us very clearly to serve by dismissing the weakness of people. What is weakness though? Weakness may include a persons inability to do something, an annoying habit they have, or it may include sin in some form or fashion. We serve the weak because we know that God does the same for us and so do other people. We are often unaware of this but other people deal with our weaknesses, so we ought serve by dealing with the weaknesses of others.

Ex. 20:13 You shall not murder.

Dear Murderer

I know that you don’t think you’ve broken the 6^th commandment and so it doesn’t apply to you, but from one murderer to another let me tell you why we are guilty.

First there is more to the commandment than actual murder. Jesus makes this clear in Matthew (5:21-22) when he says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” So even being angry or hating someone is breaking this commandment.  Slander and Gossip, killing someone’s reputation, are also breaking the commandment not to murder. Bullying, fighting ,and degrading a persons value are also a violation of the sixth commandment.

Second, each of the commandments can be stated in the positive. The positive way to say “you shall not murder” is to say, “You shall be for life, love life, treasure life, your life and your neighbors life.” The obvious way to do this is to support life.  But more than that it means we should support life at every level; physical, mental, and emotional. So stated in the positive it is not just about what we shouldn’t do, but what we ought to be doing. If we don’t support life like we ought, then we can be guilty of murder by neglect. This implies that we ought to do things to help people have great lives. We should speak kindly and encouraging people. It’s a call for us to step in and encourage the kid at school or work that is always being ridiculed. It a call for us to get to know people, to love people, to share Jesus with people.

Finally, the main point of this and every command is to show us we are not nearly as good as we think we are. We are sinners that break every command, even murder. And because we are sinners we need a Savior. So this commandment is meant to lead us to “the Author of Life” (Acts 3:15) and hear the “the Bread of Life” (John 6:35), say he is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6) because he came to give “abundant life” (John 10:10) and “eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus leads us to life because he gave his life as a substitute. We should have died and been judged with an eternal punishment but instead he gives eternal blessing to all who turn from their sin to Jesus.

Thanks for letting me share,

Another Murderer

Eph. 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Sherri and I have to discuss and evaluate how we teach our children all the time. It is a never ending conversation, because we seem to constantly drift toward unhealthy parenting. What follows are a few ways in which we discussed what it means to provoke our children.

Playing favorites

• Some parents do this on purpose to manipulate their children, but many do this not realizing. Among divorced parents this can happen more easily, especially when one kid stays with one parent more often.

Disciplining them only for selfish reason and not to teach them right and wrong.

• Discipline is for the good of the child. But is easy to discipline our children for personal gain. Anger often comes out during selfish times, that is one reason we should try not to discipline in anger all the time.

Being inconsistent

• When we don’t discipline for something and then blow up the next time we see them do the very same thing, it sends mixed messaged to our children and leaves them confused, frustrated, or discouraged.

Unrealistic expectations

• A 2 year old can’t realistically be left alone to clean a room by themselves. Not every child is going to make straight A’s. Our kids are all different they excel in different things and we don’t punish one kid for not excelling the way big sister or brother does.

verbal abuse

• Talking to your child in a rude, less than human way is always going to provoke them to not honor their parents.

Never admitting when you are wrong.

• Parents who never admit they are wrong are only training their children to never admit they are wrong. It will provoke a child less for a parent to admit their faults than to just think “they’ll get over it.”

Always focusing on the negative and not the positive

• Parents need to praise the children more than correct them. If the majority of the time that you converse with your children is to get on to them, they will resent you. Talk to your children more than just to say, “Stop it, don’t do that, why did you do that, clean that up, go play, go to your room.” Tell them when you are proud of them. You should encourage your kid more than any other adult.

Failing to keep our promises

• Okay, sometimes we just can’t follow through. But when we make promises on a regular basis that we know we are not going to be able to keep or just don’t plan on keeping, we are failing to be the parent the Bible calls us to be.

By disrespecting your parents in front of your children.

• We as parents should be careful how we talk about our parents in front of our kids. If we want our kids to honor us, we should honor our parents especially in front of them.

When you don’t support them or say “I love you” to them.

• I still like to hear my parents tell me they love me. No one is going to tell my kids they love them more than me. If you don’t, some creep might.