How easy is confession?

     How easy is confession? This may or may not be a question you often think of but it is important to consider because the answer reveals something about how you perceive confession. The first answer that came to my mind is that confession is easy not because I had a simple view of confession but rather a shallow one. Confession is one of those things that my parents taught me do because it was what good Christians do but they never taught me why it was important or how hard of a discipline confession really is. Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline, 

Confession is a difficult Discipline for [Christians] because we all too often view the believing      community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into the holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy. (145)

     Confession is not meant to isolate us from the believing community but rather it is meant to draw the believing community together in ways that show the community that this believing community is being the Church. Confession is also a “means of healing and transforming the inner spirit” (Foster 144). Yet so often I return to the memories of the action that caused me to confess and seek forgiveness because I have not allow the healing power of God fully transform my inner spirit. 

     So the practice of this disciple came about while I was on a retreat with other students and staff from Kuyper. Friday night’s message was focused on examining what are our motives behind the choices we make. The speaker challenged me to consider the reasons why I chose Kuyper and why I chose to go into the pre-seminary program. 

     I sat on the beach of Lake Michigan in the cool and windy Saturday morning. I began to ponder the question why did I chose Kuyper and the pre-seminary program. I ask the Holy Spirit to reveal both the good and motives. As things came to mind, I just wrote them down and not analyze them. I soon saw motives that horrified me and I knew that they horrified God even more.

     I took the bad motives and confessed them to God asking him to forgiven me for being so self-centered and to help me to live a holy life. That time I spent confessing was a time of healing and transforming because I walked away renewed, refreshed, and in tune with the Holy Spirit. Confessing reminded me that I am totally dependent upon God to rescue me from deepest part of my being where I am a broken human being who is selfish and rebelling against Him.