The more you confess your sins the more you are forgiven.
The more you are forgiven the more you love God.
I’m very grateful to the congregation. You guys gave me some time so I could be with my dad while he was on hospice. And my first week there with my dad I explained to my dad the churches, let me given me this time to be with you. I’m not going back. I’m here and we’ll go through this together. Oh, that’s good. You know, thanks for coming down. That’s a good church. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. And then come Friday, that Friday he said he starts naming people that he knows that could come and take care of him and I’m dead. Yeah. They could come and help you, but why? I don’t need them to help me out. Help you. I’m okay if they want to come, let them come, but I’m here to help you up. He says, aren’t you going back to to San Jose on Saturday?
I go, no, I’m not going back to San Jose. I’m here to stay. He says, well, when you going home, I go after you go home those. Oh, okay. Thanks. You know, ed, I was a little humorous moment there, but I really appreciated the opportunity, the freedom to go and be there with my dad. I was very grateful to you guys. I’ll never forget that and I’m very grateful today talking about a topic that is very important for us as a Christian, very important for us as new Christians. It’s also very important for us who might be veteran Christians because it’s one of those topics that has a way of leaking out of our lives and this is necessary for bringing us right back into the presence of God on a daily basis. So I’m very excited to share with you the importance of the discipline or the habit of confession.
I say confession hesitantly because it has such a bad rap. Usually when I might say the word confession, what the response I get is, Oh no. And their minds go straight to a story that they’ll tell me. When I was in Catholic school in elementary, the nuns would make us go to confession and I had the hardest time thinking of something to confess when it was my turn. So I would sit there and we would all talk about what we’re going to confess and so we’d have to go talk to the priest and I would say I sinned because I pinched my brother. And then you know, the priest we give is, you know, little words there. And that was the whole experience that they had. So when you say the word confession, it’s really not a positive word. It doesn’t always bring up a positive memory, but it brings up a very small picture with, it’s not even fair.
It’d be like saying, you know, I’m going to make this Apple pie out of the STEM of the Apple. Well that’s, that’s not an Apple pie. Use the Apple. And that’s, that’s kind of how sometimes when we reduce confession to just a very sliver of what it means. I hope to share with you guys a little bit more, a little bit bigger picture to what confession is. I personally have a hard time with confession. I don’t like to confess to God my sins and wondered about that. Why is it that I be an ordained, should have any trouble confessing my sins to God? And I thought, and I kind of, you know, kind of dug around that idea a little bit and, and kind of came up with the thing. Well I don’t like thinking about my sins much less verbalizing them, you know, saying something, wonder if somebody bugged my home, maybe I, there’s a microphone in my car or something, you know, maybe you know, somebody listening to me.
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And so I don’t even know that I like to say that kind of stuff cause I don’t want anybody watching me. I don’t like it when people watch me. It makes me nervous. I came across an interesting study that somebody did in the Netherlands and they asked somebody to sit in a room and look through a key hole at some other people, what they were doing. And then we, they might the room and then they would ask the person questions about how they felt about watching the other people and, and everybody really liked it. And yeah, this is really fun. I like, look at they’re doing this, they’re doing it. They just felt in complete control of the situation, watching other people behave in whatever way they were behaving, the games they were playing, and then at some point after the guy was nice and comfortable looking through the keyhole, watching everybody get a good idea of it.
Then the guy in the microphone said, we’ll look behind you. And he looked and he saw a door that was closed with a keyhole and you looked and somebody was watching him. All of a sudden it wasn’t so much fun watching other people. He kind of made him nervous. I the one being watched, watching other people and I sometimes confession gives me that kind of a feeling that I am being watched and I don’t like that I, I wish it would just, I could just act or do whatever. What would be just to the guy and let it go. I think another officer confession is very common is that, well, what am I supposed to confess? What? What do I do? Because I’m not that convinced that everything I do is a sinner. The things that, you know, I don’t do where I, that the Bible says I should do.
And, and so basically we just kind of make up our own moral standards if, and if I make my own moral standard, am I really supposed to confess to that? Is I just accountable to myself and why is it, you know, anybody else’s and God, he can accept me the way I, so he’d just come up with that moral standards. Nine times out of 10, we don’t live up to ourselves either. But you know, we, we just don’t know. It’s kind of ambivalent out there isn’t how am I supposed to do that? And a lot of it is grounded in this fact that we love to judge other people based on their actions. And so we’ll say, well, you said this, you did that. That’s the bottom line. But we don’t like it when people do that to us. No, we, what we do is a no, no.
You don’t understand. That’s what I did or what I said. That’s not the whole picture. You don’t know what I intended. You don’t know the bigger context. You don’t know why, and so we find this incredible capacity that every human has to so justify whatever it is they do. In fact, you’re really hard pressed to find anybody who’s done something obviously wrong. Say that. Yeah, that was really wrong. I had an uncle that worked at San Quintin and then he went to work at Folsom and he had lots of stories and I asked him, I said, well, [inaudible] and I, I asked him, I said, his name was uncle Dick, and do you ever find people in there you think are really innocent? He goes, Oh, Greg, they’re all innocent. That’s what they all say. They’re all convinced. Every single one of them was innocent. Well, you know, I guess that’s true.
I guess all of us have that capacity to just make ourselves innocent and in the face of that, there’s a real cost to it. There’s a, there’s a problem that happens with that. We miss the joy that comes from being able to confess as the Bible delineates here and what we’ll share a little bit more about that. The pleasure, the joy, the meaningfulness that comes from confessing, confessing our sins is a joyful experience. It’s something that increases who we are as a human being has increased our capacity to love others and to know God for who God truly really is. And our songs are who we truly are. It’s not a negative thing in the least. I had a friend a couple years ago, I went to a conference with him and when we met each other, we’ve been friends since college. I’ve always admired this guy.
He was just the epitome of cool and I don’t have a lot of cool friends. And he was, and he was really nice to me, so I appreciate you that. So I just kind of kept in touch with him. He’s, he’s a pastor in Pennsylvania, had a fantastic church. Everything went really well. And then he decided he wanted to be a missionary to Indonesia. So he took, picked everything up to, cause he had a big fan. She goes family or that didn’t go well. And he ended up in a church somewhere, I think in Northern Ohio. And then that really didn’t go well. And then that’s when I met up with them and he was complaining because he said the people in his church get mad at him because they want him to answer his text, you know, either that day or the next day. And I’m like, yeah, that’s kind of how it is.
It’s quick, you know, it’s not that big of a deal. And I answer a text is I don’t take my cell phone with me. What if somebody would call me? I’d have to stop whatever I’m doing and talk to, I don’t, I don’t have my cell phone with me and go, well, okay, you’re one of the only ones that does it. And he said, what’s all this stuff about social media? Why do we have to care about that? They want me to come up with a website. They want me to do make posts on stuff and what do I have to do that? Or you’re talking to the wrong guy. I absolutely love that kind of stuff. And so I just inundated the poor guy. I just laid it on so heavy about what a great age we live in and, and how we can communicate so quickly to so many and, and all of these different paths and avenues.
And I just went on and on and on and I, I, I questioned him, I said, Whoa, why would you take advantage of this stuff? Why, why are you living in, you know, the caveman days, man, you should be up here. And what I didn’t realize as, as I was telling him how backwards he was and how great this world was that he wasn’t headed to have any part of, didn’t have the right mindset for, I didn’t realize it, but I was discouraging him more and more and more and more. And so it got to the end of our conversation and he was very polite, very nice. So a couple months later as I usually do, I call him and he didn’t answer his phone and then he didn’t call back. A couple months later, I call him again. He didn’t answer his phone. And then it started to hit me in the head what I had done.
How I had discouraged him. And by then I’d learned that he’d left his church and taken another secular job and that’s fine. But it kinda hurt me cause he was a fantastic pastor and I felt bad and I started wondering why didn’t I encourage him? Why didn’t I encourage him? But now this guy doesn’t carry a cell phone with them and he’s sure not going to answer mine. And six months whenever he does look at his phone, so I was kinda stuck. But when my father passed away, I got a text from him. He says, I’m really sorry about your dad. I knew your dad is a wonderful man, blah, blah blah. And so I texted him back and I said, Hey, I am so glad you texted me cause I’ve been sick and I’m so sorry about what I told you at that conference a couple of years ago.
He says, I’ve regretted that so much. You’re a really great friend of mine and I can’t believe I did that. Please forgive me. I promise if we ever talk again, I’ll never bring up social media. I’ll never bring up anything tech again. And he texts me back. He says, Greg, what are you talking about? He says, you really encouraged me incursion with some other areas. And he says, man, right after our meeting I called my wife and told her how much you’d encourage me. And everything you said was going to happen is exactly what happened. And I’m really happy about that. But there’s a little piece of side of me that wonders if he’s telling me the whole truth. Regardless, I was able to reestablish a connection with them through an apology, through a confession of something I knew that I did that was wrong.
And as soon as he reciprocated that love, and as soon as we connected again, men, I’ve what a weight was lifted from my heart. I was so happy. I was so excited. I’d look at this, I’m back together with him, you know, this is so neat. So good. I could continue again. And you know, and I assume I haven’t called him, but I assume I could call him and he would answer his phone if he has it in his pocket, which probably does it. And but I just so great. And you know, that’s a small picture of how it is with God. Because sin separates us from God. Sin in any amount, any quality, any quality of sin, it caused between us and God. It’s not, God doesn’t ask us, well, how do you feel about this? Said, is this a sin or not better?
No, no. God says, this is what it is. And he puts his Holy spirit in us. And he says, yeah, that’s, I said, boy, we know what God’s telling us. There’s no doubt about that. Yeah, that’s right. That’s wrong. Regardless what everybody around us is telling us, we know what God says to us through his Holy spirit, through his word. And when it’s a sin, it’s a sin. And when we commit that sin, when we do that, there’s a separation that exists between us and God. Now the Bible is very clear about what we are to do because all of us sin regularly. And so the Bible shows us this is what we are to do and it’s in first John one nine. There’s a passage that some of you might be very familiar with, and if you’re not, I hope you become familiar with it.
It’s a beautiful verse and it because it describes our lives with Jesus. And this is what it says. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Unrighteousness means with the ways that I am not right with God. So I am unrighteous when I’m not right with God. So when we confess our sins, we know this for certain, that God hears our confession and he immediately forgives us of our sins. It’s all in the confession. God’s response to our confession is forgiveness. It’s not like you confessing to somebody else and all they do is heap on more guilt and tell you, Oh yeah, you think that’s all you did? That was wrong. Well, let me give you a few more things that you did was wrong. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that to somebody or been a victim of that, but I have been both, but God is not like that.
As soon as we confess our sins to God, there is a forgiveness that comes upon us. How do I know that God forgives us? My sins? I would say number one to me is this. This is witness inside of me. This the spirit of affirmation, a spirit of welcome me into his presence. Again, I cannot deny that. I do feel that and I’m very grateful for that and also just as important, perhaps even more important is God’s word. God repeatedly throw scripture tells us throughout his word tells us I forgive those who sin. I forgive those from confessors since I forgive those who come to me with their sin and I paid a big price to do that on the cross. I’m happy. I love you. That’s the motivation. I had to forgive you. And so what we have here is if we confess our sins, the word confess is an important word.
The word confess in its original meaning has the idea of the same as the same things God sees the same way God sees the same as God’s words. So a confession is it’s an affirmation or a repetition of how God sees things. It’s saying, I know that this isn’t right, and God’s up there saying, I know this isn’t right. It’s acknowledging that it’s seeing things as God sees them from God’s perspective. It takes us out of the picture and basically we’re just saying, I know that this is not how you want me to be, and God is saying, this is not how I want you to be. That’s what the confession is. These are the ways that I have not been. So if we confess our sins, we’re what we do is we acknowledge, yeah, this is what I’m doing is not the way you would have it done.
I said, yep, that’s exactly right. And he forgives us and he brings us into that relationship with him and brings into that relationship that we walk into his presence. Again, we’ve lived there in his presence and God continually reminds us of these things and that’s why there’s so much joy in confession of confessing our sins. God, here I am. There’s a another passage it talks about confessing, kind of a, a little bit to the side of it was talking clearly about confessing our sins before guidance found in the gospel of Luke, the story of Jesus in the book of Luke chapter seven. And I’m just going to read verses 41 through 43 and Jesus explaining the question here. He given a situation, but right after this verse, and I’ll tell you about it, he takes a real life situation and says the exact same thing.
So he says to this guy, two people owed money to a certain money lender, one owed him 500 denari dinner was a day’s wage and the other 51 owes 500, 150. Neither of them had the money to pay him back. So he forgave depths of the depths, depths, debts of both. Now, which of them will love him more? Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven you have judged correctly. Jesus said, and so what Jesus here is saying is showing. He says, one guy owes 500 the other guy owes 50. Both of them were wiped clean. We would kind of approach this and say, well, both of them would love God. Both of them had their debts forgiven, but Jesus makes the point here is it’s the one who realizes how much he was forgiven, who realizes how much he was forgiven is the one who’s going to be more grateful as the one’s going to love the, the the debtor, that D, the OER, whatever.
It is more and in that quantity of realizing how much we owe and how much we’ve been forgiven is this wonderful indirect or even direct response from God that we have into loving God more because we acknowledge how much we have been forgiven. A lot of us would say, well, you know, what does it matter if somebody has sent a ton or somebody send a little bit? I would say in that regard it probably doesn’t matter. What does matter is this how aware of the quantity is one or the other? Aware of how much they said. That’s where the magic comes in. That’s where the blessing comes in. That’s, that’s where God can really begin working is when each of us recognize just how much God has forgiven us of our sins and there’s something empowering about that. You would think that that would be very discouraging.
It’s not very discouraging because you don’t stop at the listing of all of the sins. Where are you? Stop is at the forgiveness of all of the sins, so it’s not just how much have you have you sin. It’s more about how much have you been forgiven and the more you have been forgiven, the more you end up loving God and so being forgiven, confessing our sins, which is a requirement for for being forgiven, confessing. The more we confess, the more we are forgiven, the more we are forgiven, the more we love God. There’s that simple line. It’s just a straight arrow through those three steps to love God more is somebody who realizes how much they have been forgiven, who realizes how much they needed to be forgiven of. And so for you and I to avoid confessing, we are missing that whole line of how much have I said, how much have I been forgiven and the opportunity to love God even more.
And when we love God more, we end up loving others more. That’s just a natural flow. So when you meet somebody out there who is not very loving, it would be a very quick summary or conclusion you could draw. I bet they haven’t confessed much. I bet they live in this little world where they don’t think they’ve really done anything, where they’ve really been forgiven much because they’re not very forgiving people. They’re arrogant people. They’re very prideful people, people who are arrogant, people are filled with pride. People are very self centered, have not confessed many sins at all. They live in a whole nother world. But somebody who is broken, somebody who has been crashed up against the rocks, somebody who has come to the Lord and say, Oh Lord this, this is me. This is who I am, and, and the fact that God forgives you of your sins makes you so grateful and loving to God that pours out.
Have you met people who have been forgiven a lot by God? These are wonderful people. If I had my chance to go talk to somebody or spend a day with somebody who really hasn’t asked God for any forgiveness or very little or go somebody who has gone to an extreme length and as somebody who’s, who’s recognizes how much God’s forgiven him and how much, how darkly word, how much sin they were in, and how much God did for, Oh, I would spend every moment. There’s no choice. I want to be with a person who knows how much God loves them, who realizes how God’s changed their heart and who they are, why they are who they are. Because that’s going to be a wonderful person to be a sensitive person, as maybe someone who’s aware of life as can be. So it’s not going to criticize me as my son was not going to judge me as going to be somebody who says, I know what you’ve been through, but let me tell you what I found in Jesus.
That’s the person I want to be erect, because that’s the kind of person that I want to be more like, and that’s who God. So what Jesus does then is he says, okay, I just gave you a hypothetical. These two people, 100 5,100 a hundred but you don’t even have to go to a made up story. Let’s just look around the room. And he poised to this lady who somehow had gotten into the room and he notes that she had just come straight to him, crying her eyes out. Evidently something had happened in this lady’s life where Jesus forgave her of her sin. We don’t know the background of the story as much, but this lady came and she was just crying. Her eyes out, just focused on Jesus’ feet, and here she’s washing his feet. She’s crying so much, she’s washing his feet with her tears and she’s drying her tears on his feet with her hair.
Now this is somebody who is very humble. This is somebody who realizes everything Jesus has done and he compares it to the host. He says, I came into your home and you didn’t even give me a basin of water to wash my feet, which was part of the culture, part of the custom at that time. You didn’t even do that. But look at this lady. Look what she’s doing. He says, when I arrived here, you didn’t give me a hello kiss, a greeting, which part of that culture again, but look at this lady friends. How is she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet and so what do we see here? We see a guy who’s probably judging Jesus or feels somewhat equal to Jesus or, or feels you should be glad to be in his house or something like that. Contrast with this lady who just can’t do enough to express your appreciation and love for Jesus.
And he said, you didn’t put any oil on my head, but since we’ve arrived, this lady can’t stop pouring out. Expensive perfume on my feet is beautiful. Rome of all my feet. Look at this. And she thought to my feet, look at the humility. Look what she’s trying to say. And Jesus’ point right there is very simple to the guy, whoever’s been forgiven, little loves little and who has been forgiven much loves much. How can we be forgiven much if we don’t confess much? The amount that you’re going to be forgiven is the amount of our confession. So I would say one of the most beautiful things that we can do as a human being in our relationship with God is confessed much to not be afraid of confession, but to come to God and say, yes, that’s who I am is just being poured out.
And we have the strange, this the strange expectation of a church and people have it from the outside and worse yet, sometimes we have it on the inside. Is that a good Christian is a Christian who doesn’t send much? Isn’t that funny? As if there was a Christian who didn’t send much? We come to this expectation that, Oh yeah, look at them. Look how they live. Look how all the good things they do. The Bible does. It doesn’t affirm that in the least the Bible talks about the people who are aware of their sins and confess their sins and find forgiveness of their sins. That’s a good person. That’s a good Christian, not the one who tries to convince you that they don’t send much. The good one is the one who confesses their sins. Isn’t that what makes a beautiful church?
Wouldn’t you like to be a part of a church that that celebrates not the people who have been able to hide their sins the longest or the most, but instead the ones who just confess and say, yeah, that’s me. I’m guilty of all illness. I live in a constant sense of repentance and confession before God and so I experienced this forgiveness in my life. I am all tra aware. I’m hyper aware of the goodness and the faithfulness of God in my life and the kindness for what Jesus did on the cross. Forgive me of my sense how much God loves me. That’s the church I want to be a part of. I want to be a part of a church that celebrates the forgiveness of God. What God does, I want to be a part of a church that really doesn’t care where people are at in their life.
I don’t want to be a part of a church that requires or expects people to fix their lives here in there, whatever it might be before coming to church. I want to be a part of a church that includes people, that loves people, that brings people in and loves them where they are because that’s who Jesus is. I want to be there for the moment that they find out that Jesus loves them for who they are and I want to be there when they confessed their sins before God and have God forgive them. I want to be there to witness that transformation of life. I want to say we all want to say that’s who we are as a church. That’s who we are and wouldn’t be a church that confesses our sense because without confession there is no forgiveness and with forgiveness comes relationship with God and relationship with others.
That’s the part of church we want to be at a church that is better, not because of how it hides, but because of how vulnerable it is and how honest it is, and this is, this is who I am. This is where we are. Now you might ask, well, how do I know what to confess? How do I know? How do I get started with that? Well, I would encourage you, don’t go to Disney movies. When I was a kid, my favorite Disney movie was Pinocchio. I thought he was great. I did not get to watch Pinocchio movies to be honest with you. What I got to watch though was a I had a record player. Some of you don’t know what a record player is. I apologize. And it’s a big giant clunky thing and it was small and, and you’d open up the lid and the lid was a speaker and then you had this black disc much bigger than a CD.
I know he doesn’t know what that is. And then I would put the the little needle, I know he hasn’t known what a needle is and listening it would turn and then it would tell the story. It was recording of people’s voices back in analog days. I know you don’t know what analog is. And we would watch this and I would listen to this thing and then I was given a little book and I would turn the pages and you have the little words at the bottom with beautiful Disney pictures. And that was my movie. If you thumb through it real fast, you didn’t see anything. So you had to go to, and it was just like stopped, you know, motionless images and that was how I learned about Pinocchio and one of the characters in Pinocchio’s, this little guy named Jimminy cricket and Jimminy cricket, he had a little song and dance.
I’ll spare you the song and the dance. You’re welcome. And it was let your conscience be your guide. That’s horrible advice. That is horrible advice. Let your conscious be your guide. I think we would all like to think, well, what’s wrong with that? You know, my conscious is really good. Yeah. What about the conscious of the guy next to you? You know, you know any people that really lack conscious, would you know anybody that you’re glad that their consciousness and their guide, anybody in San Quintin, you went there conscious to be there? God, no, no. That’s terrible advice. It’s terrible. Our, our conscious is formed in our communities by the standards of Oh, of the loudest voices around us by the rewards that we received. That’d be very careful with your conscious being, your guide. That’s not our guide at all. The Bible is our guy.
I would say the Holy spirit living in our lives, addressing and affirming the word of God in our life. That’s, that’s our guide. And so where would you go into the Bible to find? He says, well, where I go, Jared, very quickly, I just go to a place where there are lists, lists of God’s expectations. And so the first place or I shouldn’t say the first one of the places I would go among many as a sermon on the Mount, God gives us a list of these are who my followers are. Bless it, are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness on merciful, pure in heart to peacemakers, those are persecuted because of righteousness. And I would go down through those and I would say, well, have I been pouring spirits that mean have I related to the those who are, who are suffering in this world?
Am I relating to those who, who are struggle in this world? Am I relating to that? Do I show sorrow for my sin and do I realize, do I see my sin the way God sees it less or those who more do I do that? And I would just go down that list and I would say, well, today, no, today I didn’t do well on this one. And whatever it is, whatever my day car, however my day, contrast it with what God says. I would confess that I’d say I did not live up. I did not do the things you call me to. I did not fulfill your expectation. I did not fulfill how you would do that would have me do this. I confess that I confess the sin and I’m very sorry about that and helped me to repeat more and so I will use that.
Another good place. Another option is on the fruit of the spirit. In Galatians chapter five and I, you know, friends, I was a little kid. Anybody can memorize their love, you know, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self control. I probably made that sound like one long word, but it’s actually nine words. Do I have love have today that I show love? Did I not show love? And if I did not, if, if something comes to mind, God brings something to mind, then I confess that did it, did I show joy in a situation I should’ve showed you what God have wanted me to show joy that I resisted? I did not. Then I’ll confess that the patients one is the hard one cause that’s, it’s just a lot. It was, I patient was I patient, you know it, I’ll confess that I’m sorry I was not patient.
I know you want me to do and you know, none of the place that we can go for kind of the same things is a first Corinthians 13. Sometimes I’ll put my name in there instead of love is patient love is kind. I’ll go Greg is patient. Greg is kind, not really, not really. And in a, I’ll go through the same thing. I said, well in this way, God, I was not loving in this way. I was not patient. And I’ll go through and I let the Bible and I let the Holy spirit contrast my day. Now, some of you would say, well, what good has that been in your life? You know, man, I’ll tell you, you didn’t know me before and I’m not who I’m going to be either, but I’m in the process and I have been so grateful that God is forming me and my habits and my behavior closer to his word, and it comes through confession.
It comes through confession, recognizing how much I forgive it and how much God loves me and how much I can love God. That’s that process of a formation inside of us making us closer into the image of Jesus. That’s one of the ways or what primary ways that that, that beautiful thing happens. You know we are a church. Sometimes people get the idea that church is a church service or a mass and it’s something that we come and we watch and we listen and we go home. That’s a sad church. That’s a sad church. That’s not what church is. Church is a family. Church is, is a connection with each other. The very oldest metaphors for the church was a ship and the idea was we’re all in this together. We’re all here. It wasn’t, you know, I go out, we just show up.
You know, when I go to the mall, I don’t want to talk to anybody. That’s not how churches, that’s not what churches, churches, we all come together. My dad, he fell and boy he, his skin was like paper and just gash. Terrible. Gashes up and down his arm and he had a neighbor that was a doctor and so the neighbor comes over with his little kit and badges. My dad up beautifully, gets the bleeding to stop, took care of everything and that was my dad’s body. He took care of my dad’s body because my dad fell and he needed help. How much is that? Like the church? Sometimes one of us, inevitably one of us will fall, will fall and won’t get all gashed up and will be bleeding and it’s not good, but somebody comes to that person says, I can help you out with that.
I can maybe be words of encouragement, maybe it just be it spending some time with no, maybe it it just be a relating to them and telling them how they went through that experience. Maybe it’s just somebody who gives a simple prayer. Maybe that’s what, maybe just letting them know that they’re not the only ones with a gash. Maybe sometimes that’s all we need. Whatever it is. That’s the church, that’s the church. And just as we heal each other’s bodies, we care about our bodies. So we care about the body of Christ. So we care about the body of Christ. It’s hard on Sunday mornings to have intimate conversations or get to know people. It can happen on eye level, but the place that really happens is in a small group. When you’re able to meet outside of the church during the week with a group of people that you meet with regularly, that’s a wonderful place because now you can have a conversation.
Now you can open up, you know there’s some times where a situation might be where you don’t feel God will ever forgive you for something. And so you might mention that in the right moment to a person or to a group, whatever the you know, you feel the wisdom is, why is it that moment and you know to hear somebody say, God forgives you. That’s all you needed to hear and that’s enough to convince you that yes, it’s true. Overcome my doubt. God does forgiving for. That’s a beautiful thing to be able to, to confess our sins. James five 16 says, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. That you may be healed or you met. That’s, that’s the objective. That’s, that’s the end goal of the church is our healing. However it might be and the way we are healed is not just me and God, but it’s we, me and us before God together, it’s a together thing.
I encourage you to sign up for a small group, attend a small group. We have 20 plus of them. It’s really great. Find a small group. It’s not just what those people are going to do to you, but there’s a, you have a history. You have things in your life that God has given you experiences up and times for you to go to somebody and say, Hey, let me tell you what I learned about this, or let me help you in this thing. Or, and you might say, I got nothing to add. I got nothing. Well, you born yesterday. No. All of us have experiences and it’s amazing how God brings people together to help each other, to love each other and encourage each other. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another so that you may be healed. That’s God’s objective. When it’s all said and done, what are we doing?
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We’re helping each other get to heaven. We’re helping each other get to heaven. That’s what we’re doing. You guys help me get to heaven. I hope I help you get there. I hope the members of my small group helped me get to heaven. I hope I helped them get that. That’s what we’re doing. Long time, the Bible’s been described as one beggar. The gospel has been described as one beggar telling another beggar where he found food and that’s basically a very good picture of it. And as we do that, let’s let’s go that route of God, this is who I am. This is who you’ve called me to be. I confess my sins. Thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for bringing me in a relationship with you and recognizing as we recognize how much God loves us, that’s how much we’re going to love God.
And that’s the capacity to be able to love others as God is love. This created a little smile here this morning and their post it notes and I don’t know, I don’t know how God might be speaking to you, but if God is challenging you this morning and if there’s a sin that is is a barrier between you and God and something to happen, I didn’t fight you to confess it between you and God, right? But if you want, if this is helpful, sometimes writing it out is verbalize and telling somebody sometimes that’s helpful. If that is, then come up here and take a post it note and write it out. I don’t care if you just make a Mark. So it signifies that you don’t want it in writing. I don’t care if you write it out. No one’s going to read it. I promise you no one will read it.
He says it will be sliced and diced through the machines called right after the service and just put her on the cross. That’s a physical way of saying, God, this is young you. Thank you for forgiving me. This is what you did on the cross and take care of this specific issue and know that you are forgiven and remember that you are forgiving so that you love God moment to recognize how much God loves you so you can go love. Understood. I give you that opportunity as we close in this song, invite us all to stand. If God so much on your heart that something you feel would benefit you. Just come up and take it on both sides and say you just put it on the cross. I have it taken care of and I hope somebody’s life is transformed this morning. Afraid for that.
That’s my expectation and I’m looking forward to that. Looking forward to your life. Be a filled with love, forgiveness. Heavenly father, thank you so much for what you’re doing here. Thank you so much for reaching out to each one of us, touching us and bringing us to this moment where we can stand before you. Father, we pray that you would change our mindset about confession instead of something negative. We would see it as something so positive. Help us Lord, to confess our sin so that we can be greatly forgiven so that we can greatly love you and love others. Expand our lives, funds that the modesty when we are for you, change our lives or our behavior ways are more aligned. How you have called us to be, live, to live empowered by your Holy spirit, to the image of Jesus, your sin. In your name we pray. Amen.