{"id":3861,"date":"2024-07-25T06:57:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3861"},"modified":"2024-07-25T06:57:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:57:51","slug":"coming-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/25\/coming-clean\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming Clean"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

In his book Finding Our Way Again<\/em>, pastor Brian McLaren recounts the story of a man who began attending his church.

Outwardly, he seemed to be a respectable guy. He held a responsible position in his company.\u00a0

But he had a secret addiction.\u00a0

That had ultimately led to criminal behavior. Law enforcement officials, it turns out, had been monitoring him for years. One day they pounced, showing up at his house with a warrant. They departed with boxes and bags crammed with incriminating evidence.

His life imploded.

The man resigned from his job in disgrace. As he awaited trial and imprisonment, he contemplated taking his own life. McLaren notes that such a personal catastrophe \u201cis what it sometimes takes to bring people to a church, asking for help.\u201d He met with him privately, offering counseling and prayer.

One Sunday morning, McLaren was sitting near this fellow during worship when the congregation spoke this Prayer of Confession:

Gracious God,<\/em>
Our sins are too heavy to carry,<\/em>
Too real to hide,<\/em>
And too deep to undo.<\/em>
Forgive what our lips tremble to name,<\/em>
What our hearts can no longer bear,<\/em>
And what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment.<\/em>
Set us free from a past that we cannot change;<\/em>
Open us to a future in which we can be changed;<\/em>
And grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image,<\/em>
Through Jesus Christ,<\/em>
The light of the world. Amen.<\/em>

\u201cNobody else,\u201d writes McLaren, \u201cknew the drama of what it meant for this man to say these words. But I felt a shudder literally move through him, and I could hear the emotion in his voice.\u201d

It is a powerful thing to acknowledge our own darkness in the presence of God and other people.

The temptation, of course, is to do just the opposite \u2013 especially in the company of fellow wannabe disciples of Jesus. Why in the world would we ever want people to know that we\u2019re struggling just to make it through another day, or, worse yet, that we\u2019ve concluded our sins are so deep and so profound no one could ever love us if they learned the truth?

The answer is that telling ourselves (and telling God) the true story about the condition of our hearts is the only way to be healed.

That act of courage lies at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step groups. At the beginning of an AA meeting an attendee will say, \u201cHi, I\u2019m Joe, and I\u2019m an alcoholic.\u201d Joe doesn\u2019t say, \u201cI used to be an alcoholic,\u201d or \u201cIn the very near future I will no longer be an alcoholic,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019ve had a few setbacks recently, but overall I\u2019m knocking it out of the park.\u201d

No. I am an alcoholic<\/em>. That\u2019s the truth. And the healthiest way forward, one day at a time, is to come clean with that truth in the presence of God and a few others.

I have a confession to make.

As a pastor, I was part of the \u201cseeker sensitive\u201d movement at the end of the twentieth century that sought to remove as many unnecessary barriers as possible to unchurched people. I signed off on the removal of a regular public Prayer of Confession in our Sunday services. Outsiders, we assumed, would consider it a \u201cdowner\u201d to be coerced into public admission of spiritual crimes and misdemeanors.

That may be true. But that doesn\u2019t mean such prayers weren\u2019t the very things they most needed for their aching souls.

As McLaren puts it, \u201cIt\u2019s quite an amazing thing for a group of people who have dedicated themselves to becoming better to say, in public, in unison, that they aren\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0

But why are such acknowledgements addressed to God? Doesn\u2019t God already knows every dark secret we\u2019ve tried to hide from the world and from ourselves?

He does. But something happens when a child approaches a parent, head downcast, heart beating hard, and admits to being the one who drew on the wall with the magenta permanent marker \u2013 even though those magenta spots on the child\u2019s outfit have already given Mom or Dad a pretty serious heads up concerning the full story.

Such confession doesn\u2019t provide a lick of new information for either party. Everybody already knows the truth.

But now the truth, openly acknowledged, becomes the very means of restoring a relationship that might otherwise have remained strained or broken. \u00a0\u00a0

Followers of Jesus are dedicated to becoming, by the power and grace of God, better, wiser, gentler versions of themselves. Every day, sadly, it seems we\u2019re still so very far from that ever happening. \u00a0

That\u2019s why the Prayer of Confession traditionally leads to the Assurance of Pardon \u2013 a powerful word that includes the reassurance that all shall be well.

After all, we worship a God who raises the dead. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here In his book Finding Our Way Again, pastor Brian McLaren recounts the story of a man who began attending his church. Outwardly, he seemed to be a respectable guy. He held a responsible position in his company.\u00a0 But he had a secret addiction.\u00a0 That had ultimately led to criminal behavior. Law… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[778,179,430],"class_list":["post-3861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-confession","tag-prayer","tag-sin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3863,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions\/3863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}