Confess Lesson

Hey family, faithful believer in Christ overcoming addiction to pornography and lust and my name is Roger. We're going to talk about the confess lesson, which is principle four, openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. Happy are the pure in heart, Matthew 5, 8. We're on step five, which is we admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, James 5, 16. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. God be with us. Give us the clarity that we need in hearing this message. So the confess, of course, is an acrostic. Confess your shortcomings, resentments, and sins. The O is obey God's direction. The N is no more guilt. The F is face the truth. E is the pain. The first S is stop the blame. The second S is start accepting God. So let's dive right in. Confess your shortcomings, resentments, and sins. Proverbs 28, 13 says, whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy. In our family, the Stanton family, Sarah and I, we argue over a lot of TV shows, but the one that we do not argue over is cops. Judge me if you want, but that's the way it is. We love to watch cops. One of the things I know about those who are caught by the cops is, if you're honest right out of the gates, the cops are generally nicer to you than the ones who argue. You're watching this show on TV going, come on, they know.

You're watching this person lying. This does not end well for you if you continue lying like that. The Bible is the same. Proverbs 28, 13, we just read it. If you conceal it, you don't prosper. But when you confess it and renounce it, then you can start to find some mercy in that. That's good news. The O, obey God's direction. We have a saying in the Stanton house that is, obedience breeds favor. Principle four taught us how to obey God's direction by confessing our sins. It says this, first we confess, admit it to ourselves, to God, and to someone that we trust. Romans 14, 11 through 12 says, as surely as I am the living God, says the Lord, everyone will kneel before me, and everyone will confess that I am God. Every one of us then will have to give an account of himself to God. All through the Bible, God issues us direction through promises. It might sound like this, you know these, more are for you than are against you. He's telling us what to think by giving us a promise. You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. You are more than a conqueror. He will not leave you nor forsake you. He has plans to prosper us, not to harm us. These are promises, and the same is true in James 5, 16, therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that, right, get ready because here comes a promise, so that you may be healed. Confess so that you may be healed. We've got to become obedient to confession. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. I had a pride bubble, right? I never told anybody about my pornography addiction.

I couldn't. It was just too painful, right? But then confession helped cure that. I confessed every night in CR, group confession, on night one when I went to open share. I got to do a cardboard testimony at our church, confession on a grand scale, right? Then I got to tell my testimony, that's like the deepest confession, right? And then I've had practice in telling everyone, bosses, co-workers, whoever, because who knows what God can do with this? And really, I'm not going to fall short in being obedient on my confession. The end is no more guilt, Romans 3, 23 through 24, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, right? We don't have to carry guilt if we can learn to confess. A rolling stone collects no moss. A confessing Christian in recovery collects no guilt, right? It's the same, right? And I can remember early on, like, yeah, I don't need to confess. Like, it's just between me and God. I don't need to do this. And I was held. I was held captive. by the fact that I wasn't doing. I was held captive by guilt. The crazy thing, guilt. Guilt is a cognitive or emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes, accurately or not, that he or she has compromised their standards of conduct or has violated moral standards and bears significant responsibility for the violation. Jesus died on a cross so we could be found not guilty. That means none of that. Even if our brain is telling us whether it's true or not that we are guilty, we are not guilty. We have to confess. The F, face the truth. John 8 12. When Jesus spoke again to the people he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will

have the light of life. Man, if we face the truth, we get Christ's light in our life. Confession is like turning on that light in your closet that you never really want to go into. You know the one. The one when people, companies coming over and you got to throw everything into a closet real quick. You pick that one, right? Confession is like flicking the light on in that closet. It's been a mess for a long time but you finally get to see what you've been tripping on all of these years, right? That's what confession can do. The E, ease the pain. Psalm 32 3 through 5. When I kept silent my bones wasted away. Through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Whether we believe it or not, if we can confess the guilt of our sin is forgiven. Shame is a weight. Shame is painful. Can we call it what it is? You make that choice and you know you did what was wrong. You ran that red light or you or you went and bought that drug or you you drank that extra beer, right? You you did those things and then and then your brain starts to tell you, oh man you're terrible. You're so codependent. Look at you. You can't stop grieving over this person, right? And your brain starts to say these things. It heaps this shame on us and that shame is so painful. It's like I don't want the pain but I don't feel like I can escape the shame. Confession heals us of the shame even if the truth isn't fun. It's always less painful to live one life than multiple lives at once. Lying requires covering tracks which requires multiple lives. It's less painful to live one life at a time. Look, pain is inevitable but misery is optional. Psalm 32 3 through 5 says, there was a time when I wouldn't admire what a sinner I was. Well, I'm sorry, when I wouldn't admit, admire, when I wouldn't admit what a sinner I was. But my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration. My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day until I finally admitted all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, I will confess them to the Lord and you forgave me. All my guilt

is gone. Doesn't that sound amazing? Thank you, Psalm 32 for that. The S, stop the blame. We got to stop the blame game, right? Matthew 7 3, why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye, Roger, and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Man, I remember when I first started Celebrate Recovery, it was so much easier to not do work on myself and just blame my wife. That was the easiest thing in the world. It started at the beginning. Adam did the same thing. It was the woman, Lord. Like, what do you expect me to do, right? It was my wife. And that does not get you anywhere in recovery as long as we don't own this thing, right? When you've heard yourself confess, it's impossible to continue to blame or judge others, especially even yourself. When I say to the Lord, God, forgive me. I'm so sorry. I want to change and I have this contrite heart. I want to get better, Lord. He's like, well, right on. We can do some work together. Let's get to work. And the first, you gotta let go of that shame. You're not guilty because I say so, right? Like, we can hand that to God. And what we do is we stop looking at the speck of dust in other people's eyes, and we start focusing on the things that are taking us out, the dysfunctions that have been ruining our lives. Is this working okay? We doing all right? Okay, last S in confess. We start accepting God. We can never reach the full benefits of confession without God's incredible help in our lives. Even if we confess, hey, I'm doing the James 5.16 thing, and I'm doing all I'm supposed to do, all my works, I'm striving for healing, but it's not happening.

Have you invited God into this? Have you stopped and said, God, I need your strength as I confess? I believe that as I turn this light on in this closet of my life that's been so painful that you're gonna hold my hand, that we're gonna be in this together. Have you asked him that? Could you ask him that today? Man, how could ratting myself out be healthy? You thought about that. Why would a cardboard testimony give me freedom when I felt like my flesh told me, you're actually just labeling yourself in front of your entire church family? But I feel like it broke the final chains in my addiction. Really, I do. Because only in God's economy does confession equal healing. It doesn't make sense in the world, but it makes perfect sense in God's economy because we end up trusting him with our pain and our hurts. Pastor John says it like this. If you asked me to sum up the benefits of principle four in one sentence, it would be this. In confession, we open our lives to the healing, reconciliation, or reconciling, restoring, uplifting grace of Jesus Christ who loves us in spite of ourselves. Second Corinthians 5.19 says,

for God was in Christ, restoring the world to himself, no longer counting men's sins or women's sins against him, but blotting them out. I love that, blotting out our sins. Once we confess, 1 John 1.9, once we confess, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all righteousness. Let's all believe together for the courage to fight for God's plan for restoration in our lives through the often uncomfortable process of confessing. Let's close in prayer. Dear God, thank you for what you're doing in our lives. God, we're asking you for the courage to confess, God. We can know in our minds that it's worth it. We can know in our hearts that you're going to be with us, but then we have to do it. And so, God, I'm praying that right now, every ear that hears this, God, that they would have a little fire in their belly that goes, oh, this is it. This is what I need to do. I'm gonna find someone safe and I'm gonna learn to confess. God, we need your help. We love you, in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you, family.