Close your eyes and imagine for a moment a room filled with 22,000 students and pastors from140 different countries worshipping together in at least five different languages. Sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and held in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, MO this was URBANA. Much more than a missions conference, URBANA provided opportunities to hear speakers on subjects ranging from AIDS awareness to racial reconciliation. Though these topics were a huge focus of URBANA, a side focus was the prayer ministry. Unknown to me, God started me on a journey of confession at just such a prayer ministry.
As I walked into one of the prayer ministries I thought, “What am I doing here? If I stay here I will be admitting to myself, God and everyone else in this room that I have a problem.”
Looking around at over a hundred students in the room I could feel my legs growing weak. I must have walked in and out of the room at least five times. Each time I walked out I stared at the sign “Prayer ministry.”
Finally I walked back into the room and sat down. A cute young woman in her early 20s got up and began to speak in a high pitched tone and giggling after every word.
“Oh great,” I thought “We’re going to be exhorted by this cute little chickie who’s barely experienced anything of life on how we all need to pray more.”
My brain immediately started shutting down as I slouched down and prepared myself for the worst. I realized the blond was only introducing the speaker as to my surprise, a middle aged woman who looked like she’d seen much more of life than the previous speaker got up and began to speak. An Indonesian woman, she spoke on the necessity of confessing ones sins as well as the need to forgive one’s self for those sins.
This woman spoke from her heart, as if she knew everything to say that would sear my conscience. Image after image of past wrongs, formed in my mind. After she spoke, an older man got up to speak -- same topic but a little different twist. Again I could feel myself tuning out what I perceived as a holier-than-thou attitude. However, as he spoke I could feel something happening in my mind and in my heart. While he may have had a pietist attitude, I realized God was still using him to get through to me.
When both speakers finished the Indonesian woman got up again and said “Now that we have shared with you our stories, we open this time for a confession of sins. Prayer ministry volunteers are standing, waiting to help you if you need to confess to someone.” Tears began to stream down my face.
Immediately 1 John 1:9 came to mind, a verse I had learned in childhood “Confess your sins and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I had been taught that this verse deals with Christ’s initial forgiveness of sins, but upon closer examination, I realized this verse was talking the cleansing process that takes place after salvation.
I sought out one of the prayer ministry workers and as I began to confess my own sins tears flowed freely from my eyes. Things that I had stuffed down for years I now confessed verbally to a prayer ministry worker. As each sin was confessed the image of the cross stood in it’s place. No longer did I need to hide from past wrongs because God has forgiven every wrong committed both past and present.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Well, you can probably guess what I'm going to say to this one. You discovered at URBANA what Catholics have been saying about confession since the first century. Confession in the Church was typically public, in front of the congregation with the bishop present, until that became impractical. Private confession took its place, though it still has the same basic format, with confessor, a priest or bishop, representing the congregation and also representing Christ. It is a great blessing to be able to confess not just at an event like URBANA but regularly. And of course, confession in the Catholic Church has the added benefit of being a sacrament. It's not just good for a person in the natural way confession is always good for a person, but is also a sacrament, and holds the promise (John 20:23) that God always forgives if the penitent is truly penitent.
Post a Comment