Day 10 - The Dog Whisperer
Scripture focus: Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you've sinned, you'll be forgiven—healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. James 5:13-16 The Message
The benefits of confession are amazing – forgiveness, healing inside and out, a sense of community as others pray with us about our confession, a building of a whole and healthy community. Who wouldn't want that life?
Why, then, is confession such a hard thing to put into common practice?
Bill Thrall and Bruce McNichol have a quote in their TrueFaced materials – "When my fear of the power of sin is greater than my confidence in the love of God, I will attempt to hide who I really am."
If confession is tough for you or someone you love, try focusing on this part of the James passage: Jesus will put you on your feet.
Jesus puts us on our feet because it pleases him to do so, not because our ritualistic confessions force him to fulfill God's order to extend grace and mercy. Knowing who God is, and what he is about is key to developing a willingness to make confession a common practice.
My husband's family love cats; my family prefers dogs. So when my brother, Bob, provided our family with our first lab, my husband required some training. Tillie was a great dog, but she was an alpha female and had a tendency to run off if enticed by a squirrel or anything else she deemed worthy of fetching. The first time she flew out of the yard and ignored Pete's command to stop and come back, Pete waited until she came home and then whacked her with the newspaper! A clandestine phone call from me to my brother produced a lovely DVD filled with instructions for dog owners (dogs are amazingly well behaved once their owners are trained). The dog whisperer guy taught Pete that if you want a dog to listen and obey, it makes sense to teach him that you love him and rejoice in his obedience. Whacking dogs with newspapers only reinforces the need to run…and not get caught. Pete loved our dog, but he wasn't congruent in the message he sent Tillie. After some much needed dog-loving lessons, we were the proud owners of a reasonably well behaved dog, and Pete wasn't too bad either.
God could write the book on how to respond to confessions. He does not whack us on the head with a newspaper when we return to Him. He loves on us. He puts us back on our feet. He heals us – inside and out. This will be one of those key truths that will have to permeate your mind, heart, body, soul and spirit in order to live a transformed life. It cannot be a concept we mutter but a belief we act on.
Recommended reading: Exodus 29-31
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