I had no idea how much I missed preparing a Bible Study. I used to do it a lot. When I became a staff member at a church, I somehow I drifted away from leading in-depth study myself and into encouraging and equipping others to do it.

I love it all. But I’d almost forgotten that I love to open the Bible week after week with a group of people. Oh the joy of digging in, chasing down a word or two, hearing God teach us, and sharing that with each other. It’s a high like no other.

This summer, I’ve been parked in one place a little longer than usual. I plugged in at an RV Park AND at my church. And my church invited me to teach. I’m in my happy place!

A Deep Dive Into Confession

I speak a lot about the importance of confessional community. I learned—the hard way—the dangers of ignoring God’s instructions to confess and share our burdens, our struggles, and our sin. It’s a huge part of my story.

We decided to make this a topic in Bible study, so I finally took a deep dive into the verses I use when I talk about confession. As they often do, one verse led to another verse, and that one led to another.

I put on my goggles and swam around in the broad ocean of God’s whole Word on confession. I’ve never been snorkeling. It’s on my bucket list, but I’ve been to enough aquariums to know when you’ve seen one fish, you have not seen them all.

That’s how I felt as I read verses in both the Old and New Testaments containing the words translated into “confession” in our English Bibles.

I’ve always thought of confession as agreeing with God. And my deep dive soon showed me that just because you’ve seen one way of agreement with him, you have not seen them all.

We all know about the basic goldfish of confession: agreeing with God that we’ve missed the mark, fallen short, or gone another way than his way. We’re familiar with the confession of sin.

But we also confess when we notice and agree with God about his character, his purpose, and his ways. The same words that are translated as “I confess” in the Bible, are often translated as, “I thank God that…” and “I will praise you for…” When the Holy Spirit shows me a truth, a need, or a plan—and I say, “I see what you’re doing there, God,” that’s confession.

Here’s a Confession (or three)

Recently, I had some sadness I needed to confess. Being sad isn’t a sin. But I needed to see mine, call it what it was, and trust God with it. I needed to agree with God that I felt sad, so I could see that he was with me in my sorrow. The sadness didn’t go away, but the overwhelming feeling of being alone in it did. That’s confession.

I also had some wrong thinking I needed to see. I’d added up a few events–things people said, things that happened or didn’t happen–and come up with the wrong result. I needed to check my math with the God who sums up all things. Being wrong isn’t necessarily a sin, but it needs to be brought into agreement with God–because it can lead to stinkin’ thinkin’ that, in turn, can lead to sin (see last week’s post on getting rid of germs for more on stinkin’ thinkin’). God searched it out, showed me how it was causing me grief, and pointed my thoughts in a better direction (Ps. 139:23-24). That’s confession.

And I did have something that I needed to call sin. It was more of a thoughtless failure to do something than a rebellious action, so I was barely aware of it. But when I agreed with God about the sadness and the thoughts, I saw this sin of omission hiding behind them. I agreed with God about it. That’s confession.

Come Alongside

In the next few weeks, I’ll share some of the verses I read and what God showed me about confession. And I’ll share how I see confessing to each other as well as to God impacts the community we call The Church. Basically, I’ll share my pictures from my diving adventure. In the meantime, let me leave you with this verse and something to chew on.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9 (ESV)

If you’d like to take this dive with me, let’s practice. Spend some time thinking about “these things” —then ask God to show you if there’s anything that you need to agree with him about. If there is, do it. And see what happens.

You might start by agreeing that he’s Creator, Healer, or Eternal. You may end up confessing that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Whatever you think about and agree with God about, will you share it in the comments? Let’s start building some confessional community.