Confession of sin is not only the means of restoring my fellowship with God, but also the means of keeping my sanity. A human being is so alien to sin, as God intended him to be, that unless God had given him the ability to confess, he would live in a perpetual asylum. As a believer in Jesus Christ, if I sin and do not confess, I am even more miserable than the natural man in the same state. “When I kept silent about [did not confess] my sin, my body wasted away” (Psalm 32:3); “My bones were broken” (Psalm 51:8, author’s trans.). My sad spiritual state reaches to my body and affects it. How often has my body tried to tell me that my spirit was not right with God?
Thank God for His holy discomfort! A holy God believes in making me uncomfortable, for His name’s sake. An indifferent, unloving God would leave me utterly comfortable in my sins, and that comfort, like leprosy, would be a sign of danger, not health. Of course God wants me to be comfortable, but not at the expense of my soul’s well-being. Therefore He gives me the pain of guilt in order to drive me to repentance and confession, which in turn lead to the kind of comfort He truly desires for me.
If I refuse to acknowledge my sin, if I continue to repress my guilt, I may suffer from a disorder of the subconscious. It is possible that Christians may suffer from events long past in their lives, and therefore they may need the healing grace of God for their subconscious maladies. The cleansing power of God’s Word reaches deeply into the “heart” (Psalm 119:11); and while we cannot consciously confess anything in the subconscious, we can trust the Holy Spirit to apply the cleansing Word there.
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven’’ (Psalm 32:1). What a blessing confession is! Lord, may I never treat it with disdain.
“So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Thy servant and to his supplications, and for Thy sake, O Lord, let Thy face shine on Thy desolate sanctuary” (Daniel 9:17).
Daily with the King 