Why confession matters

There is an old saying that "confession is good for the soul".

But, if you're like me, it's a hard thing to do.  There is an inner resistance to admitting we have sinned - against God or someone else.

Yet, the Bible makes clear that confession of sin is essential to inner healing, a right relationship with God, and ultimately power in prayer.

As I see it, confession follows repentance and leads to God's forgiveness.  Each step draws us closer to God.

Repentance is a heart decision to turn away from sin and back to God.  Next, we confess with our mouths that we have done wrong.  And then God forgives, graciously restoring us to intimate communion with him.

The apostle John summed it up in 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Author, prayer warrior and world evangelist Dick Eastman says in his book The Hour that Changes the World: "This brings to our attention an essential law of prayer: My prayer life will never rise above my personal life in Jesus Christ."

He adds: "According to Scripture, there can be no effective prayer life where sin maintains its grip in the life of the believer."

As the psalmist says in Psalm 66:18: "If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened."

"Why is confession so difficult for some?" asks Eastman.  "Perhaps because confession is really the most painful part of personal prayer."

I realize that there are some sins I resist confessing because I don't want to admit I'm wrong.  That's especially true if confessing means having to ask someone for forgiveness.

But this hard-shell resistance may be standing in the way of inner peace and powerful answers to prayer.

Eastman says he includes a time of personal confession every day during his prayer time.

He uses Psalm 51: 10-11 as the basis of his confession: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me."

He breaks this passage down into four steps:

• A plea for divine holiness ("Create in me a clean heart").  He reviews the previous day's activities and asks God to point out areas that need confession so that a healthy relationship with the Lord can be maintained;
• A request for a divine attitude ("Renew a right spirit within me").  He considers his relationships with others and whether he has a forgiving attitude toward them;
• A request for divine guidance ("Cast me not away from your presence").  He confesses his need for the presence of God during the day to lead him and to defeat temptation; and
• An appeal for divine unction or anointing ("Take not your Holy Spirit from me").  He says to God that he needs the Holy Spirit to operate through him.

A good plan.  And a reminder that I need to take confession seriously.

God's burden

You may get a strong desire to call out to God for someone without knowing why.

If so, obey and pray.

Elizabeth Alves tells of just such an episode in her book Becoming a Prayer Warrior.

Decades ago, she got out of bed at night to get a glass of water when a picture of a cousin she hadn't seen in 10 years flashed across her mind.

Suddenly, she fell to her knees and cried out: "Don't let him move, God! Don't let Mike move! Stay still! Stay still!"

She had no idea why this feeling swept over her.  She got up to go back to her bedroom and again fell to her knees, calling out:

"Get him up, Lord! Get him to run!  Run, Mike, run!  Lord, help him to run, run, run!  Let him run, God! Run, run, run!"

After a few minutes, she calmed down and went back to bed.

The next morning, she called her aunt and told her about her prayer experience.  Her aunt said her son was in Vietnam.

A month later, her aunt received a letter from her son, an American pilot, who said he had been shot down and landed in a tree.  He tried to scramble away but fell into a bush, just as Vietcong soldiers began searching the area for him.

A Vietcong soldier stood unwittingly on his pant leg so he couldn't move.  The soldiers were looking up into the tree.

They moved away to sweep nearby bushes and he got up to run but felt as if someone was pushing him back down.  Then, he got up again as it seemed safe and, feeling an impulse to run, he dashed away and was recovered shortly afterwards by a U.S. military helicopter looking for him.

I have heard similar stories of God placing an urgent burden on people to pray when they don't know why.

Not all of us have had such a dramatic experience.  But, God is speaking to us all the time.  And he often drops someone's name into our minds.  Elizabeth Alves' story is a reminder to me that I should pray immediately - even if nothing serious seems to be going on.

One of the reasons Elizabeth Alves was used by God in the Vietnam incident is that she had a close relationship with the Lord.  She listened to him and acted on what she heard.

The prophet Daniel had a similar connection with God.  Daniel began seeking God in prayer as a young Jewish exile in Babylon.  He remained faithful to the Lord even in the darkest times.

Then, one day he was reading in the prophecy of Jeremiah that "the desolation of Jerusalem would last 70 years".  He felt a great desire to pray and poured out his heart, confessing his sin and the sins of the Jews against God.  He called out to God, admitting the Jews did not deserve it, but pleading for Jerusalem based on the Lord's merciful love.

In reply, God sent the angel Gabriel to give the Lord's reply - a further prophecy about the restoration of Jerusalem until the "Anointed One" would come.  The reference to the Anointed One seems to be a prophecy of Jesus' coming and his sacrifice on the cross (Daniel 9).

I believe it is a privilege to receive a burden to pray from God.  It is evidence that God wants us to work with him through prayer.

But, like Daniel, we must - I must - begin by building a close and continuing relationship with the Lord, listening and obeying.

Praying with faith

Jesus made some stupendous promises for those who pray with faith.

But what does it mean to "pray with faith"?

It is something that I have wrestled with over the years.

Sometimes, people pray with little or no faith and God will answer, "Yes." And sometimes they pray fervently but wrongly and God says, "No."

John Wimber, founder of the charismatic Vineyard movement, believed that faith was very important in prayer.  In his healing ministry, he always looked for someone who had faith - a relative or friend - if the sick person was without faith.

And yet, he noted in his book Power Healing that he and his church saw no healings for about year after they launched a healing ministry.  In fact, the breakthrough came after he uttered what he said was a faithless prayer over a woman with a high fever.  She was healed.

It is easy to forget that God is the healer - not me or anyone else.

Andy Stanley, a renowned American author and pastor, has said that "walking by faith is simply living as if God is who he says he is and that he will do everything he has promised to do."

So faith must be in God - not in my ability or gifts or how I feel.

I like what Samuel Chadwick, a British Methodist preacher and teacher a century ago, says about praying with faith in his book The Path of Prayer.

He notes that Jesus declared that "all things are possible to him that believes".

"Without faith it is impossible to please God," Chadwick writes.  "Without faith it is impossible to have fellowship with God.  Without faith man can do nothing with God, and God can do nothing with man."

Then, he outlines several essentials for praying with faith, taken from the epistle of James in chapters 1, 4, and 5.

As praying people, we must:

• Ask (James 1:5):  There is "no limit to the range of prayer," says Chadwick.  "God waits to be asked before he gives the gifts that supply man's deepest needs."
• Ask in faith (James 1:6):  As James says, a person who doubts is "double-minded" - unsure what to believe or ask.  A person of faith trusts that God will do what he promises.
• Ask aright (James 4:3): "God takes account, not only of what we want, but of why we want it," Chadwick writes. "He looks at the heart."  Sin can stand in the way of God's answers.  Lack of forgiveness is another issue.  Self-seeking is still another barrier.
• Ask righteously (James 5:13-18):  Personal integrity is a powerful argument for our prayers to God. Chadwick says that "faith is no substitute for right living".
• Ask earnestly: "God promises to be found of us when we seek him with all our hearts," says the author.  "Elijah's prevailing prayer was intense in its passion."
• Ask in the Spirit: Elijah's prayer was "inspired, instructed and empowered of the Holy Spirit".
• Ask in the prayer of faith: As Hebrews 11 points out, the great men and women of the Bible "dared and endured by faith, even dying believing".  Chadwick underlines Jesus' great promise in Mark 11:24: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours."

There is plenty of material for me to reflect upon as I pray.  Is my heart right with God and other people? Are my motives godly? Am I clinging to God's promises such as Mark 11:24? Am I seeking the Holy Spirit's guidance as I pray?  Most of all, do I trust that God will do what he says he will do?

If the answer is yes to these questions, I can pray with real confidence.

Listen to Jehaziel!

It looks hopeless - a vast army is invading and we're all quaking in our boots.

But wait!  Jehaziel speaks up: "This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid! Don't be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God's."

And God intervenes and destroys the enemy as his people praise him. (2 Chronicles 20)

I have been thinking of this great intervention in Judah's history and the powerful words of the prophet Jehaziel as Christians today face creeping darkness in our cities and nations.  As believers, we must join together - all believers - and pray and seek God's face to turn around these dark times.

And we must believe that the battle is fundamentally God's.

Are we believers too complacent?  Or have we already given up in the face of Islamic terrorism, destruction of the family, racial animosity, spreading crime, the dominance of anti-Christian values in society?  Or, do we simply doubt that God is strong enough to turn things around and heal our cities and nations?

I believe more and more believers are praying.  But much more needs to be done.  Judah was saved when the whole nation came together to plead their cause before the Lord.  The Christian church needs to do the same in our Western countries.

The great impact of united prayer has been documented throughout the ages.

In Acts 4, the early believers prayed together that they would speak boldly for Christ in the midst of persecution and the faith spread rapidly.

In East Germany, prayer meetings in Leipzig led to the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989.  See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/europes-revolution-the-pastor-who-brought-down-the-berlin-wall-1799976.html.

In Uganda in the 1970s, churches from many denominations prayed together - often in secret - as dictator Idi Amin launched terror campaigns against Christians.  A revival broke out among the Christians and Amin was eventually overthrown in the late 1970s.

But first we Christians have to look at ourselves.  Are we prepared for spiritual battle?  What is the state of our hearts?  Do we love others - or hate them?  Those are questions I ask of myself.

Francis Frangipane, author of The House of Lord: God's Plan to Liberate Your City from Darkness, says God's strategy for healing our cities begins with us.

In my city - Ottawa Canada - I see encouraging signs.  The National House of Prayer was founded to pray for our nation and Love Ottawa, a local inter-church ministry, fosters a week of prayer for our city every January.

Yet I feel this is only a beginning as more believers join together in praying to our great God for our nations.

As Jehaziel said, the battle is not ours, but God's.

Removing the veil

I have sensed for several years that the prince of this world has dropped a veil over the eyes of an elderly friend of mine, preventing him from seeing Jesus as he is.

So I am praying that Jesus will reveal himself in some way to this man who has attended several of the Alpha courses on Christ, but still does not understand and accept the good news.  He hangs on to the forlorn hope that God will judge that he has been good enough to enter the kingdom of heaven.

I know of others, too, who have had difficulty grasping the gospel even when it is explained plainly and graphically.  One woman I know belonged to a women's Bible study group and had heard the gospel many times, but it was only as she was listening to the radio as she was driving one day that everything clicked and she rejoiced in what Christ had done for her.

In my mind, this reinforces the truth that it is the Holy Spirit who brings people into the family of God.  We are called to speak of Jesus and to show God's love to others; but it is the Spirit who changes hearts.  And this may happen in unpredictable ways.

Colin Dye, author of Prayer Explosion: Power for Christian Living, says that Satan is actively trying to subvert Christian efforts to reach those who do not know Christ.

Dye, pastor of Kensington Temple in London, England, speaks from experience.  His church has a vast prayer ministry that has been praying and sharing the gospel in London and Africa with striking results.

"The main reason people reject [the gospel] is because they're not ready," says Dye.  "The ground isn't prepared and there are spiritual forces that are blinding them."

He quotes the apostle Paul who wrote: "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Corinthians 4:4)

So the prayer warriors in his church - and there are many of them - include prayer against Satan along with prayers for those who don't know Christ as they evangelize.

As Dye notes, Jesus has given us authority to trample over all the power of the enemy. (Luke 10:19)  But he advises us to pray together - in support of each other - as we pray against Satan's activities in our cities.  We need to uphold each other as Satan can seriously impede us - and hurt us - if we operate alone.

As most of us do, Dye says that he prays for God's mercy on people because of Christ's sacrifice on the cross; for the Holy Spirit to convict people of their need for Christ; and for the Spirit's insight into what to say and do.  And he brings before God the Lord's promises from the Bible.

But he also prays against "strongholds" that may be binding people - the thoughts that dominate the minds of people.  These thought-lives may be so strong that they may affect large numbers of people and be difficult to dislodge in ordinary conversation.

He mentions an evangelistic mission to the African country of Benin some years ago which was plagued with the dark forces of Voodoo.  His church had gone there to help local people present the gospel and found resistance to the message of Christ among non-believers.

The church team spent a lot of time in prayer to break the hold of these evil forces on the people. And, in subsequent trips to that country, hundreds became Christians.

He reports similar prayer stories in London.

Dye notes that if I am to pray effectively for my friend,  I must draw close to God in my own life. If the enemy finds a chink in my armour, he will exploit it to my detriment.  And I need to seek the Spirit's guidance as I pray.

But, above all, I must pray convinced that God is all-powerful and everything is possible with him.

Knowing what to pray

What do you do when you want to pray what God wants?  You ask him.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  But it often isn't.  We either pray what we want.  Or, we blunder along, forgetting the power of praying according to God's will.

But for John Eldredge, asking God what he should pray about has become second-nature.  And he sees results.

In his book Moving Mountains, Eldredge says he and others were praying for a chronically-ill friend when he realized nothing was going to happen.

"I paused, and quietly in my heart I asked Jesus, What is going on here, Lord? What are we doing wrong?  How do we change the way we are praying? Jesus replied, Ask him how he feels about his body."

So Eldredge asked his friend that question and he answered: "I hate my body."

That was the key to opening the door to healing his friend's body.  As Eldredge writes: "You can't bring blessing into a body while the owner of that body is cursing it."

The next step was working with this man to "break those agreements with self-hatred".  Having done that, the group of friends prayed again for healing and soon the man was feeling well.

Eldredge says that asking Jesus what to pray in any situation is "the step that has brought greater results than all others combined" in his experience.

"If prayer is in fact a partnership, I want to be in alignment with God," he writes.

Of course, this is consistent with scripture.  The apostle John writes in his letter 1 John 5:14-15:

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him."

Still, it is hard to shake myself of the habit of praying for what I want in a situation.  I have to be ready to accept that God knows best - even if the answer is bitter tasting at the time.

Eldredge offers the illustration of someone asking for prayer that his mother and father be reconciled.  That may be what God wants right then - or it may be that the Lord wants something else done first.  Perhaps there are character issues to be dealt with before reconciliation.

We need to remember that Jesus wants to talk with us as he says in Revelation 3:20.  He is knocking on the door of our hearts, waiting to be invited in.

Eldredge always begins his prayer time, asking for God's guidance.  He suggests we begin with simple, specific questions like "Should we invite our neighbours for dinner this weekend" rather than big life-changing ones like "Whom should I marry?" or "Should I quit my job tomorrow?"

Then, he urges us to find a quiet place where we can relax in God's presence without distractions.  He will ask a small question and then repeat it so his mind stays focused.  He does not demand "Yes" or "No" answers, but opens his mind to the still, small voice of God.

When he can, Eldredge begins his prayer time by consciously consecrating himself to God - spirit, emotions, heart, mind, will and body - and asks the Holy Spirit to fill him.  Then, he seeks God's guidance for his prayers and looks for breakthrough - a sign that God is answering the prayer.

This makes a lot of sense to me.  I can think of two friends I have been praying about for several years without outward results.  Have I been praying stubbornly the wrong way?  Does God have something else in mind for them?

I will ask God and start listening to what he says.

Mind games

How our minds think plays a big role in how we connect with God in prayer.

And Peter Lord, author of Hearing God, says that we can change the way we think to better hear our Lord.

Lord declares that "we will inevitably become what we think about all day".  That can be a problem if our thinking is wrong.  It is especially a problem if we base our prayers on wrong thinking.

"My attitude at any given time is determined by my thoughts," he writes.  "Whether I am afraid, loving, anxious, peaceful or filled by any other such feeling, it is all dependent on my thoughts."

The solution, Lord says, is to fill our thoughts with truth - truth about God and from God.

The writer of Hebrews said long ago that we believers should be "fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith". (Hebrews 12:2)

And, in his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul said: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)

Lord says that we often draw our thoughts from our subconscious where we bury our experiences of life.  Frequently, we interpret our experiences wrongly so that when we turn to our past to base current decisions, we make mistakes - sometimes serious mistakes.  If our reasoning is founded on bad thinking, we will come to faulty conclusions.

But the author offers hope.

"How do you get the air out of a glass? By filling it with water.  How do you get rid of wrong and untrue thoughts? By filling your mind with true and right thoughts from God."

The mind is able to receive new information - sometimes changing long-held opinions, writes Lord.

"When we recognize and accept the appropriate thoughts as truth from God, we repent.  We change our minds."

But if we are to get God's input, we have to spend time with God - reading his word, meditating and conversing with him.

That is the big issue with me and with other Christians, too.  Lord is calling us to spend every waking hour in talking with God and listening to him.

That may seem impossible, but Christians have done it through the ages.  One great example is Brother Lawrence, a 17th century French monk whose prayer life is described in a little book called The Practice of the Presence of God.

Brother Lawrence knew from the Bible that Jesus was always with him.  So, in the ordinary course of daily chores, he spoke with Christ, sharing his needs and worshiping the Lord.  He did everything - even the jobs he disliked - out of love for Christ.

It took discipline for him to make this a daily habit.  But eventually it became second-nature to him and this humble monk had a profound impact on the people around him.  People came to him for spiritual counsel.

Frank Laubach, an American educator and missionary, developed what he called "The Game With Minutes" after reading The Practice of the Presence of God.  The game suggests practical ways we can be in God's presence for at least one minute every hour - either imagining Christ with us or sharing thoughts with him or praying for others.

In 1 Corinthians 9:24-26, Paul says we are to train hard as we run the race of life to win a reward from Christ in heaven.

I want to have a close relationship with God.  My challenge is to be disciplined and open my mind and thoughts to the Lord throughout the day.