How many of us know that there’s a difference between cleaning and straightening? Anytime we have people coming over to our house, we get into this frantic moment where we said, okay, we’ve gotta clean the house. But really what we are doing is not cleaning the house. We are straightening the house. Probably your home does the same thing. Why? Because we wanna convince strangers that when they come into our home, it looks that clean all the time. It’s a complete lie. But we wanna give off the perception that our home just looks great all the time. And I remember as a kid, ’cause my family did the same thing, and we’d have somebody coming over. And one of the things that my parents would tell me to do is they’d say, okay, we’ve got company coming over. You’ve gotta go clean your room. And I never understood that because it’s not like they were gonna give house tours and that my room was one of the stops.

Nobody was gonna walk the guests up and say, and here’s the room that Kurt shares with his brother. Take a look and let’s go on to like, nobody cared. And yet it was a convenient way for my parents to, to make me go clean my room. And probably you are in the same boat that you go as a kid and you look at your room and you just got junk everywhere. Especially you got dirty clothes. And I didn’t clean my room because I don’t remember a single time in my childhood going and washing the baseboards. Probably you don’t either. But what I did do often is I would take all those dirty clothes and I would wad them up into a giant ball, and I would either shove them into my closet or I would shove them under my bed. Not one time did my parents say, you need to go clean your room.

And I took all the dirty clothes and I took them downstairs and I washed ’em, and I folded them and I put them where they belong. No, I, I just took the junk that was in the room and I got it out of sight, out of mind. I made the bed so that when mom or dad came and checked, they could say, yes, your room looks clean. But it wasn’t really clean. It was just a little more straight than it was before. And oftentimes in our lives, we do the exact same thing. That we are very good at straightening our life, that we have some junk in our life that we don’t want anybody else to see. And because we don’t want anybody else to see it. What we do with that junk is we hide it, we put it in a closet, we put it under the bed, we make it look from an appearance standpoint, like everything looks great, everything is fine, even though there is some junk, some real brokenness that we have hidden away.

That’s why I love this picture of this dumpster fire because the dumpster fire, it’s just like, everything’s fine. We’re good here. Nothing wrong. Everything is okay. And, and how often do we do the same thing in our lives? That we’ve got some junk, we’ve got some issues, we’ve got some problems, but we want everybody around us to pretend like, Hey, everything’s fine, everything is good. There’s no problems here. And we’re in this series talking through the 12 steps. And today we’re gonna talk about step four and step five. Step four is that we have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. It’s really about inspection. It’s

Really about looking at my own life and saying, what are the areas of my life that need to change? What are the areas of my life that are not okay? And then step five is that we’ve admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being. The exact nature of our wrongs. The biblical term for step five would be confession that I confess the sins, the wrongdoing, the junk that I have hidden away. I confess that to God, to myself and to someone else. Now here’s the challenge with confession, is it’s not natural that when I have sin in my life, my natural response is not confession. Instead, the first instinct of sin is hiding That, that I wanna take my junk, I wanna take my sin and I wanna hide it away so that nobody else is aware of it. It’s true in our life.

It’s also true from the very first sin In Genesis chapter three, if you’ve got a Bible, turn one me to Genesis chapter three. We’re gonna start in verse six. Genesis chapter three, starting in verse six. Here’s what it says. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who is with her, and he ate. Now pause for just a moment. ’cause Here’s what I wanna point out about sin. Sin is enticing. If it wasn’t enticing, nobody would do it. But why does E fall into sin? Well, it’s because she says, well, it looks like good for food. It’s a delight to our eyes, and it is to be desired.

And we believe this lie that says, well, it’s enticing, therefore it’s going to make me better, make me happier, make me more fulfilled. And sometimes we also have this lie that, well, it’s a problem for other people, but it’s not gonna be a problem for me. I will be fine. This week, I, I saw a video from Denver on July 4th. Now, July 4th, there was a burn ban across pretty much all of Colorado. And, and valid reasons why, because huge parts of our state were literally on fire during July 4th. Very, very dry. And so they say, Hey, burn ban, no fireworks. Did that stop Coloradans from putting off fireworks? The answer is no. Why? Because we got a neighbor called Wyoming, and they’ll sell you fireworks anytime, anywhere. And so people go to Wyoming, they bring back giant illegal fireworks, and there’s this video of an aircraft flying over Denver at night, the night of July 4th.

And in that video, all across the city, as far as your eye can see, guess what is going off fireworks? Thousands upon thousands of fireworks. So collectively, our state said, Hey, yeah, it’s dangerous to put up fireworks. It’s very dry. It could start a fire. It could be really disastrous. And people heard that. And they say, we hear you like, like nobody else should do, do fireworks, but I’m gonna be fine. It’s gonna be totally fine for me and for mine, but nobody else should do it. And that’s what we do with sin. We, we convince ourselves that, okay, it might be a problem for somebody else, but it’s not a problem for me. And then we see the consequence. Verse seven, then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden and the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord guy called to the man and said, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. So the first hiding is hiding away from the presence of God. The second hiding is they’re hiding their nakedness. They’re covering up their shame. Verse 11, he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, this woman whom you gave to me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. And he’s saying, it’s her fault.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is it that you have done? The woman said, not my fault. The serpent deceived me and I ate. So here’s what happens. After sending, they do three things and we do the same three things. The first thing that they do is they hide, they sin. They do something that they’re not supposed to do. They’re scared about the presence of God. And so instead of confessing, they hide. They run away and try and hide from God. Then the second thing that they do is they cover, they try and cover up their shame. Shame is anything that makes us feel unworthy of relationship. If you have shame in your life, it can hinder personal relationships with you that you have, shame could hinder your relationship with your spouse or with a parent or with a loved one. But shame also hinders the relationship we have with God.

We say, I’m unworthy because of this sin, and so I’m gonna do my best to try and cover it up. That’s what they did. They’re naked. They have shame because of it. They try and sow leaves together to cover up their shame. And then the next thing they do is that they blame. I say, it’s not my fault. It wasn’t me. Adam says, it’s the woman’s fault. It’s her fault. God, why? Why did you give me her? And the eve says, it’s not my fault. It’s the serpent’s fault. That’s what we naturally do. Because here’s the truth, the first instinct of sin is not confession, but concealment. When I have sin in my life, what my human nature wants me to do is not to confess it, but to conceal it, hide it in a way that nobody else knows, but our natural response to hide, to cover, to blame, it has consequences that come with those things.

So when we hide, here’s what we’re really doing. When we’re hiding, we’re withdrawing away from God. We also end up withdrawing away from people, away from the truth and away from the accountability, taking ownership for our actions. And then when we cover up our shame, cover up our sin, what we’re doing is we’re trying to manage our appearances. We’re we’re trying to disguise things or minimize things or we’re trying to pretend like it’s not as big of an issue as it actually is. A great example of of the covering is if you look at our culture one of the, the areas that, that I think is a real challenge in our culture, and yet we disguise it and pretend like it’s not a concern at all, would be the area of alcohol. Now, I know I’m gonna step on some toes, so, so I’m still gonna lean into it.

Here’s what I’d say about alcohol. Alcohol itself, drinking alcohol is not a sin. Totally abstaining from alcohol is not a biblical thing of, of drinking. One drink is sin. That is not what the Bible says. But the Bible over and over again, warns about the dangers of alcohol. And what is sinful with alcohol is when it influences my thoughts, my words are my actions. That’s why drunkenness is a sin, because I’m letting an outside influence other than the power of God, influence my thoughts, my words, my actions. Now, if you were to just turn on any sporting event and watch the commercials, and you knew nothing about our culture, you would walk away from watching that sporting event and say, alcohol’s amazing. Like, it’s just wonderful. It makes everybody happy and everybody great, and you, you can drink it and be fit. Like it’s, it’s got all kinds of benefits.

And yet, if you peel back the layers of our culture, alcohol is a real problem. The CDC warns that excessive alcohol is one of the leading causes of death that is avoidable in our country. That 9.7% of people in our country struggle with alcoholism. That’s almost 10%, almost one out of every 10 people struggles with alcohol. Last year there were approximately 178,000 deaths related to alcohol. If it was listed as a a disease by itself, it would be the fourth biggest killer in our country. And so, so my my point is not saying that alcohol itself is evil, but alcohol does cause huge amounts of destruction in our culture. And yet, if you looked at tv, if you, if you heard the, the public conversation around alcohol, it sounds all good. Why? Because we try and cover it up. We try and manage appearances.

We try and disguise it. We try and minimize it. We try to pretend like it’s not that big of a deal. But one of the leading areas of growth of alcoholism is stay at home moms. Why? Because of wine culture, wine cultures. Hey, you, you deserve this. Just have another glass. One more glass. We, we’ve created a culture that says, Hey, it’s not an issue or not a problem because we try and cover it up. We, we do that with alcohol, but we do that with so many different addictions that exist inside of our country. And then what else do we do? We blame. We try and shift the responsibility from ourselves to somebody else. I don’t want to deal with it. I want somebody else to deal with it. And then after, in Genesis three, a, after you have this exchange where they’ve done something wrong and they’re hiding from God in the middle of it, you have this kind of beautiful moment where God asks this question where he says, where are you Now, as a kid, I, I was always confused by that question because he’s God.

So obviously he knows where they are. If you wanna see the first historical moment of hide and go seek, it was right here in Genesis three. First game ever played. It was hide and go seek between Adam and Eve and God. And God knew exactly where they were the entire time. You can’t hide away from God. And yet he asks this very curious question, where are you? And if he already knows where they are, why then does God ask the question? Because he’s not asking for himself. Who’s he asking for? He’s asking for Adam and Eve. He said, I want you to ask yourself right now. Where are you? Because of your shame, you’re hiding away. He’s trying to, to, to bridge this gap towards healing, towards redemption, towards restoration. And the same question that he asked Adam and Eve thousands of years ago is the same question that God wants us to ask ourselves right now.

Where are you in your life with drunk with, with junk and issues and challenges? Where are you? What are the areas in your life, in my life that we’re hiding into the bed? We’ve shoved into the closet we don’t want anybody else to see? And we’re not dealing with? In Psalm chapter 32, starting in verse one, it, it says something pretty powerful. It says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. And in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night. Your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Sah Salah is an interesting Hebrew word ’cause we don’t actually know what it means. We find it in the Psalms, and we specifically find it in p songs in the Psalms.

And we think that Salah is a musical moment of pause. So this is after you’d sing a chorus or a verse, and then there’s this musical moment of pause. And, and musically, the author’s trying to get you to just stop and pause before you go into the next thing. And, and with this passage, it, it’s natural for us to stop and pause and, and look at exactly what it’s trying to say. It starts by saying, blessed is the person who who has their sins forgiven. Blessed is the person that’s taken their sin and asked for forgiveness for those sins. But in verse three, it shows us the contrast between the blessed person that’s found forgiveness and the person that’s hidden their sin. Verse three is for when I kept silent, it’s talking about hidden sin. Doesn’t want anybody else to know. He says, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

Here’s the point that hiding sin, it feels safe, but it is destructive. Hiding feels safe. Nobody knows it’s just me. I’m the only one aware. I I, I’ve got this, I’ll figure it out. But the lie that we tell ourselves about that is completely destructive. Why? Because hidden sin never stays private, even if nobody else in the world knows. And I’m the only one that knows about it. It still is affecting me. And because it’s affecting me, it’s affecting the people around me. So hidden sin, it affects my anxiety, it affects my anger, it affects my defensiveness. It, it affects control. It affects numbness. It affects my relationships, and it affects my prayer life that when I have hidden sin, there is a shame that is creating distance between me and God. Not on his part, but on my part, that I’m creating this distance because I know I’ve got something that I’m struggling with that, that I should have confessed, I should have given over to him.

And because I won’t deal with it, it’s causing distance. But we like to pretend, well, hey, I, I’ve got this, this sin, it’s contained to me and nobody else. It’s not affecting anybody else. And yet it is hidden sin affects the people around me. They might not know that the sin exists, but it’s affecting areas of my life, and they are the consequence of it. Well, when I’ve got anger issues, because I’ve got this hidden thing, it affects every relationship in my life. And so what step four is all about is self-reflection. It’s conducting a fearless moral inventory. It’s coming to a moment in my life where I say, okay, what, when I really look at my heart and my life and my actions, where are the areas that need to change? Where are the the spaces in my life that I’ve tried to hide away that are really causing damage to the people around me?

And look what the psalmist says in 1 39 verse 23. He says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there may be any grievous ways in me and lead me in the way everlasting. If you were here a couple weeks ago, when, when Gary talked week one, he did a really compelling job of showing us that all of us have sins that we struggle with, that this is not a, well, hey, I don’t have an addiction. Like they have an addiction. And so I don’t have that same problem. No, biblically the process of sanctification is that I’m never right. I always have sins. So for the rest of my life, I’m constantly pursuing holiness. And one of the ways that I do that is by praying in prayer like this and saying, God, I don’t even know the sin that I’ve got in my life.

It’s even hidden from me with self-deception. So God, help me be aware of those areas in my life, whether it be pride or gossip or anger. Good. Bring those things to the surface so that I can deal with those things and find healing. And the big book, it has a number of different inventory questions, but, but here, here are four of them. And the point of the inventory questions, when I’m doing this self-evaluation, it, it’s really about trying to figure out what is the root issue. So if you think of most addiction, most addiction, there’s something else that’s driving that addiction. So, so think of what AA does. Think about alcohol. Why do most people drink to drunkenness? Well, it’s not because they just like the taste or because they, they just like alcohol. No, they have some root issue in their life. A resentment, a frustration, a fear, a pain, a hurt, and, and that pain is driving them towards the alcohol.

And so question number one is this. What am I resentful about? The big book would say that the number one driver of addiction in our lives is resentment. That I have something, something that’s happened to me, some pain, some hurt, some sorrow. And because I’m re resentful and I’m resenting that thing, it’s leading me towards this sinful nature in my life. And here’s what I wanna unpack for a second, that it might not be my fault. Like you might have resentment because you had a terrible thing that happened to you. And I don’t want to, in any way, shape or form minimize that. I know that there are many people in this room, if not all people in this room, that have had painful things that have happened to you, that it is not your fault if you had a really terrible relationship with the mom and the dad as a kid, that that’s not your fault.

But here’s what the steps would tell us, that although it’s not our fault that that exists, it is my responsibility with my life to take the next step to try and heal and fix those things. So maybe you have all kinds of resentment, and maybe you deserve to have that resentment because of what happened to you. But you holding onto that resentment is no longer hurting that person. It’s hurting you. And so doing the inventory helps me understand what is the root cause of the thing that I’m struggling with? What am I resentful about? What am I afraid of? Last week, Harvey talked about trust. But if I’m gonna trust in God, I first have to recognize where the fears that I have that I’m afraid of, that I hold back. That if I’m gonna trust God, it means that I’m laying those fears at his feet. And so I have to ask myself, what am I afraid of? Where have I been dishonest? What are the things that I’m trying to hide that I don’t want anybody else to be aware of? The number one person that we are dishonest with is ourselves. Self-Deceit is real. That I can convince myself all day long, Hey, it’s not a problem. I can quit anytime. I can stop any moment that I want to.

Self-Deceit is real. And then lastly, who have I harmed? Now, there’s a whole step about reconciliation, but really in the inventory process, the point of this is self-reflecting and saying, okay, I’ve got this addiction. I’ve got this sin in my life. Who is it overflowing to and affecting? If I struggle with gossip, if that is something that I do over and over and over again, then guess what? Unintentionally it is harming the people around me, including my kids, because they’re picking up on that and they’re treating it as a normative pattern of behavior. And here’s what Christian inventory is all about. It’s saying that I bring my sin, my responses, my resentments, my fears, my wounds, and I take them all into the presence of God. And I do it truthfully. Why? Because confession breaks the power of secrecy. That if I want to take ownership of those things, if I wanna have freedom from the of addiction, confession breaks the power of secrecy.

Secrecy convinces me. It’s not a problem. Nobody else needs to know. We’ll deal with this tomorrow. But confession brings it to the light and says, I’ve got an issue. I need help. We think of confession as punishment. Okay, I confess because I’m in trouble. And now that’s the punishment, but that’s not how the Bible treats confession. Look what it says in James chapter five, verse 16. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James tells us that we need to confess our sins one to another. And he doesn’t say, confess your sins one to another so that you might be punished. He doesn’t say, confess your sins one to another so that you might feel ashamed. He says, confess your sins one to another, pray for another so that you might be healed.

That we struggle with confession because we think that it’s punishment, but God gives us confession as an avenue towards healing. I remember when I was a kid we had this one room in our house that we called it the big Room. Originally when they built the house, it was built to be a garage. And then instead of making it a garage, they just turned it into a game room. And so it was kind of a basic big room. And it had a TV on one side of the couch. It had a basketball goal, like a little mini hoop basketball goal. Had a pool table, an old ratty disgusting pool table. And then I think because my parents didn’t know where to put it, it had the piano. One of these things did not fit in that room, and it was the piano but they didn’t know where else to put it in the house.

And so it went in the big room. And so my brother and I, in the summers, we would get into some pretty intense basketball games with a little mini hoop. And my brother’s two and a half years older than me, which means that growing up, he was bigger than me and he was stronger than me, and he was faster than me, which means he just dominated me all the time. Or as, as we like to call it, his parents. That’s character building for the younger sibling. So I got a lot of character development from my older brother growing up. And we would get into these games in the summer where we would play dunk basketball, and he would just dunk on me and dunk on me and dunk on me. And I would try and dunk on him, and he would swat it away. And, and we always had to be a little bit cautious because there was a piano in that room.

And we weren’t being cautious because of the piano, because I promise if we ran into the piano, piano wasn’t getting hurt, but we were gonna take a licking. But on top of the piano was one random fragile thing in the big room, and it was a porcelain piano. Again, I I think they just didn’t know where else to put it. And so they put the piano that was glass porcelain on top of the other piano. And so when my brother and I would get playing, we, we’d always have this caution in the back of our mind of, Hey, don’t touch the piano. And God, be careful about the piano. Don’t break the piano. Well, one day in the summer, we’re going at it really hard, back and forth, back and forth, and I’m getting frustrated ’cause I’m getting dunked on over and over and over again.

So eventually I get so frustrated, I take the ball and I push it into his chest. But with a little extra oomph, mo, 90% of the fights that were started growing up were me getting frustrated that he was bigger than me and beating me, and me attacking him in some way, shape or form. And so I take the ball and I push it into his chest enough to where it causes him to stagger back his hand hits the piano. And that porcelain piano, I remember it like, it was slow motion. It starts flipping up into the air. And if we were good athletes, we would’ve dove and catch the piano, but we didn’t. And so this piano flips up in the air, and then it falls down to the ground, and it just shatters not into a million pieces, but like five solid chunks, very loud.

And, and we both, we go through your typical script. We did exactly what Adam and Eve did. We first, we, we kind of dusted it up and we tried to put it back into place, and we just tried to put the, the pieces on top of each other and try to let gravity just slowly hold him together. It looked terrible, by the way. It looked like a broken piano. But that’s, that’s where we put it. And then without even discussing it, we both just split. We ran away from the room. Like, let’s, let’s just go somewhere other than here because we’re gonna look really guilty if we’re right by the broken piano. And so I’m outside, he’s up in his room. Eventually my, my mom calls us in and she’s like, Hey, hey, what happened? And what do you do? Well, we’ve already hidden and we’ve already tried to cover it up.

And so now we’re right onto step number three. We start to blame. And I said, mom, I, I just want you to know, I did not touch the force Oly piano. I was actually over here praying when Steven, he’s, he’s the one that touched the piano. And, and my brother’s like, I touched it because he pushed me. And so there’s this whole back and forth, and we really, in this moment, were, we’re terrified that this piano had such value that my mom was gonna be angry, and she was gonna start yelling. And, and here’s the thing, my mom, she looks at this and she says, guys, do you think that I care about the piano? And we’re like, I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s why we’re so scared. And my mom was like, I, if I cared about it, it wouldn’t be in the big room.

Like it just like, I, I couldn’t care less about the piano. But she said, what I do care about is you being truthful and being honest. And so what we got in trouble for was not breaking the piano. Oddly, we got in trouble for lying about breaking the piano, trying to hide it, trying to cover it up. And I think we have this mindset with God that, oh gosh, I’m gonna confess sin to him and he’s just gonna smite me with lightning and thunder. But, but here’s the thing. God already knows. But when he asked the question to Adam and Eve, where are you? He already knew the answer. He wasn’t asking for himself. He was asking for us. God already knows the junk that I have hidden in my closet, and he wants to bring healing, and he wants to bring healing because he loves us.

And so now un unpack this for a second. When we talk about confession, confession doesn’t mean I have to broadcast my sin to everyone. So I want you to go home today and say, Hey, pastor said, I gotta confess. So here, here we go, Facebook, I’m just gonna start riding it out right here, talking about all the issues I got in my life. No, but confession does mean that someone godly needs to know. James doesn’t just say confess to God. He says, confess your sins to another. Why? Because accountability is the best way to fight sin. That if you’ve been struggling with a sin right now in your mind, don’t just confess that sin to God, but make a note in your mind of who’s the person that you’re gonna tell? Who’s the person that you’re gonna bring the dark things into the light and say, this is something that I’ve been struggling with.

And maybe it’s very hidden. Maybe nobody knows. Maybe you keep it like dirty laundry under the bed or in the closet very, very well. But you know that it is destructive and is wreaking havoc on your soul and on your relationships. And the path towards freedom is there. And it starts with confession. That’s what step five is about. Step five is about confession, admitting wrongs to God, admitting wrongs to myself and to another person. Why? What’s the benefit? Look what it says in one John chapter one, starting in verse five. This is the message we’ve heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him, while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he’s in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. The hope of the gospel is not that I am strong enough to defeat my sin. The hope of the gospel is the blood of Jesus. His son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We don’t confess our sins because we’re worried about the consequence. We’re worried about the pain that it’s gonna bring. We’re worried about what other people will think. But what God wants us to understand is that confession is not punishment. Confession is a path towards healing and redemption. David writes about how his, his soul is being torn up by this hidden sin in his life, but also he talks about blessed is the man who’s found forgiveness from his sin.

That is what God is offering. I love this quote from Tim Keller. Timothy Keller was a pastor in New York. He was an author, brilliant guy. It said a lot of amazing things. His most quoted line is this one. Now you’ve probably seen it a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, but he’s the originator behind it. And here’s what he originally said. He said, we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe. Yet at the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. We live in a culture that says, Hey, you’re fine. Everything’s fine. You be you. And so what we do in our culture is, is we don’t really deal with sin. We say, Hey, your, your sins fine. As long as it’s not affected anybody else, you, you just own it.

But the gospel tells us that we’re not fine. The gospel tells us that we are broken and by ourselves, we can’t get to God. The gospel tells us we are in need of a savior. And so when I understand scripture rights, it tells me that I’m a far worse person than I think of myself. That’s the bad news. I’m worse than I ever believed that I was. But the good news is that God loves me more than I could ever fathom, ever comprehend, ever understand. And the hope that God wants all of us to understand is you. You might have hidden sin and you could keep that hidden sin under the bed or in the closet for a really, really long time, and maybe nobody else will know. But here’s the truth. It is destroying you from the inside out. And God wants is a loving God for us to walk in freedom free from all that junk. And confession is hard. Confession is challenging. Confession can be painful. And yet confession is healing. It is a gift from God. Heavenly Father. And I pray right now that we would understand that, that we value, that comes from confession, the value that comes from really examining our hearts and our lives and taking the sinful areas, the junk that we have hidden away and bringing it to the light.

And so, God, I pray right now in the name of Jesus, for those people in this room that have a sin struggle. And I know in a room this size, there are numerous people all across this room that they have an addiction that, that maybe they’ve kept so hidden, nobody else knows, but they know God. I pray that today can be the day that they bring that to the light that they can find healing, confession, redemption. God, I pray that we can be a church that is filled with grace, that encourages people to repent, encourages people to confess, encourages people to walk in freedom. God, I pray that shame would have no place here. That feeling of being unworthy, God, nothing we can ever do will make us worthy. It is who you are that makes us worthy. Help us to live that out as individuals and as a church. And we pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.