Deceiving Ourselves

  8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. – 1 John 1:8-9

Those of you who are familiar with traditional Lutheran worship will easily recognize this verse as part of the liturgical confession.  Althou i love a good traditional Lutheran service, one of the problems with liturgical responses is that if we do not change it up a little every now and then the responses can become robotic and automatic and we fail to think about what we are saying.

How easy it is to deceive ourselves about our sin.  In fact, it is even easy to deceive ourselves into believing that we never deceive ourselves about our sin!  Probably our biggest practice in deception is in convincing ourselves that we have good excuses for most of our own sins.  

We convince ourselves that our “gossip” is really “prayer concerns” or that cheating on our taxes is simply a little “financial creativity.”  What we are really creative at is ways for naming our sins as something other than sin.  But we are only deceiving ourselves.  Our sins are as clear to others as theirs are to us!  And we know we can’t fool God.

So if God already knows… why confess?  Why not skip that part and go right to forgiveness.  Like everything else God asks of us, it is not for his sake, but for our own sake.  There is power in naming our sins.  And when we humble ourselves our hearts are more open to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.  We may discover sins that need confessing that we didn’t realize we had.

Lent is a great time to examine our hearts and our consciences.  

Father,
Open our hearts to our sins.  Help us to name them and confess them and then feel the burden lifted through your forgiveness and grace.  Amen.

Joys:  fun day at work and a little birthday celebration for Pastor Chad; advice from Christian friends; a day off