Essential Week 5: Confession & Guidance

Will you pray with me, Father?

You are the way maker.

You are the keeper of promises from your word.

Today, God, we open up your word to let it read us.

To change us.

To be more like your son, Jesus.

The perfect one.

The sinless one.

The savior of the world.

Seated on a throne.

And God, I pray right now, Lord, that in this place, that God, you would make a way for healing.

Physically, emotionally, spiritually this morning, God.

We pray too, Lord, that today would be a day of salvation.

Not because of anything that we have done, but because of the power of the cross.

Your work in our lives.

So God, we invite you into our midst.

Let my words be yours this morning, God.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thankful to see each one of you today.

And uh maybe some of you have brothers and sisters, um, like me.

I've got an older brother.

I'm the youngest.

Any other youngest in the house today?

The babies of the family?

Yeah, all over the place.

Yep.

Uh it's a special experience being the baby.

Yeah.

I experienced it growing up.

A lot of uh hate from those older siblings, jealousy of the baby.

We always got away with everything, right?

Uh never got in much trouble as you got in, right?

It just as time went on, there's less and less trouble.

Each kid, the parent had more kids to focus on, right?

All their uh all their wrath came your way.

And not for the baby, not for us.

Now, there is also something about being the baby of the family that I experienced growing up that also is not like necessarily the best, and that's that you are the tag along.

You're the tag along all the time.

I remember me growing up, my brother's a few years older than me, just two or three, and he always could do things before I could.

He always could run faster, jump higher, throw the ball farther, ride his bike faster, and you can just imagine me, little forests with my bike behind, just trying to keep up all of the time.

Always trying to keep up.

Now, in the neighborhood, all the kids in the neighborhood were more like my brother's age, so um I was always like the youngest one around and uh always the tag-along.

Now, uh we got into all kinds of fun, but also when you're the tag-along, when you're the youngest, you also get told what to do all the time.

You know, uh we're getting into you know different trouble.

And I mean, I think about growing up and jumping off bridges.

Has anybody done that?

Jumping off a bridge, setting off fireworks in the woods back behind uh the neighbor's house, all those little things, and somehow I always ended up being the one that was, you know, out there holding the lighter or whatever the situation was, right?

Being the tag-along.

And that even led to things for me of being a tag-along that I got into some things that shouldn't even have been a part of.

My brother was a senior when I was a freshman, went to my first party when I was 14, took my first shot when I was 14.

Should have never been in that situation.

Tagging along.

Brother went to college, was partying at UK, and the tag-along brother, high school, going over and partying with college students.

I shouldn't have been doing that.

The tag along.

You know, there's something about uh having a group of people that you're following, some friends that are in your life.

And you know it rings true, you are who you hang out with.

You are who you hang out with.

And not only is it about the quality of our friendships that we have around but uh and relationships, but even if you have them at all.

Before COVID, 2017, there was a study that went out that said one in five adult men say they do not have a close friend as of 2017.

Crisis of friendship, loneliness.

Some 40% of men and women both said that they did not have more than five friends.

And that's all before we even went through COVID and the pandemic and the isolation that happened.

And it makes me wonder what the quality is of the relationships that we have in our life.

The friendships that we have, the people that we can call on, the people that are around us that we can lean on, not to lean us into trouble, but to lead us into the right path and the path of righteousness in Christ.

We're gonna look today at the scripture, and we've been in this sermon series Essential, talking about the essentials of spiritual growth.

We've talked about a lot of private pieces to our life with Christ, like prayer and fasting and things, solitude and silence, things that we uh have to do ourselves, but there's also an element of growing in our faith that takes others as well.

You know that being a Christian is not a solo venture, it's a team sport.

Everybody say team sport.

God designed us in a way for us to be in relationship with other people who are following Jesus to help spur us on, encourage us, and help us to reach the potential, the purpose, and the glory that God has called each of us to follow in his steps.

Today we talk about two things that I don't know if I've ever even really preached on, but there are two disciplines of the faith, confession and guidance.

I just started calling it confession and direction because it rhymes.

Confession and direction.

We're gonna look at some truth from Scripture that's gonna teach us some things that maybe you've not heard before, about what the function of confession is, what it actually does for our lives.

And just to let the cat out of the bag, confession we're gonna see from the scripture, it leads to our inward healing.

And we're looking for spiritual guidance and direction in our life.

That there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors who are godly people.

Now, when I say the word confession, I don't know what image comes into your mind.

Maybe in the movie of somebody sitting in one of those boxes with the priest, and there's a screen, and the priest is on the other side, and they're telling like some deep dark sin in the movie.

That's not what I'm talking about, necessarily.

And we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty of what it actually looks like biblical for biblical confession and for us to seek God's guidance in the concept of relationship and the people of God.

So let me just ask you this.

Do you want to have healing in your life?

Are there things that you have experienced, ways that you have messed up, struggled, you sinned, and been sinned against that you would like to be free from?

We're gonna see from the scripture today that confession is central.

It's central in receiving healing for those things that you have gone through.

Let me ask you this.

Do you want to know the will of God for your life?

Who doesn't?

Who doesn't want to know that?

You want to know why God put you on this earth?

What your right next step is?

Well, we're gonna look at the scripture today and reveal it to us.

How we should walk in this.

This is the scripture that you need to highlight, highlight it in your Bible, on your phone.

James 5, 16 says this.

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be what?

Healed.

The earnest prayers of a righteous person have great what?

Power and produces wonderful results.

I'm gonna read it to you again.

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

An earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

And we know from just the story of Christ or us as believers, that we know that we can go to God and that we can confess our sins to God and that He is faithful to forgive us.

We'll see that here in a moment from the Scripture.

But not just the relationship that we have with God, also taught to us in the Scripture that there is a function of forgiveness, of confession, of healing that comes from you confessing your sins to your brother, to your sister in Christ.

If you've never read this scripture before, mark it down.

Highlight it.

Commit it to memory because it's important when you and I think about the healing that we want to see in our lives, there is a portion of the healing that needs to come from you confessing your sin to a brother or to a sister.

You ever seen uh those videos of the uh bottle of coke and the mentos mouth fresheners?

And you pour the mentos in, and I did not do it this morning because it would have been a massive mess that we had to clean up.

But if you've seen the video, there's something about the compounds that are that are in the Coke and in the Mentos breath mints that when you pour them into the Coca-Cola, it immediately just erupts like a volcano.

Now, what would happen if you were to put the mentos in there and screw the cap on?

The whole thing would explode.

You know a similar thing happens when we keep our sins and struggles bottled up inside.

Each of us go through things, each of us have sinned, we have struggled at different times in our lives.

Not a daily occurrence for a believer.

You're not perfect, I'm not perfect.

We need the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus, to cover our sins and to forgive us.

You know, if we keep those things bottled up inside of us, eventually it's gonna explode.

And hurt and shame and more destructive behavior and sin.

But there's a function here of forgiveness of healing that comes from you having a relationship with somebody else who's a believer in Jesus, who you're able to confess your sins to.

Richard Foster, who wrote the book Celebration of Disciplines, that this series has been after, he tells a story of him feeling like that there were things that he had been bottling up from years, sins and struggles that he had from his childhood and teenage years.

And he just knew that these things were holding him back.

He didn't know exactly why or how it was holding him back, but he just had this feeling that these things were holding him back.

And so he decided to take a pen and paper, and over a couple of sessions, thinking about childhood and his teenage years and adulthood, he marked down different things.

Sins that he had committed or had happened to him, or things that had happened that were struggles in his life from childhood and from his teenage years and from adulthood.

And he took those, that list of things on a piece of paper and he took it to a trusted friend who sat across from him.

And he said, they set across from each other, and they knew that this meeting was about for him to confess to him.

And so he confessed these things over the years and read them off the paper, not some of them needing context, most of them not.

Sin after sin after sin.

And when he was done with it, he took the piece of paper and he was putting it back in his briefcase, and his friend grabbed the paper out of his hands.

And he began to tear the paper up into a hundred different pieces and toss it into the trash.

A physical sign of the forgiveness that comes from God.

The things that he wrote on that paper, they're forgiven.

By the power of the blood of Jesus on the cross.

Do you know that you cannot sin more than God can give you grace?

You cannot outrun the grace of God.

You can't sin so deeply that God can't come after you.

He will go to the pit of hell to find you and to save you.

He's already done it.

2,000 years ago, where he died on the cross for sins past, present, and future.

He placed them on himself so that you could have salvation in Christ.

So what business do we have keeping them bottled up to ourselves, these sins?

Jesus has taken them from us.

But it takes having relationship with other believers, strong believers, and with God.

I know this because, you know, thinking about two men sitting down and writing a piece of paper and having that kind of relationship, like that's that's a rare thing.

Guys, guys in the room, you know, you're out hanging out with the guy with the guys, whatever you're doing, throwing cornhole, having eaten, barbecue, whatever it is, and you bring up something that you're going through, the guy's like, hey, rub some dirt in it, man.

Listen to this bad thing that happened to me.

Or, hey, why don't you just get over it?

I know this, I've been in these conversations with other guys.

What if you had a friend that looked at you and you said, you know what?

God forgives you, he loves you.

I'm gonna speak that over you.

That you're free from that.

What a relationship that would be.

Let me just say again, we know that we are forgiven by Christ, but somewhere from this passage, we see that at some point there's there is a function of healing that comes from confession.

In 1 Timothy 2, 5.

Scripture says, for there is one God and one mediator who can reconcile God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus.

The image I show I talked to you before of the priest and the person sitting in the confessional booth.

We don't have to confess our sins to somebody else or to a priest as a mediator.

You don't have to come and tell me all of your sins so that I can pray for you.

Guess what?

You have direct access to Jesus through prayer.

Jesus is our mediator.

You don't need a priest or a pastor to be the one to pray to absolve you of your sin.

You need to reach out to God directly, is what we see from the scripture.

You know, part of religion is trying to put a wedge, a gap between you and your intimacy with God all along the way.

Boy, isn't it nice to have to have a priest go talk to God so that you don't have to talk to God?

That's not how he designed this.

He designed for you to have a relationship with God.

For you to have an intimacy with Christ in a prayer life so that you could be reconciled, forgiven, and free in communication with God.

Look at 1 John 1 9.

But if we confess our sins to Him, speaking of the Lord, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all wickedness.

Can I get an Amen?

Boy, I'm thankful for that.

I'm grateful for that.

For you to have somebody in your life for you to confess to, that means that you don't need to be trying to do your Christian walk alone.

Do you know that that's that's that's why we have small groups here at Multiply?

That's why we have teams and volunteer teams so that you can get into relationship with another believer or a group of believers who can encourage you, who can pray for you, who can share things with you, and you can encourage each other in struggles.

Now, what I'm not telling you to do is next Wednesday or whenever your small group meets for you to go and just have a list and tell all your deep dark sins in the middle of a small group and do that.

You want to seek out those who are wise.

A relationship.

I'm not telling you to go after today and go and put all your dirty laundry on Facebook.

Boy, it'd be great if we had a little less of that, wouldn't we?

I'm not telling you today after church to go and put every deep dark sin and to post it out on Facebook, just trying to confess to y'all that I did this, but I will say this there are wounds in your life that have happened to you and that you have done to yourself through your own sin that need the healing of God.

Those wounds, just like on my finger here and on my leg, those wounds, when they are healed, they'll turn into a scar.

And the scar is a story of God's forgiveness and power in your life.

Now that story doesn't have any power, it doesn't have any healing if it's still an open wound.

Some of us in the room, we have open wounds that we've not addressed, that we've not spoken out, that we've not confessed, that literally just need us to speak it out, to let it out of the bottle, so that God can heal it and turn it into a savior story.

You need this in your life.

And you know what else?

Your friends and family need this too.

Y'all know.

This life is tough.

The stuff that we go through that we know that our friends and family have gone through, they need the love, care, and healing from Jesus himself alone.

We can't heal it for them.

But we can bring them along in the journey.

This uh last week, I told you guys that there was a couple of us that, myself and Sally, and we teamed up with my brother-in-law Jay Ingram and a crew, and we went over to Eastern Kentucky for this conference called Together for the Mountains.

It was an amazing time together that we had in the room.

It was 200 people focused on Eastern Kentucky and this new initiative out of Southland in church planting, and my friends Jared and Bethany standing up in front of this whole group and talking about how God is going to move in Eastern Kentucky and that God's going to plant more churches and see more people saved in this new initiative.

I mean, it was amazing.

We had an amazing time.

I don't know if you've ever gone all the way to Pikeville, but it is far away, okay?

It takes three hours to get there.

So we're all jammed in the car after the conference, and we're ready to get home.

We're back for this three-hour trek.

We've all got stuff to do.

We haven't gotten out of the parking lot more than five minutes when this red SUV literally just veers out into the middle of oncoming traffic in this intersection.

And my brother-in-law, Jay Ingram, he swerved the car like Mario Andretti, race car style, barely missing.

I mean, it may have been like a foot.

We were going at least 40, 45 miles an hour, and moved us right out of the way.

And boy, all of us were screaming and grabbing each other, and it was wild.

I don't know if you've had an experience like that, but woo! That was a close one.

All of us were kind of shook up and thankful for Jay and his driving skills.

So we made it through that one, and we're talking and talking about the conference and going on for some time, and about an hour later, Jay says.

You know, this doesn't look familiar anymore.

We were passing things, and I definitely didn't see it on the way there.

It was like a power plant or something like that.

That wasn't there last time.

I must have missed that.

Well, in all the commotion of this near wreck, his phone had unplugged out of his car for the GPS.

And he had just been driving now for an hour out of the way.

Straight north from Pikeville.

I'm like, are you kidding me right now?

I have to get home.

I want dinner.

Small groups.

There's like, at that point, we just driven an hour in the wrong direction.

You ever kind of woke up at some point in your life and realized, man, I've been going the wrong way.

That's happened to me.

Happened to me when I was in high school, and when I was in the party scene, and that stuff was going on, and I was heading down a wrong road.

God woke me up in my senior year of high school.

I'm so grateful for it.

But only it hadn't been that part.

There's been other times in my life where I've been stuck in sin and struggles and wake up and realize, how in the world did I get here?

Look at Proverbs 11, 14 when it says, without wise leadership, a nation falls, but there's safety in having many advisors.

Look at Proverbs 15, 22.

Plans go wrong for lack of advice.

Many advisors bring success.

There are times where you need to consult and have wise people in your life who you can talk about what the direction and what your right next step is.

But the key word in that is wisdom.

We have plenty of smart people around us, right, who have been there before us, can tell us about jobs and that kind of things.

But wisdom, wisdom is knowing the word of God.

True wisdom is knowing what God said and knowing what God's design and desire for our life is.

And we need a multitude of counselors in our life who actually know the word of God and can help to give us direction when we find ourselves going the wrong way or not knowing which way to go.

There are plenty of people around you, maybe who've gone through the same thing.

Maybe you've experienced something, a job loss, divorce, difficult time, a loss of a family member.

There's big things that can knock us off of the path.

We don't need just somebody who's been through it before.

We need to talk with somebody who knows the Word of God and knows his way in the situation.

This happened with the disciples in Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

There are people who were at that point in the early church that were trying to take the gospel message off course.

What essentially they were doing were these new believers that were in areas outside of Jerusalem and in Jerusalem itself, instead of them just believing in Christ alone and in the cross, there were these Jewish people who were trying to get them to also follow all the laws from the Old Testament, also in addition to following Jesus.

But we know what Jesus said that he didn't come to abolish the law but fulfill the law of the Lord.

That on the cross, that Jesus bought a new covenant in a new way.

And so now, if anybody tries to tell you it's the cross of Jesus plus anything, that's wrong.

Salvation is in Christ alone.

His work on the cross.

What's salvation plus?

You gotta do all these good works.

Salvation plus, you need to do more good and bad, and there's the scales, and as long as you have more good and then you have bad, then you're gonna get into heaven.

No.

It's the cross.

And so look at what happened here in Acts chapter 15, verse 6.

Acts 15:6

So the apostles and the elders met together to resolve this issue, and at the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood up and addressed the followers.

Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you some time ago to preach the Gentiles so that they could hear the good news and believe God knows and believe God, believe God knows people's hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us.

He has made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith.

So why are you now challenging God by burdening burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear?

We believe that we are all saved the same way, everybody, same way by the undisturbing, undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.

Everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told them about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

And when they had finished, James stood up and he said, Brothers, listen to me.

This is James, the half-brother of Jesus.

Peter's told you about the time that God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself.

God was opening the door, not just for Jews to be saved, but for the Gentiles.

And then he says this in verse 19, and this is so good.

Do not miss this.

He says, and so my and so my judgment is that we should not make it what?

Difficult for Gentiles who are turning to God.

We're supposed to not make it difficult for people to turn to God.

Boy, we can really be guilty of putting up some barriers, can't we?

But right here we see James and a multitude of advisors and this council trying to figure out the right way, the way of the Lord.

And James stands up in wisdom and he says, It's my judgment that we not make it difficult for those who are turning to God.

You know that's still true today?

You know that we ourselves, we don't need to be the ones making it difficult for people to come to Christ, but instead for us to be a bridge for people to Christ.

The scripture says that when we're in Christ, that we cross over from death to life.

That when you are not saved, you don't have Jesus, you've not received his forgiveness on the cross, you're not a follower of Jesus, that you are spiritually dead is what the Bible says.

And that you need to be awakened, that you need life, and that it's through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, salvation that comes from him, that you cross over from death to life, Jesus is the bridge into heaven.

But guess what else?

You need to also be a bridge, you need to be a bridge to other people, you need to be a bridge for other people to come to know Jesus, to come to be a part of a family of faith like this, so that they can be healed, so that they can be healed, and so they can know the purpose and plan that God has for their lives.

Who are you bringing with you?

Who are you bringing with you here to multiply?

Who are you bringing with you to your small group?

Who's the person that the empty chair that's next to you or the row next to you, who's the person that you know that God has laid on your heart to bring so that they can find healing in Christ, in Christ alone?

Do you have someone?

If you don't have someone, let me tell you this.

Let's not make it difficult for those who are turning to God.

Well, we can make this a lot harder than it really should be, can we?

And when I say bring somebody, that's exactly what I mean.

I love the story, and I don't know if she's in here or not, but Dana, if she's in here, I would give her a shout out.

Dana, who serves over in kids, she's a teacher at my daughter's school.

She received Christ and was baptized here at Multiply on Easter Sunday.

And then a few weeks ago, that story's not done.

Let's clap after this.

And then a few weeks ago, three or four weeks ago, she baptized her daughter here at Multiply just a few weeks ago, Aria.

Can we praise God for that?

Amen.

But you know where that started?

That started with her friend Caroline, who also comes to our church, who also serves in kids, who invited her to come to multiply ten times that she said no.

And I remember back then, because now it's been a few months now, but it struck me so much at the time because Caroline told me after Dana came for the first time to multiply, she reached back out to her and she said, Thank you so much for not giving up on me.

It's making me like emotional now, thinking about it.

Who is it that you don't need to give up on?

Who is it that you need to bring?

To sit down to coffee, to have a conversation with, to open the door, to be a friend, to be that trusted person in somebody's life?

And maybe even load up in the car.

Load him up in the car on a Sunday to bring him.

Jesus was faithful to bring us to the Father.

By the power of the cross.

We need to follow his example and doing the exact same.

Today may be your day.

Today you may be in the house today and you have not accepted Jesus as your savior.

You've not received the forgiveness that Jesus bought and purchased for you on the cross.

The way of salvation is very simple.

As easy as ABC, going back to Bible school right now.

You accept that Jesus is your Savior, that He is the Son of God, that He is Lord.

That you believe that He died on the cross from your sins.

That He is alive, reigning on the throne in heaven.

And the C is you commit your life to Him.

You confess your sins, you commit your life to Him.

Maybe that's today is the day for you to receive salvation, to do that.

And there's no magic prayer.

But it's about what's in your heart.

Do you truly believe that?

And when you do, Jesus hands you the gift of salvation.

Now you may be in the house today and you've already done that.

You did that when you were a kid, or 10 years ago, or two years ago.

But who is it in your life that also needs that gift given to them?

God will use you to help hand it to them by making a way.

Can I pray for us all now?

Father, we thank you, God, for the fact that we can be healed if we walk in your way, God.

And if we pursue you, Jesus, and if we have a family of faith around us who can help us get there.

Father, I pray for every person right now, under the sound of my voice, that God, that they would confess their sins to you.

And we know that you are faithful and just to forgive us of all of our unrighteousness and wickedness.

So God, thank you for that.

And God, I pray right now, I claim and declare right now, God, healing over this group.

By way of confession.

Lord, I pray, God, and speak, Lord, over them that they would take the step, God, of confessing sin to a brother or sister, a trusted brother or sister, so that they can be healed.

Father, I pray that this group of people would be a people who are wise in your way.

That, Lord, that would have a prayer on their tongue for a brother or sister to love and care for them.

Father, I pray that over children, over teenagers, college students, adults here in our midst, God, we want more.

We want more of you, God, and more people to know you, Jesus.

So with nobody looking around, I pray right now, God, over anybody in this place who's not received you as Savior.

That right now, Jesus, they would pray to you and ask for your salvation.

There's no magic words, but Lord, that they would, from sincerity in their heart, that they would reach up to you right now, God, and ask for salvation.

They would pray something like this in their heart and mind, Jesus, save me.

I believe that you are the Son of God and that you are alive.

Forgive me of my sins.

Wash me as white as snow, so that I might be in heaven with you one day.

I give my life to you as you gave your life for mine.

Thank you for saving me.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you prayed that today for the first time, I would love to pray for you, celebrate with you.

There's a place on the Connect card that says, I want to follow Jesus.

We'd love for you to check that off so that we can come alongside you and care for you, encourage you, pray for you.

I want to invite you now to be st uh to stand back to your feet as we close and worship.