Confess & Pray

Hey this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with

God bless you.

God is good, amen.

All the time.

Amen I want to get into the word this morning.

Before we do that, I want to wish a happy birthday to my brother Juan.

Where's Juan at?

There he is.

Brother Juan.

Amen.

He uh he and his wife, if you don't know Juan, he uh He he leads our PNEUMA closet and our outreach, and we're grateful for their leadership and their love and their compassion, everything that they do, um they do with the with the heart of Christ.

Happy birthday, my brother.

Amen.

Also want to remind everybody of our c excuse me our centennial later this month on the twenty fourth.

If you haven't registered, you gotta register.

We're we're uh we're getting up there.

So we we want to see you there.

I want everybody here, there, that evening.

Amen.

Celebrating with us and having a good time.

Let's go to the word this morning, James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

James chapter five.

I'm gonna take this off because it's a little hot.

And uh my wife this morning she was like you're not gonna wear just a shirt, right?

Now you're gonna see how wrinkled I am.

Amen.

Praise God.

Are you are you there?

James chapter 5?

James 5 · chapter mention

13 through 19, James here is talking to the church.

He's talking to believers.

He's talking to the saints.

If that's you, say, hey, that's me.

Amen.

James is talking to you this morning.

He says, is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise.

Is anyone among you sick?

Let him call for the elders of the church.

Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore, somebody say, 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 and it is working.

Heavenly Father, I pray this morning that your word would do what it does, Lord.

My God, I pray, Father God, that we would be receptive, that we would be open, that we would be ready, ripe this morning to receive this word, Lord.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Take your seat.

Amen.

I entitled the sermon very simply, Confess and Pray.

Confess and Pray I want to speak to kind of both sides of that today.

I want to speak to those who need confession, and I want to speak to those who are called to pray for those confessed needs.

Now, if anybody ever thinks that they're too righteous, it's worth noting that these two groups overlap. at times.

Sometimes I'm going to be the one who prays.

Other times I'm going to be the one who confesses.

That's how it is.

I believe that James has in mind a church that um you know maybe isn't too common in our day and age And it's a church that's not perfect, it's a church that's not sinless, but it's a church that's honest.

It's a church that's transparent, and it' It's a church that is safe, and I'll get to the safe part a little bit later.

But I want you to notice that everything James says to do in this passage It requires an honest and transparent reaction.

He says, if you're struggling, pray about it If you're cheerful, praise about it.

If you're sick, let somebody know you're sick.

And if you're in sin, confess it Each of these conditions, struggling, cheerful, sick, or in sin, requires an honest and transparent response.

And a lot of what we find today in churches is not honest and not transparent.

And if you're if you're new here, if you're new to the church or you're new to the faith, I don't say that to scare you to think that, oh man, what am I what am I walking into?

Church is just full of liars and hypocrites.

No, that's not what I mean to say.

What I mean to say is that not everybody is honest and transparent about the things that they're going through.

As they should be.

Some people are suffering, pretending like everything's okay.

See or no?

Some people are sick pretending to look healthy.

Some people are hiding behind fake praise because you come into church, you see everybody with their praise, you feel like if you don't praise, if you don't smile, you're gonna stick out like a sore thumb, everybody's gonna ask what's wrong with you, and so you praise fakely.

It's not real, it's not genuine.

Some some are in sin pretending to be holy.

We should always aim to be a church that if if not perfect or sinless, at least honest and transparent.

Because if we're those things, if we're honest about what we're facing, if we're transparent about what we're going through, we know that we're at least trying our best.

But when you hide the struggle or when you hide the sin, what happens is we take away the power of prayer that's needed to fight against those things with the body.

Many churches, I think, have the prayer part down.

I don't know if you've noticed this, but PNEUMA Church knows how to pray.

We got some prayer warriors in here.

Yesterday, man, the Spirit of God was was moving.

So it was so evident in our 7 a. m. prayer service, which again, I I welcome everybody to come the first of every month at 7 a. m.

We just pray together for about an hour And yesterday the Spirit of God was just moving in the saints.

You could feel it.

But what if.

What if a church, even though the church knows how to pray, is not praying the prayers that need to be prayed for healing to happen?

Because you're suffering, but nobody knows that you're suffering, so the church can't join you in prayer.

What if what if you're sick, but because you don't want everybody in your business, you don't want people making GoFundMe accounts, you don't want you know you don't want the whole no world feeling sorry for you.

You you stay sick in silence And the church can't join you in prayer.

What if you're in sin and you don't want to be judged and you don't want to be confronted?

And so you stay without accountability, you stay without leadership, therefore you stay without growth.

That's not how we heal.

That's not the way that the church heals.

A spiritually mature church like the one that I believe James has in mind here is one in which the individual members of a body are not afraid to be seen as weak so that the saints can be strong in prayer.

Did you get that?

Do I need to say it again?

The body that that that Jesus has in mind is one in which the individual members are not afraid to be weak so that the rest of the body can be strong on their behalf.

And there's gonna be times where you're gonna be strong, and there's gonna be times where you're gonna be weak.

And if you're so used to being seen as the as the strong person, you know that pride puffs up.

Pride puffs up, but it doesn't allow you to be weak when you really are weak and need a prayer.

That's more of a warning for us leaders who hide behind our perceived sense of needing to be strong.

But if we believe in the power of a praying church, which I hope we do, then we've got to start bringing some real issues to the feet of Jesus.

We got to start bringing some real issues to our to our brothers and sisters in Christ so that we can grow and we can heal together.

But Pastor, I don't want to be a burden to anybody.

Pastor, I don't want anybody in my business.

I don't want to confess my sins because it's shameful.

And so we battle things alone.

And there's going to be times where prayer needs to be done alone.

You need to get in your prayer closet on your knees and battle it out with the Spirit of God on your side.

But many times prayer is best to be done with the army.

I got like five or six people this week, man, that that that called me just in need of prayer.

And I as I listened to them and and their needs, felt their needs, and at times I cried over the phone with them because I was empathizing with a lot of what they were going through.

I had the privilege of being able to join them in agreement in prayer.

And that's a privilege, man.

That's not a burden.

That's a privilege.

I get to pray with my brother in Christ.

I get to pray with you and and and help see uh see to it that that we're getting healed together.

That's a privilege.

That's what it is to be a part of a body.

When one person is affected, it affects the entire body.

If if one part of your body is infected, does not the whole immune system activate?

That's the beauty of being part of the body of Christ.

That's the privilege that we have to be a part.

We are soldiers and an army, and we don't have to go into the battlefield alone.

So if you're sick and you're suffering, James says, call the elders and let them pray.

Confess what's going on in your life so that you're not battling alone.

This is why we have a prayer team.

Every week they're up here.

They're not up here just to look cute.

They're up here because it it's in this it's an invitation for the church to come and bring exposure to their suffering, to your sin, to your depression, whatever you're carrying.

Bring it here so that together we can pray and stand in agreement and work towards a healing.

But listen, you we cannot heal what is concealed.

We cannot heal what is not brought to light.

You have to bring it to light, and that's a really hard word for us because we want to keep things that we're shameful of hidden so nobody knows about it.

Therefore, but you can't heal that way.

You can't heal what isn't revealed.

And some of you are sitting here this morning, and you're you're sitting there with the weakness of a sin, and you're saying to yourself, Pastor, the church isn't what saves me.

This is how you justify it.

The church isn't what saved me.

Only God can heal me.

Only God can deliver me And God already knows this struggle.

God already knows it.

He'd already confessed it to him.

Good.

Praise the Lord.

You've done the most important thing.

Bringing it to God.

That's bringing it to the light.

But listen, this is something that we don't understand.

If the problem is deep enough and perpetual enough, you might also need discipleship.

You might also need accountability.

You might also need some encouragement when you're struggling and you don't have the strength to encourage yourself.

You might also need you might also need uh another perspective because you're doing things Uh from your own point of view, and you're doing things incorrectly, and you're walking down waters that other people have walked before.

You could benefit from bringing some things out in the open so that the church could walk with you through the healing process.

This is a hard word, man.

And you're still sitting there.

You're like, Pastor, I already confessed my sin to God.

I'm good.

I'm good.

I already brought it to him.

Some people don't understand that when you confess something, that's the first step of the healing process.

Some people might like to make you think that it's the last step, like it's the final boss, like you gotta renounce it.

I renounce my sin.

I renounce my lust.

That's just the beginning.

Because now you have to learn how to tame the eyes.

Now you have to learn how to create boundaries.

You have to learn how to take your thoughts captive.

You have to learn how to replace the lust with the spirit.

You have to learn how to call somebody when you're being tempted.

It's a process, and the church is here to help you with the process.

So James says, confess your sins to one another.

Pray for one another.

Bring your struggles.

Bring your sickness.

Bring your sin into the light so that they're exposed and vulnerable, so that we can all see what we're fighting with.

Is this is this is this clocking?

Right?

That's how that's how they say it.

We're uncomfortable with the word confession.

Even in the Catholic Church, they cover up the face of the priest We're uncomfortable with confession.

Makes us uncomfortable.

And you know, it's not very helpful when somebody says, Pastor, I need you to pray.

For me.

I'm like, okay, what do you need, what do you need prayer for?

And they're like, the Lord knows my needs.

I'm like, uh, well, can I know them too?

You know They used to call it an unspoken prayer request.

Made it sound so spiritual.

I've got an unspoken pastor.

Well that's not a prayer request.

What are you requesting?

Come on.

How how do you how do you want me to ask God for something I don't even know what to ask him?

And and and I get it.

I get it.

Pastor, I'm I'm going through I'm going through something.

The Lord knows.

So pray for me.

What am I praying for?

Pray for yourself if you're not gonna let me pray with you.

See or not?

So church church, what if you are just one honest and vulnerable conversation away?

From the beginning of your healing?

What if what if it just took one moment with the trusted brother or sister in Christ Saying, I'm dealing with this.

I'm tired of dealing with it.

I've been battling it for a long time.

I need support.

I don't know what to do.

I'm at the end of the road.

I'm tired of dealing with it.

Tired of battling it.

I want to get better The church has always been a hospital for the sick.

This is where you come to get better This is where you come to get healed.

This is where you come to get stronger and grow.

And yes, it's possible to overcome some things on your own, but why make it any harder than it needs to be?

Let people who understand sin.

Let people who understand temptation who knows what it what it feels like to be in chains who now walk in godliness help you conquer the battle.

Let your brothers in Christ help you get there.

Man And I love these things because it's not just It's not just we're going to get together and have a service and praise Jesus together.

That's easy.

That's easy to do.

I remember at the start of the at the at the start of the service, I said, look, you guys, y'all have, because they divide them up in tables and everything like that.

I said, the guy next to you is about to learn the deepest, darkest secrets of your life.

And that's how it should be.

We should be able to rest on each other and and be vulnerable with one another so that we can talk to the things that that That you're probably dealing with as well.

Maybe you're a little bit further along and I want to learn how you got through it.

There's power in confession.

There's power in prayer.

Now there's some people today, and this this is gonna take a this is gonna take a turn.

There's some people here this morning who refuse to confess because you refuse to repent.

There's some people in here.

Those are the hypocrites.

Those are the liars.

If you're here today and you are sitting in your sin and you are stubbornly unrepentant, what are you doing here?

Like why why you don't belong here?

And I know that's not a pastoral thing to say, but like if this is a place for healing and you have no business wanting to be healed What are you doing?

If you have no issue with your sin, if you keep excusing it, if you think it's not a big deal and you got no plans on stopping, man, you don't you don't belong here.

You're wasting your time, you're wasting my time, you're wasting the leaders' time who are spending time and resources trying to disciple you and you got no intention on actually getting better?

I don't want to spend an hour with you discipling you.

If you have no intention on being better, I could be with my family.

So if you got no intention on getting better, what are you doing here?

That's the reality.

If you're at that point where you're sitting comfortable in your sin, that means that you've already been up given over to the devil.

You're just sitting in church.

If you've gotten if it's gotten that far and you're like, yeah, I I I'm good where I'm at, but you're still at church.

You've been handed over to the devil.

And can I tell you, I don't want devils to my church, man.

I don't want witches in my church.

I don't want people with other agendas.

I don't want people praying on vulnerable saints here at the church.

I don't want people only looking out for themselves.

If you're here just to slide into somebody's DMs, get out of here.

If you're here because you're pursuing a certain person, get out of here, man.

If you're here because after church you like to ask people for money, get out of here.

We ain't got money.

Man.

Like if you're not looking for healing If you're not looking to try to get closer to Jesus, if you're not looking for genuine godly connection, I cannot think of a good enough reason for you to stay here.

That's just the truth.

Many people come for different reasons, but to stay here, to be planted here, to dwell here, if it's not for any of those reasons, you don't belong there.

Don't come back next week.

I'm serious because look, I say this as a pastor, I say this as a shepherd.

I have I have a heart to protect the saints, man.

I have a heart to res to to protect the flock because that's been entrusted with me And so if there's a wolf anywhere in our midst, get out of here.

I don't want you.

And I pray that the Lord exposes you so that you can leave.

This is a place of healing.

This is a place of restoration.

It's a place for salvation.

And if you have another agenda, you don't belong here.

Now, if if you genuinely love Jesus and you hate your sin, And you hate what it does to you, and you hate the gap between the person you are and the person you're trying to become, but you you have this stronghold over your life and you don't know how to get rid of it. and you're humble enough to admit it, but there's still plenty of fear in you, there's still plenty of conviction in you, you're just struggling, well then maybe it's time to confess it to somebody.

We need to be a church that is honest.

We need to be a church that is transparent so that real and lasting healing can take root.

This is there's another point that I want to make.

And now I want to switch my attention to to the saints, to the prayer warriors.

We want a church that is honest.

We want a church that is transparent, that isn't afraid to be vulnerable, but we also need to ensure that the church is safe.

The church is meant to be a safe enough place to where transparency and honesty are the norm.

I had originally entitled the sermon Safe Space because I wanted to talk about the culture that we as believers are responsible for creating if we want healing to take place.

In order to create a culture of prayer and confession, we have to first make this a place that's safe enough for those things to happen.

That makes sense?

John 8 uh tells a story of a woman caught in adultery.

I don't normally preach from John 8 because it's is believed by most scholars.

It's it's it's more than a belief.

It's a well it's a it's a truth.

John 8, this story was added many, many years later.

It's not original to John's gospel.

In fact, a lot of commentators don't even comment on it because they don't treat it as genuine.

And this is not news your Bible tells you in the brackets of John 8.

But when you read it, it still sounds like Jesus.

Like when you read it it it doesn't make you think oh Jesus wouldn't do that No it's it's one of those things that you're like Jesus would do that And so whether this was made up or it was it was a truth passed down orally that a that a scribe later decided to add into the Bible, I'm gonna read it.

It says, early in the morning.

He, he being Jesus, came again to the temple, and all the people came to him and he sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery.

And placing her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.

So what do you say?

I don't think we even need to read the rest of the story to get the message.

Listen, the reason some people don't confess their sins to the saints is because they don't know if they're going to be stoned by them.

So I I just spent 20 minutes telling everybody that we need to confess our sins.

Now let me speak to the body.

Because the body needs to know that in order for people to confess, we have to be worthy of their trust.

Have to be.

I I told that to our prayer team, man.

People come up to you and they they trust you.

You have to be worthy of their trust.

You have to be worthy of someone's confession.

And this same principle, by the way, can can be applied in church and out of church.

Parents.

Like if you want your kids to be honest about what goes on in their lives, you need to create a safe space for them to tell you.

They need to know that you're not going to lose your cool when they tell you something that you don't want to hear.

They need to know that even though there's going to be consequences to their actions, you're not going to be wildly unreasonable because you yourself are just as hot-headed as they are.

Spouses, if you want a culture of confession in your marriage to build trust and to maintain trust, you have to create a safe space for confession confession to happen.

You have to do that.

My wife and I, man, we we have had to work on this intentionally.

Melissa has told me many times, she says, if if you need to confess something, if you need to tell me something that you know I'm not gonna be happy about, she says, I need you to prep me.

She says, I need you to warn me because I need to invite Holy Spirit to drive in the driver's seat, right?

So that it's not Melissa.

And that's such a that's such a true thing to say.

Like it's a it's such a a great self-awareness thing That that when people tell us something, sometimes we react in the flesh.

And and that's why it's not a safe place because people won't want you to react in the spirit.

And so I appreciate so much that she has given me the space to say that, hey, if you need to tell me something that's uncomfortable, if you need to have a hard conversation, I want you to prep me so that I can pray that the Holy Spirit takes over.

That's the type of culture that we need to create in the church.

We have to be mature enough to handle people's confessions and not take it as a thing to be entertained and gossiped about.

We need to be gentle enough to treat a vulnerable soul with the same love and care that Jesus would have shown.

We need to be loving enough to not cast the first stone when chances are we've walked the same path that they've walked in some form or fashion.

Someone should not have to worry about confiding in you because they think that what they tell you is going to be passed around the church and by next week everybody's going to know about it.

They shouldn't have to worry about being cast aside the minute you tell them something.

Because now you don't see them the same way.

Because they genuinely struggle with something and they don't want to tell you because of the way that they think they're going to be judged.

They shouldn't have to worry That that the leadership is going to embarrass them and call them all to the front.

And you got 400 members knowing this person's business, and you got everybody extending hands that don't even need to be praying for this person.

That's the culture that we create in the church.

That's the culture.

Sister Susie.

She uh She's got a sexual transmitted disease.

Can we bring her here and pray for her?

That's what those are the types of things that I hear in some churches.

I damn I wanna go to that church.

Man We shouldn't we we people shouldn't have to worry that we're gonna react in a way that is unjust.

That we're going to correct unjustly, that we're going to to to to react with the word of God.

Sometimes we are the people or we are the reasons that people hide things in the church.

We are the reason that people delay their healing.

We are the ones that stand in the way from sin and healing.

In in this scene, and I'm almost done.

Um, in this scene, you have three representations.

You have the woman who represents a sinner.

You have those who might represent the people of God, and then you have Jesus.

And listen, it was those who thought they were obeying the law.

It was those who thought they were righteous were also the ones holding the stones.

Now, I I won't pretend to know this story.

I won't pretend to know this woman, but I believe that many are like her today.

The story says that she was caught in the act of adultery.

She didn't confess it.

She didn't bring it to the light.

She was caught.

And you know, when people are caught in the act of sin, you know it's never a good look.

And I think we all react the same way, less graciously.

We say, well, you're only sorry because you got caught.

But that's not always true.

What if this woman hated the sin?

That she was committing?

What if she hated the weakness that she was battling on her own, but because she was afraid that she was going to be stoned to death, felt like she had no other choice but to keep it in hiding?

What what if what if there's people today hiding something because they feel like they've got no choice but to hide it?

If that's the culture that we are creating as a church, one of religiosity and judgment, we will never be a church of confession.

And if we're not a church of confession, how can we be a church that promotes healing?

Let me let me ask you this.

What what's the what's the point of confession if healing is not at the other end of it?

Like really think about it.

How and how can one heal if if what is brought to them is not met with some semblance of grace?

This is not to say that righteous judgment isn't required.

This is not to say that discipline isn't required.

This isn't to say that justice goes out the window.

But God invites us to uncover our sin.

So that he can have grace upon us so that we could heal and mature.

If if people can't trust that what They confess is going to be met with some grace.

We are giving them reason to allow their sin to continue to grow in the dark.

Jesus says in verse 7, as they continued to ask him, he stood up and he said, Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.

This is a call to remember that even the most holy saints need grace.

No, Pastor, I got it down.

I'm I don't got no sin.

If you really believe that, then you are just you just have sin that you can't see.

The Bible says that if anybody says they were are are without sin, they are a liar.

But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

And Jesus stood up and said to her, woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

And she said, No, Lord.

Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you.

Go and sin no more.

Jesus said He said, he who was without sin cast the first stone.

And he was the only one qualified to throw the stone at her.

And did he?

No.

He says they don't condemn you because they can't condemn you.

Church, the righteous, the holy saints, the believers, the prayer warriors, we can't, we don't have the power to condemn anyone.

We don't have that type of power.

I mean, God, if you wanted to, I stand condemned before the throne of God.

Even on my best day, I'm like a filthy rag.

I'm a I'm a child that only a mother can love before the eyes of God But he says, if if they don't condemn you, I also don't condemn you.

Instead, Jesus showed grace and then told them to stop living in that sin.

So I want you to I want you to I want you to stand with me and I'm sorry if this wasn't Pentecostal enough Listen.

Prayer team.

Prayer team.

I I trust these men and women of God up here.

I trust our leaders.

I trust our pastors.

I trust our prayer warriors.

I trust that they are mature enough to handle the confessions of the saints.

And in just a minute, I want to invite you, and I know this is a really, really hard invitation, but I want to invite you to come and confess That which has been on your heart, on your mind, on your spirit for such a long time that you've just been keeping in the dark and you know that you can't do it by yourself.

You can't do it by yourself.

You need help.

You need accountability.

You need prayer.

You need discipleship.

You need a conversation.

And and maybe neither of these people are the people that you need to confess to.

Maybe it's somebody else.

Maybe it's your spouse.

Maybe it's it's it's your parents, maybe it's your children.

I don't know.

But I want us to create a space that is safe enough for confession to happen so that true healing can happen.

I don't want fake deliverance.

I don't want that.

Honestly, fake deliverance makes me uncomfortable.

I don't want I don't want fake renouncing.

I want I want something real being brought to the feet of Jesus.

I want there to be a follow-up.

I want there to be discipleship.

I want there to be accountability.

So if you need to confess somebody something this morning, our prayer team is here.

I would encourage you if you are a man and you have something to confess, you go to a man.

If you are a woman and have something to confess, go to a woman.

Just a moment, the prayer the the worship team is gonna sing.

And this is just an invitation.

I'm gonna leave it open.

If you want to come, you come.

If not, you stay there and you pray.

But the Lord wants to heal.

He wants to heal.

Let yourself be healed.

We thank you, Lord Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch. com If you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe or share it with your friends on social media and tag us at mypneumachurch.

Thanks again and God bless.