He was in trouble. A lot of trouble.
She was new at the office. Young, attractive, talented.
They had been appointed to work on a project together, and he was inordinately pleased about that.
She laughed at his jokes. Appreciated his ideas. Listened intently to his thoughts.
She took up more space in his mind than he was initially aware of, and as he drove home from work, it was her that he was thinking about, not his wife and two sons who would greet him when he arrived.
He had been married for eight years now, and life was different than when he and his wife first met. In those days, they couldn’t get enough of each other. Every day was a new adventure. They dreamed of building a family together, of making a home, of saving for retirement.
But ever since the boys came along, things had been different. She had struggled emotionally after their second son was born, and there had been a growing distance between them. He would go to work and take care of the boys when he got home. He and his wife were kind to each other, and he knew that they still loved each other, but the spark that had initially been between them had all but disappeared.
And now—the new girl.
What was he to do? He knew that his faith prohibited such a relationship–Jesus Himself condemned adultery–but his feelings were not submitting to his will. He felt like he was on a slippery roof, and a fall from that height seemed nothing short of inevitable.
He prayed about it, but his heart still lit up every time that coworker entered the room.
He planned to keep his feelings secret and pretend that everything was okay until he could work it out on his own. Then everything would be back to normal, and no one would know the difference.
But it wasn’t working; he was falling deeper and deeper into his fantasy.
He was in trouble. A lot of trouble.
Finally, in his desperation, he called a buddy from the church. They had hunted together and watched ball games together; the guy was a good friend and a brother in the Lord.
“Can we grab breakfast?”
Two days later, over a stack of pancakes and too much syrup, the man ashamedly spoke out what he had been carrying in his heart: he was falling for a woman at work and was afraid that he was going to cheat on his wife.
He could hardly look up when he said the words. How could they possibly be coming from his mouth? He never wanted to be in that place, but there he was.
But two things happened that he had not anticipated.
First, his friend just listened. He didn’t pass judgment. He didn’t condemn. He didn’t recoil in horror.
“Oh man, I’m so sorry you’re going through this,” was all he said.
The second thing was that whatever power the secret had over him vanished in an instant. The moment he spoke the secret out loud and invited someone in to share it with, it lost its grip.
Immediately, the feelings he had harbored for the woman at work left him like the last vestiges of smoke from a snuffed-out candle.
He was free.
Though some details have been changed, the above story is true. I have seen it happen in different situations with different secret sins, but the overarching truth has always been the same:
Confession brings freedom.
Two Bible verses speak clearly to this issue.
The first says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
The second says, “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (James 5:16)
Confession brings freedom.
As I read these two verses, I am convinced of two things:
- We confess our sins to God to receive forgiveness, and;
- We confess our sins to each other to receive healing.
And by healing, I mean set free, released, and delivered.
It is like holding your breath underwater and then bursting forth, gulping delicious air. When you are under the water, you may be convinced that you are going to drown, but the moment you breathe in the air, you know that you are going to live.
I have experienced this personally over and over again, and I have seen it in many brothers’ lives.
Men who have been caught up in a secret sin for years–looking great on the outside but dying on the inside–have been really and truly set free from the grasp of that sin the moment they confess to another brother.
As Christian men, we have become great at keeping secrets, portraying one image to the world while hiding a much darker truth within our hearts. The devil loves it when we do this. He can do wonders when there are secrets, when things are kept hidden in the dark.
But when we confess, when we flick the lights on, when we expose what we are so desperately trying to keep hidden, it sends the devil packing. He knows he loses almost all of his power when things are brought into the light.
John 3:20-21 says, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
There is freedom for you, my brothers. It comes at the price of humility, transparency, and honesty. But it is freely there for the taking if you will confess your sins to God and to one another.
About
