Admitting our wrongs can be hard, but confession is an important step.
“We need to ask Jesus for your honesty, courage, and the willingness to even come to a place of confession.” – Bill Arnold
Step 5 in the 12 Step process relates to confessing to another person as well as confessing to God. George Fraser explains,
“I think everything that is going to get us more godly, more holy, we need to pray for. That desire isn’t in us. Let’s face it, none of us wanted to quit using. The desire comes from God and the Holy Spirit.”
“It helps in our accountability and it puts some skin in the game for us that we can’t just kind of blow by everything and go, ‘Okay, I did that one, I did it in my head,’ you actually have to write this out. Set up an appointment was somebody that you trust, maybe your minister, maybe your sponsor, I prefer doing it with a man of the cloth, and it helps to realize that we’re not by ourselves that there’s a human connection here.”
Bill reminds us that confessing our sins to God is a safe thing to do:
“Most people in in need of recovery feel unworthy of a relationship with God, and I think part of the confession is to lay yourself bare in front of a complete, holy God who sees you as broken and completely lovable in every way, and he loves us so much he went to the cross to die for us.”
George reminds us that we’re not just confessing to feel better, we’re confessing to someone who can forgive our sins:
“We’re going to ask for forgiveness, so I want to get into the habit of doing this, this is a big deal. I think a lot of people that I’ve met in recovery that don’t know Jesus pass by this one. I believe that our addiction is idolatry, and we’re our own God, and so a lot of people do this step to make them feel better about themselves after they confess. I want to make sure that I confess to someone who can forgive my sins, and that’s Jesus.”
