on the walk

Ben began a great new series today. This series will lead up to our Christmas Sunday/Christmas Eve services. It is called “The Perfect Gift.” The whole series is about how Jesus is the perfect gift and through the work of Christ we receive exactly what we need. As we saw today however, what we need is not always what we wanted.

Today Ben shared that through Christ we receive the perfect gift of confession. Confession is not the perfect gift because we want it. Confession is a gift because we need it. Confession is a gift because most of us struggle with guilt, and confession is part of the process to freedom.

I hope to have some more time to reflect on confession in this forum, but before I wax theological I thought it was important to actually confess. If you are a small group leader, you may want to encourage your group to spend some time in confession at your next meeting. As the old joke goes: A guy goes up to a preacher and says, “Good Sermon.” The preacher says, “We’ll see.”

So lets make sure that this weeks sermon was a good sermon by practicing what we heard.

To help us all in our confession, here is a great confession that has been used by many Christians throughout history. For a fuller exercise of confession and forgiveness, you can check out The Walk which includes several confessional prayers at the end of the grace chapter.

If you want to begin to receive the gift of confession, you are invited to experience the following prayer:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

—Book of Common Prayer, Morning Prayer

on the walk

-Ethan