There is power in community confession.

I confess that it is
difficult to put myself in a position to know this with experience. But
as I do, I remember how much it is needed. It is hard in the moments to
trust Christ is there because it is awkward, vulnerable and I am all to
aware of my humanity. Still I do see Christ real and active there,
perhaps because of the very reason's I find it hard to trust in the
first place. There I recognize how dependent of him I am, how much I
yearn to be like him. There I recognize Christ doesn't give up on his
end of the deal. So in response, I do my best to keep showing up,
trusting Christ's promise.

When an individual gathers with
fellow believers in authentic community
and shares openly a weakness or wound from within, the power of Jesus
Christ has an open door for healing.

We fear vulnerability. And
that fear attacks us in two ways: First, creating a barrier between
people so that community is stifled. Second, leads us to think that our
culture's message of "rugged individualism" is safe and the best way to
live. Alone we can ignore that we are as broken as we suspect and never
get better. Together we can accept we are as broken as we suspected,
and then confess it; and then get over it; and then allow God to
overcome it. That process is messy. It can be painful. Oh, it is so
rewarding in the end. Community is the hard road of real life
individualism tries to shortcut towards mirage.

None of those
steps can truly occur for a person apart from others. Other people must
mutually be confessed to, help each other get over brokenness, and join
together in God's power to overcome it, by God's power.

A person
may try, with some sense of success, to try this on their own, outside
of community. But it is the success of balancing a playing card on its
edge while building a house of cards. There is no real support. "Surely
I can confess my sins silently to God- for to God alone will I stand in
judgment". Spiritually, yes, God will judge all. And we are to come to
Him regularly to confess. But I believe this something Protestants have
lost in their break from the Catholic church. The accountability for
real transformation that comes from confession to others. And in fact,
when we confess to our spiritual siblings, we are confessing to God,
who we represent and in whose name we gather. Our confession to God in
this way gives us the assurance that those people who hear us will not
only watch our confession turn to repentance- a new direction- but they
will most certainly encourage and be active in the process. They will
know what we deal with and lovingly not let us alone to fall into our
traps of sin again. Accountability. Encouragement. Celebration of
progress. One cannot truly do this alone. Individual prayers are half
the equation and can make us deceptively confident in our strength to
avoid the sin we just confessed.

Only within community can this
full healing of an individual occur. There Christ will be embodied in
the group as they respond to the vulnerable person. When all is well,
how they interact will echo Jesus with the Samaritan Woman, Jesus with
the paralyzed man, Jesus with Peter on several occasions; Jesus with
the Woman caught in adultery, Jesus with the young rich man, Jesus with
Zaccheus, Jesus with scores of lame, sick and demon-possessed. Through
others, Christ is no longer a moral concept or a Jimminy Cricket on our
shoulder, nor mantra or vague sense of self-medication. Jesus becomes a
person, actively speaking to us, guiding us, correcting us, accepting
us and loving us without end. Jesus remains real and alive in the body
of brothers and sisters 'doing life' through the thick and thin of
life, never giving up on one another, forgiving sins and speaking hard
truth with an embrace. Without this community an individual may never
truly know Jesus, the God-man who made real life possible for us,
humans, truly in this life now; much more so in the one to come.