Confession

[His son]

Confession of sin to God is necessary for the salvation process to continue in our lives. Sometimes God will direct us to confess to someone else but it should always be under His direction. Confession must be followed by for forgiveness, and that is to be followed by repentance (change of life style) in regards to that sin. This we empowered to do by The Indwelling Holy Spirit, who also is The one who convicts us of each sin.

[WISDOM]

Most people, in my experience, don't feel the need to confess. So by telling you it's unnecessary, maybe in some subconscious way they're trying to justify their own sin of omission.

EXCELLENT POINT!

Truer words were never spoken....

[WISDOM]

Hi Kay......

It is part of our growth and development into the image of CHRIST.  Confessing the truth to our FATHER is not a sign of weakness, but of strength.  None of us are perfect.  Confession also helps to weld the bond of trust between us and our FATHER, and should make us better aware, and even MORE thankful for HIS grace and mercy always demonstrated towards us.

Wow, dead on. Maybe I'm playing with semantics here (and I apologize if I am), but I would say confession is a sign of weakness on our part so that we might bring forth the strength of God.

Like I said, it's all semantics, thus doesn't matter. What does matter is how dead on correct your post it.

Hello Super Jew....

No apology is necessary. I clearly understood your point, as a matter of fact I'm glad you mentioned it the way you did. It gave me another angle of insight to approach the topic with....

Our LORD does make note that HIS strength shows up best through our weakness. VERY good point, Super Jew. Thanks!

[stevehut]

Confession must be followed by for forgiveness, and that is to be followed by repentance (change of life style) in regards to that sin.

Forgiveness precedes repentance?

Acts 3:19

Repent then, and turn to God, that your sins may be forgiven...

[Guest Orthodox Christian]

One wise person said: "When we sin, God seems merciful to us, but when we have sinned, God seems cruel". One thing to remember in confession is that God always forgives whenever you ask with truly repentance in your heart that you did something wrong. And He acknowledges our weakness, so He does not ask of you to do something that is beyond your strength, meaning, you should not worry that even if you were truly sorry for your sins and repented, God did not forgive you. God is love, and He forgave you before you spoke the world "Lord forgive". He does not forgive only when you formally and automatically speak the same set of words when confessing you've learned to speak in the past years. Confession should be alive.

People are afraid of confession, and those people do not have a personal relation with God. They may pray to Him two times a day, but their lives lack that dear intimacy with the Lord, when you open your whole inner person to Him. Those people do not trust God as they should, and therefore they doubt His mercy and His power and His love towards them. Therefore they doubt Him as being true God. Or another explanation is that they are simply lazy, because confession involves some spiritual work and effort.

When I confess my sins to the Lord, I do it sometimes with tears, and mostly just with a sorry heart and I judge myself as being worthless of this very life. This helps me humble myself and ask God to forgive me. I appeal to His mercy, not to His justice. And after that, peaceful joy enters my heart. I am too unworthy to know where it comes from, but I think it's better than wondering whether my sins were forgiven.

Another question is, how should that confession be done? In front of as many christians as possible? At home? To a priest?