Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed James 5:16

Sometimes honest confession can seem shocking, impossible, and dangerous. Because we have learned silence so well, we experience honesty as full ofrisk. After all, if we're honest, then other people will know what we think and feel. We'll be exposed. The appearance of strength and competence we work so hard to develop will have to share the spotlight with our weaknesses,
our failings, our sins.

When we practice honesty as a daily discipline, however, something happens to us. The promise of this text begins gradually to grow in our lives. We begin to heal. It is not a dramatic, once-for-all-time, quick-fix kind of healing. Nor is it a private healing, a healing that happens only 'inside' our heads or in secret with God.

Honesty leads to healing because people can now express their love for us in practical ways. Honesty leads to healing because we no longer have topay the high tariffs that pretense demands. We heal because the experience of acceptance counteracts the contempt we so easily heap on ourselves. We heal because we are no longer alone. We heal because we are known and
loved.

Honesty is a discipline with a promise. We will be healed.

Praying that we all learn to be more honest,
Pastor Mike