Learning That Revealing Is the Beginning of Healing

In review of James 5:16a it says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed”

Bottom Line:

Admit your faults to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Prayer is powerful and effective.

What this means to me:

I am to admit my faults to others close to me and we are to pray for each other so that we may be healed. Prayer is powerful and effective, it can help out a lot

Today's passage comes from the last part of James chapter 5. James is telling us of the power of prayer.  He says, if we are suffering hardships, we should pray. If we are happy we should sing praises. If we are sick, we should call upon the elders and others to pray for us. We should confess our sins to each other and pray for each other to be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

The first part of this verse emphasizes confession to others, thus revealing my feelings is the beginning of healing.

This verse reminds me, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16a NIV). Being forgiven is one thing (and the first step), but being emotionally healed is something different.

If I just want to be forgiven, I just confess my sin to God. But if I want to get over this and get on with my life, I need emotional healing. That means I need to tell somebody else.

So why would God want me to drag somebody else into this?” I think it's because God knows that the root of my problem is relational. I don’t even realize that. My messed-up relationships with other people are the root of my problems.

If I don’t have one person in my life that I can be completely honest with, I’ll end up wearing a mask. I pretend and fake it, thus being dishonest with each other and playing games like a  hypocrite. I pretend that I have it all together, when everybody knows I don’t. I act like it’s all right when it’s not.

What does that do? It isolates me from other people. It prevents intimacy. And it keeps me from the deepest level of love. I cannot love fully with guilt in my heart.

I’m only as sick as my secrets. The fact is, the more I hide, the sicker i get. On the other hand, revealing my feeling is the beginning of healing. When I find someone that I can trust and who listens to and shares with me, I’ll actually find out that they’ve got big problems, too and it could even be the the same as mine.

This past weekend, my pastor was speaking about this verse. Seems there is something about telling another person that uncorks the pressure valve. When I let the boogeyman out of the closet, all of a sudden, the boogeyman isn’t so big any more.

In order to obtain healing, I’ve got to stop concealing. The very thing that I don’t want anybody to know about, that’s the area where God wants to give me the most grace, mercy, and healing.

Given this, it seems my next hurdle would be to find someone that I can meet with and confide in, perhaps one that would trust me to do the same for them.