When things happen to us or in our lives that we perceive to be bad, we often blame God, as if He made it happen. We do this to avoid taking personal responsibility for our own actions and choices. (Now this is not to say that bad things do not happen in our lives that are completely out of our control, because they do.) But most of the time those hardships are really a blessing if we only open ourselves up to the possibilities of what God can do with our hardships. All throughout the Bible God used less than perfect or broken people to do his work, and he is still doing it. I recently started reading a book that describes life like a puzzle with out a box, so we can’t see the full picture. I think that is a rather accurate analogy. We can only see so far down the road so we have no way of knowing who or what our hardships will affect, or how our reaction to them will be perceived by others. Someone is always watching, even when We don’t think so. So when we deflect and deny to avoid responsibility for our own actions we are not only hurting ourselves, but we are also hurting those watching us, for what lessons are they receiving? We try to teach our children to be forthcoming with us when they make mistakes, and we justify that request with the idea that consequences aren’t as bad if they are just honest about what they’ve done and confess.
Confess, now there is a word that is hard to swallow sometimes. Why do we think we can hide our wrongdoings from God? Much like a parent asking their child a question for which they already know the answer, He knows before we ever speak. So why then must we confess if he already knows? It certainly is not for God’s benefit. Again like a parent with a child we ask the question even though we know the answer because we want to see if the child will be Honest, because if we are not honest then we will not learn. Therefore the confession is for ourselves, it is how we own our mistakes and accept responsibility for our own choices and actions.
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