The regular rhythm that keeps us ‘in sync’ with God

Each month on Salvos Online, Rosy, the Territorial Secretary for Spiritual Life Development, shares her thoughts and reflections on the spiritual issues that shape our lives as Christians, exploring how our faith intersects with our everyday experiences and how we can deepen our relationship with God.

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One of my earliest memories of confession and repentance was around the age of 13. I wouldn’t have known the fancy words for it; I just knew that I was so jealous of my friend Sophie.

She’d joined my class halfway through the school year when we were only 11 years old, and she brought with her a bright personality and a mass of curly blonde hair. 

Everyone loved Sophie. The boys I liked liked her, and the girls who were my friends all wanted to be friends with her. For the next few years, I quietly seethed with jealousy. Years later, when we had moved on to high school, I saw her in the driveway one day and surprised myself by being compelled to tell her that I was sorry.

“What for?” she asked.

“For always having been jealous of you,” I replied. She laughed in disbelief, and something literally left my shoulders and flew into the sky. It was like something that had clung to me had finally been released. As I let it go, it let go of me.

While it’s easy to look at stories like this, of minor confessions or inconveniences, and tell them as vignettes of our former selves (“Oh, but I am so much better now!”), confession and repentance are meant to be part of our daily rhythm of life, from the seemingly shallow issues to the serious.

Just as bathing daily and cleansing ourselves from material dirt, confession and repentance can be seen as a cleansing from spiritual dirt. But it is also a practice many of us as Western Christians are unfamiliar with, and perhaps even some see it as – dare I say it – quaint?

While the Catholic tradition has confessional boxes and a culture of repentance (“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned …”), my own Baptist and Salvationist Christian experience mirrored no such modelled vulnerability or regular practice.

But I know we could all probably write endless paragraphs on cover-up culture, painful betrayals of confidences and outright discouragement after bouts of vulnerability. Satan is the father of lies, after all, and we have all had disappointing experiences of being in a Christian community that lacked transparency or perhaps caused us unintended/untended wounds. But trying and failing to live authentic, loving Christian lives doesn’t excuse us from trying again. In fact, we must – always and daily.

“Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:14-15).

“Confession and repentance are not optional. They are a required practice in keeping our spirits attuned to God’s presence and in sync with God’s community.”

Sin can grow in the dark like mushrooms, and we can acclimatise to filth. It’s not until the curtains are drawn back that the sunlight comes in. Eyeglasses often get so dirty that we aren’t aware of it until we clean them. Our spiritual eyesight can degrade more than we realise until we visit the optometrist, get a new prescription, and declare, “I can finally see!”

I am in a small group affectionately called ‘Brengle Book Club’, where four of us meet weekly to read a chapter or two of Army theologian Samuel Logan Brengle’s reflections on holiness, pray and disciple one another. 

As we’ve grown more and more together with our vulnerable, committed community and pursuit of holiness, confession and repentance have now become an (initially unexpected) natural part of our rhythm. 

Holiness can be a word that is easily discredited. 

The main phrase I hear when mentioning the word holiness is ‘holier than thou’. Holiness can be seen as personal piety that self-righteously lords itself over others. But true holiness is holier with thou. It is holiness both imparted by God and formed by living in community, marked by loving selflessness, and the righteousness of the Lord being refined through authentic, vulnerable living with and serving of others. It is a true gift.

When we confess and repent, two of the tools of holiness, it is a stripping off of religious armour and self-justification. It’s a nakedness before the Lord and others. It means relinquishing self-reliance and asking to be embraced by the community – to be seen, forgiven and loved. What a blessing.

David took off the armour of Saul before he fought Goliath. His age wasn’t what qualified (or disqualified!) him, but his obedience. Saul’s armour would have had the royal emblems and jewels and the heft of the throne behind it. This is the man the king has endorsed! But if we are to do as God asks, it requires us to take off all other justifications, qualifications, and affiliations to embrace our frailty and ask God to cover the shortfall. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

But beware of your own flesh-coloured armour!

We can so easily trick ourselves and others into thinking our curated confessions, or half-truths, or self-love cover what others can’t see. “I am naked and unashamed,” we say. But we’ve camouflaged the armour we still wear to make others believe we are vulnerable, because we are afraid of being seen. True intimacy with God and others requires trust and vulnerability. Vulnus is the Latin root, literally meaning “wound.”

“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38–39).

If you’ve never tried confession (Here in this area of my life/living is where the Spirit has convicted me. Here is where I know I have done wrong in your eyes, O God, and in community, to you my friend/enemy) and repentance (Forgive me, Lord, for my sin against you. Thank you for your grace. Will you forgive me, those I have wronged. Let me make right, be renewed and not sin against you again), then I encourage you to find two or three others and make it a regular practice. This is what will strengthen the body and bring revival.

A wound heals from within, by being exposed to the light, tended to and bound up again for healing. Perhaps this is where the title of Christ as the Great Physician becomes reality for our Christian experience:

“And Jesus answering said unto them, ‘They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:31-32 KJV).

Will you allow the Lord even there, friend?

As you let it go, it will let you go.

We belong together. 

And we are holier with thou.