THE LOST ART OF RELATIONSHIP
Confession Is Critical
“But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” ( John 1:9)
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” (Jas. 5:16)
Rebuilding a relationship begins with confession. If I am the deceiver, I first need to confess my sins and the lies I told to God (1 John 1:9). He already knows they are not true. He just wants me to acknowledge that fact. When I present my faults to Him and ask Him for strength to tell the truth, it helps me to keep my focus on bolstering the relationship and not setting it up for failure through deception.
Next, I need to confess to the one I wronged. My goal here is to acknowl- edge my weakness and lovingly tell the truth. Confessing to one another helps to foster healing in our spirit and emotions, and it allows for openness in the relationship. It should end by praying together to ask God to mend the relation- ship and to avoid any future dishonesty or deception. Through prayer for each other, we will see amazing results in our relationships (Jas. 5:16).
If you’ll remember something we learned in chapter 20,
The “Principle of Structural Integrity”—that is, the ability to hold something together under its own weight and whatever load is placed in or on it. Instead of spaghetti, tape, and string though, we use trust, vulnerability, love, hope, support, respect, honesty, forgiveness, gratitude, good communication, connec- tion, purpose, authenticity, and a host of others things as the relational building blocks for long-lasting relationships.
_These lifetime relationships are the kind that the Great Architect, God Himself, intends for us to have. His purpose in creating us is to be in a relationship with us and us with each other. If you desire a strong, structurally-sound relationship with anyone, it has to be built using these characteristics so that it can hold together and withstand whatever load is placed upon it, whether externally or emotionally.
Confession becomes the weight you place on the structure. And the relationship is as only as strong as the structure it is built upon. The good news about a relationship with God is that he already built the structure that can withstand any confession we have. Through Jesus and his death on the cross and