I’M SAVED, NOW WHAT? (part-58)

I’M SAVED, NOW WHAT?

RELATIONSHIPS (continued)

In the verse James 5:16, we are given two more
instructions for our relationships with other believers.

The first one is to ‘confess our sins to each other’.
    Satan will use several of his techniques to discourage us
    from confessing our sins to each other.

    He will convince us to allow our personal feelings of pride
    and embarrassment to convince us that we should never
    confess our sins to others.

    He will use our capacity for reasoning to convince us that if we
    confess our sins to other believers, they will turn it into gossip.

    And lastly, he will convince us to ignore the scriptures and
    remain confident that confessing to God is good enough.

    So what could possibly be the benefits of confessing our sins to
    other believers? For one thing, it means that we will have to be
    accountable to someone. It may be easy for a believer to confess
    their sins and ask for forgiveness from an unseen God, but
    having to admit our failures to another ‘seen’ person is more
    difficult. Whenever we have an accountability partner who we
    know will ask us specific questions regarding our weak areas,
    we will be less likely to give in to temptations as easily.

    Now, one question we might ask is, “Does this mean we should
    confess our sins to all our fellow Christians?” That is not the
    intent of the verse in James. He is encouraging us to have an
    accountability partner. Our ‘partner’ needs to be someone with
    understanding, who can express love, who is not judgmental
    and who can be trusted.

    You probably noticed that James said for us to confess our sins
    to ‘each other’. That means it is not a one way confession; both
    accountability partners need to confess. We can be clever enough
    to try and keep the focus on the other person as much as possible,
    but if we do, we are missing the mark of complying with this
    instruction from James – we need to confess as well.

    The next question we might ask is, “Should I confess all the
    details of my sins?” The answer is: including all the details
    is not necessary. For instance if you have a struggle with lying,
    it’s important to confess that you have lied since the last time
    you met with your ‘partner’, but it is not as important to tell
    them how many lies you have told and the details of each one.

The second instruction that James
gives us is to “pray for each other”.
    This is one of the reasons we need to confess our sins to
    other believers – so they will know what to pray for on our
    behalf. Some things others need to pray about like sickness,
    job loss, or some tragedy can be obvious, but chances are they
    will not know to pray about the areas where we are weak and
    susceptible to temptations, unless we tell them.

    James says when we pray for each other, we can be healed.
    What does he mean? He could mean that relationships
    between two believers can be healed. It is difficult to remain
    angry with someone when you are praying for them. Likewise,
    it is difficult to remain hurt over the way another believer has
    treated you if you are praying for them.

    He could also mean that when we pray for others, it is good for
    our physical and spiritual health. Praying for others is also an
    indication that we are showing humility as we focus on others
    instead of selfishly being concerned only about ourselves.

    There is one other consideration regarding James 5:16. He says
    that the prayers of a ‘righteous’ person are powerful and effective.
    Does that mean that when our prayers are not answered, it is a sign
    that our righteousness is in question? Not necessarily. As mentioned
    earlier, God may not answer our prayers in the way we hoped for,
    but it doesn’t mean He didn’t answer our prayers.

    Since James is talking about relationships with other believers, he
    may mean that whenever we pray for others, we can see positive
    results, as our relationship with them improves. Of course there
    are also times whenever we see the Lord answering our prayers
    when a situation appears to be hopeless. We can see miracles
    throughout God’s Word, so we should never underestimate
    the power of prayer.

In summary,
– we need to pray for each other (our class is doing that each week;
  we need to always contact the person we are assigned to pray for
  in order to find out if they have and special requests);
– we need to consider having an accountability partner;
– we need to have a trustworthy friend for confessing our sins;
– we need to realize (and never forget) the power of prayer
  (we have seen answered prayers many times in our class).

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