Time Bomb

Time Bomb

By Grant Gaines

Starting on September 7, 1940, Hitler and Nazi Germany began a four year “blitzkrieg” campaign of London. A “blitzkrieg” was a quick-strike military tactic employed by the Germans during WWII in which they would send air raids to bomb certain key cities in a concentrated fashion. The goals of these blitzkriegs were to destroy industrial factories and completely smother a country’s moral.

To say that Germany accomplished these goals in London would be an understatement of epic proportions. For 57 consecutive nights following September 7, 1940, the Germans bombed London. Over the next eight months the capital was bombed 70 more times. Night after night after night of living in fear took its toll on Brittan as you could likely imagine.

If you fast forward four years later to when Germany surrendered to the allies, Brittan had been bombed by more than 30,000 tons of explosives on the nation’s capital¹. But not all 30,000 tons of bombs actually exploded during the war. Archeologist, engineers, and construction workers are still uncovering multiple unexploded bombs every year in London. To make matters even worse, these bombs are rarely found in an open field but rather under many layers of soil in a crowded part of London.

If the authorities aren’t careful to safely extract these explosives, the bombs have the potential to kill thousands of people and destroy the capital’s infrastructure. We’re 70+ years removed from when these bombs were first dropped and yet, they’re still wreaking havoc on London.

This perfectly illustrates what happens in our own lives when we fail to confess our sins. We can bury our past mistakes and even forget about them for a season of our lives but if we fail to call a spade a spade and sin a sin by confessing it to the Lord and to others, they will eventually ruin our lives.

This idea of confession is one of the most often written about subjects in the Bible and yet it is one of the least practiced spiritual disciplines by God’s children today. Do you know why? One little four lettered word-F-E-A-R.

When people ask us how we are doing, the fear of having our sins exposed causes us to live a lie by putting up an “everything-is-going-fine” front while in reality, we are dying a slow spiritual death behind the scenes because of our unconfessed sins. Fear tells us that God won’t forgive us even though 1 John 1:9 (NIV) tells us that, “If we confess our sins [God] is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Fear tells us that others won’t accept us when we tell them our junk even though 1 John 1:6-7 (NIV) says of true, godly community that, “If we claim to have fellowship with [God] and yet walk in the darkness [by hiding our sins], we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light [by making our sins known], as He is in the light, we have fellowship with [other believers], and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” All this fear does is kill, steal, and destroy the abundant life that our loving and merciful Father has in store for us (John 10:10).

John 3:19-20 (NIV, bold mine) conveys this exact same message when Christ tells us, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”

Do you remember the first thing Adam and Eve did when they sinned in the Garden of Eden way back in Genesis 3? “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7, NIV). What’s interesting is that the very last verse in Genesis 2 said, “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25, NIV). No sin, no clothes, no shame. Know sin, new clothes, covering shame. That’s what fear does.

God wants you to be free from your sin and shame. He doesn’t want you to stop your harmful pattern of sinning because He needs your tithe, your prayers, or your evangelistic efforts to advance His kingdom. Luke 19:40 (NIV) tells us that, “…if [we] keep quiet, the stones will cry out,” telling the testimony of our God. He doesn’t need you. He loves you.

He loves you so much that He wants to rid you of anything that could harm you. Just like a good doctor, our Good Physician wants us to allow Him to inspect and treat every inch of our souls. If He finds a splinter, He’s going to pull it out. If He finds a blocked valve in our hearts, He’s going to do open heart surgery because that’s what’s best for us in the long run.

Do any of those treatments feel good the moment the foreign object is being removed? No way! But does your body function better when you are free from something that is harming it? Absolutely. David put it this way when talking about concealing his sins for an extended period of time in Psalms 32:3 (NIV),”When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” Sin not only harms us the moment we commit it, it eats away at our body, spirit, and soul as long as we try to conceal it.

So what does the Good Doctor prescribe as our treatment from these harmful sins that plague our lives? First, confess our sins to the Lord (1 John 1:9). God already knows our sins but He wants us to acknowledge our wrongdoing before He can heal us. The act of confession simply brings our sins into the light. It’s as if a little child brings a broken toy to his father to fix it. Unless the child hands the toy over, it will remain broken and useless. But as soon as the toy is handed into the father’s hands, the dad is able to restore the toy to a brand-new state.

After confessing our sins to God, James 5:16 (NIV) tells us that we should confess our sins to others-“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

Can a friend, family member, or a priest forgive your sins? No, only God can. But the Lord desires us to bring our sins into the light so that fellow believers can come along side us and pray that we would find victory over those sins in the future.

Isn’t it time you handed your junk over to God? Haven’t you been laboring around with the weight of your sin for far too long? God knows and has already paid for your sins when He sent His Son Jesus to die for you so that you could live in freedom from a bondage to shame and guilt. Let today be the day that you give God your sin.

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©Grant Gaines 2013