Is Confession Good For The Soul?

Confession leads to forgiveness, but what does that look like?  The picture is presented to us in a wonderful way in Psalm 51.  The results of forgiveness are a clean heart, a renewed spirit, a restored relationship with God and the joyful experience of God’s salvation.  God “cleans us up”, makes us “presentable to Him” and “reorients us toward Himself” and helping us to focus on that which is right.  When God forgives us, HE crosses over the deep canyon that separates us from Him.  When you put all of this together~~there is much cause to be joyful!  Forgiveness is truly more than a theological principle…it makes our salvation a very personal experience with Almighty God, Creator of all things!  It takes all the wrong things in our life and makes them right in our Father’s eyes.

Psalm 51: 10-17

10)* Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. **11) Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. ***12) Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13) Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. ****14) Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15)  O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.  16)  For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. *****17)  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

~references from Psalm 51 and other Scriptures of importance~

* Ezekiel 18:31

  “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel?”

**Luke 11:13

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

***2 Corinthians 12-18

 “Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains , because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit”

**** Ezekiel 33:8

 “If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.”

***** Psalm 34:18

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Isaiah 57:15
“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.'”
Isaiah 66:2
 “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

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To me joy is an honest Spirit-filled overwhelming awareness of the grace of God in my life.