Hide or Confess?

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. 

Psalm 32:5

John Ortberg tells a story from his spiritual mentor, Dallas Willard. Willard's two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, Larissa, was playing in the backyard, and she discovered how to make mud, which she called warm chocolate. It didn't take long until she was covered in mud, and Larissa's grandmother, who was in the backyard reading with her seat turned away from Larissa, discovered her, cleaned her up, and said, "Now, Larissa, no more of that." She then turned her chair to face Larissa.

Pretty soon the two-and-a-half year old went back to the warm chocolate factory, but making eye contact with her grandmother said, "Don't look at me, Nana. Okay?" Nana, who was a little bit codependent, agreed.

Three times as the little girl was playing in the mud, she said, "Don't look at me, Nana. Okay?" Willard writes, "Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is for us that we be unobserved in our wrong." We hide.

Tradition says David wrote this psalm after his great sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah. He went into hiding. He tried, in the words of this psalm, to cover himself, to pretend and to live in hypocrisy.

Ortberg says this may be one of our most common prayers, one of our least acknowledged prayers, one that we may not even be aware of when we speak it. Don't look at me, God. Okay? This is the dynamic of the spiritual life: Sinners sin. Sinners hide. We try to cover ourselves.

We use various methods, tools, tricks, and devices to cover up our sin. David used deception. Remember the story of David and Bathsheba? She became pregnant, and he tried to cover it up. He brought her husband home from the war and tried to get them to spend time together. It didn't work. We trick; we spin; we deceive:

Sometimes we cover up our sin by simply ignoring it, out of sight, out of mind. Maybe this was the dynamic with Peter. Peter denied his Lord, Jesus. Then Jesus rose from the dead. But apparently, things weren't right. There wasn't any reconciliation. What did Peter do? He returned to his old occupation of fishing. We don't know his motive, but perhaps what was driving him was a desire to get back to the mundane.

We use various methods to do that hiding. Scripture teaches that when we try to cover our own sins, God's hand falls heavy upon us. When we try to mask our own sin, we groan, we fade, we bake in the heat of discipline. Consider verses 3 and 4: "For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up[b] as by the heat of summer. David is saying: My moisture was evaporated. I became desiccated. I'm like a raisin. I have no strength. I'm fading away. David is describing the physiological response our bodies have to a troubled conscience. Your mind spins; your stomach churns.

Isn't there a better alternative? Is this the way we want to live our lives? We can try to cover our own sins, or we can confess as David did. In Psalm 32:5 David says, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

We acknowledge. We respond in transparency. We respond in non-hypocrisy. We confess: "Lord, I've done wrong. I've broken your holy laws. I made an idol of my money. I have committed adultery in my mind or with my body. I have cheated. I have stolen things that don't belong to me. I have criticized. I have ruined the unity of the Body. I have sinned. I did it."

Dear Friends, all sins are committed against God. If you are at war with a stronger opponent, if you have created enmity with a more powerful foe, it is natural to fear. When we fear, it's natural to hide.

This Lenten Season let's come out of our hiding place and be covered with the blessedness that god is willing to provide when we confess our sins before him.

God bless you