Avoiding the Cancer of Concealed Sin
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.
- James 5:16
Robert
Wood Johnson, former chairman of Johnson & Johnson, had a reputation for
being especially stringent when he inspected his manufacturing plants. One day,
a plant manager got a tip that Johnson was on his way and would arrive at the
plant in 30 minutes.
The
manager hastily had things spruced up by ordering several large rolls of paper
transported to the roof of the building. When Johnson arrived, he was furious.
His first words were, “What in the world is all that junk up there?”
Unbeknownst to the manager, Johnson had arrived by helicopter and landed on the
roof!
Many
times in our lives, we can find ourselves in a similar situation where we feel
the need to clean ourselves up in order to impress someone else. Perhaps we’re
meeting with someone whom we see as “extra spiritual,” so we move some things
around in our lives to make it look like we have it all together.
But
the truth is, when we rearrange our lives to look cleaner, we’re doing nothing
more than concealing the very things that need to be dealt with in our lives.
So instead of hiding the ugliness, find safe people who can help you address
it. Open the doors of those unkempt closets in your life and invite others to
help you clean them out!
Prayer Challenge
Pray
that God would open your eyes to any sin you’ve been concealing so you can deal
with it in a healthy way.
Questions for Thought
Why
do you think it’s so tempting to sweep our sins under the rug so we appear to
have it all together?
Who
is one person you can invite into your life to help you expose those sins and
deal with them in a healthy way?