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?