Hidden Sin

"Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” - James 5:16

While working a landscaping job in college, I got a splinter in my finger that I neglected for too long. I barely noticed its presence at first, but it soon became infected, and started sending shooting pains up my arm. Naturally, I ignored it. The splinter was so embedded in my finger that I saw no way to remove it and besides, I had other things to worry about. Days passed and the pains grew worse and worse until I could not use my hand. If I even lowered my hand to my side, the ballooning pressure incapacitated me.

I was completely useless at work and finally drove myself to the ER, holding one throbbing hand in the air. I rocked back and forth in the waiting room to relieve my pain, bitterly embarrassed that a tiny splinter had taken me down. Thanks to a long needle, a nurse relieved the unbearable pressure in a matter of seconds, but one of my fingernails is deformed to this day.

This humiliating experience reminds me a lot of a more recent one, where I finally confessed a sin to a close friend. It took everything in me to share my struggle and ask for prayer. But the sin had festered in secret for too long and it was affecting me to the same point as my infected splinter. What had begun as small and insignificant had swelled into something all consuming. As soon as I shared it, the pressure in my heart went away and I felt like I could finally breathe again.

The command in James 5:16, "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed," is an often overlooked part of Christian fellowship, but it gives us a practical way to cut the legs out from under our sin. It allows us to hold each other before the Lord as believers and grow closer to Him and each other, while practicing unified holiness. And the best news is, whatever sin we may confess, God will forgive us instantly, every time.