Pray, Sing, Confess

"Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. [...] Therefore confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed."
James 5:13,16

There are three cornerstones of a strong Christian faith and all of them have to do with community. Community with God and community with our brothers and sisters in Christ. James tells us of two things that will help us overcome anything and one base act "so that [we] may be healed," (verse 16). 

Praying. What exactly is praying? A lot people see it a lot of different ways. A plea, request, reminder, list, conversation. I don't see it like anything 100%, but I do gravitate towards one way that I learned while reading through Acts. In chapter 28 of Acts, verse 8, we're told that Paul went into a room to see a man who was sick. It says, "Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him." Paul prayed before he did anything. I see prayer as a preemptive strike against Satan. If our prayer lives are strong, then we're in constant communication with God. We're able to recognize Him in a much easier way than if we spend time away from Him. Imagine your best friend's voice. Is their any doubt in your mind over what it sounds like? I'd imagine not because you talk to them so much that their voice is unmistakable. That's what we're doing with prayer. We're becoming familiar with God so that when Satan comes to tell us a lie (or as I learned from The Screwtape Letters, to withhold the truth from us) we are able to easily pick out God's voice. We're able to stop hearing lies and start hearing only God's truth. All that from a strong prayer life.

When my mom was our youth leader, she had us play a game where we broke up into partners. One partner was blindfolded. That partner had to navigate through an obstacle course listening only to the voice of their partner telling them where to turn and walk and step over and whatever else. The trick is that the rest of the youth group was also shouting, so you had to focus on your own partner's voice. While it was fun, it came with a message. The rest of the world is going to be shouting at us. They want us to buy into the philosophy of aborting our children and saving the trees (N.B. I don't think saving the trees is a horrible idea. I do think it's horrible that people are focused on the lives of trees and not babies). The more we talk to God, the easier it will be to hear the Voice of Truth over the chorus of lies. Praying puts us in an intimate relationship with God.

Sing. This is one is easier for me. Let me start by saying I am not a good singer. But thankfully for me, we're instructed to "Make a joyful noise to the Lord," (Psalm 108:4). While I might harm the ears of those who have the misfortune of standing near me during worship, I do not struggle to raise a joyful noise! I'm able to lose myself in music unlike anything else. I was talking to a woman on Carson Newman's campus (Jennifer Catlett) and she told me a fact I did not know about music. I told her that music really helps me relax and breathe when everything seems so constricting. She told me that our brain stores 80% of a song unconsciously. That's why it's so easy for us to remember songs; our brain works extra hard to retain them! I consider worship a lyrical prayer. And one of my favorite things about worship is that it can be done alone and it can be done with many thousands of people (I've done both). When we feed our spirits with singing, they tend to grow. I hope that's not a shocking fact. When we feed something, it grows. Not only do our spirits grow, but when we worship and sing with other people they see a very intimate part of us. We open ourselves in a very unique way when we sing to our God. Worshiping puts us in an intimate relationship with God as well as our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Confession. This is a very uncomfortable aspect of Christian faith. I don't think I've ever met anyone who likes to talk about what they do wrong. There is one person I know who isn't scared to tell people what he does wrong but he certainly isn't comfortable doing it. He does it in order to help others. But what does the Bible have to say about confession? "What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs," (Luke 12:3). What we try our hardest to keep private will be known to all one day. 

This week I went for a run on something ROTC has coined the "Cow Route". The route is just over 3 miles long. I love it. It's got some beautiful fields along it, some massive hills, and it's simple. While I was running, I had music going (as I always do). This particular run, Rooftops by Jesus Culture came on. This is a song I've heard easily hundreds of times. It's pretty much a staple at any modern worship night, and for good reasons. The first hundreds of times I heard this song, I thought it was about proclaiming our love for Christ for all to hear, and that is definitely a large part of the song. It says, "So I shout out Your Name, from the rooftops I proclaim that I am Yours." No matter which way you slice that, it's powerful. But I always missed the next line and the next line hit me like a Mack truck on that run. "All that I am, I place into Your loving hands." Simple and at first glance for me pretty basic. But how wrong I was. "All that I am, I place into Your loving hands." What does that mean? That means our strengths and our weaknesses we hand over to God for Him to use as He pleases. All that I am. I realized for the first time in my Christian walk that I need to give God everything! And shout from the rooftops that I've done it! This message will reach God and it will reach everyone else. "Jesus! I am Yours! All of me! My lying, gossiping, jealous, mean, sarcastic, joyful, (hopefully) funny, people-loving self is all Yours!" What will it be like when we finally give God everything instead of just our great things? And perhaps the best part of it is that we're putting them into loving hands. We give God our worst and He absolutely loves and adores it. Yeah, God can use a good speaker to affect someone's life. But God can also use a drug addict to do the same. Give him everything! Confess what we've done wrong and let God use that. Once we confess, we can be healed. Confession to God and to others puts us in an intimate relationship with God and our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Pray, sing, confess. I'm here to argue that there is not a better way to become so close with God and our fellow Christians. Complete honesty and genuineness in these three acts will take us to new heights in our walk with Christ.