(This post is being shared from my Substack weekly devotional series on prayer. Each week I send out a weekly devotional for those who are subscribed to my Substack. It’s free and goes to directly to your email inbox. You can subscribe to my Substack here.)

There are two main things I automatically think of that can stop us from confessing our sins. Pride or shame. Even a combination of the two can come into play at times. Pride says I’m really not that bad so I don’t need to confess. Shame says I am so bad that if I confess then I will be rejected. Both are lies the enemy loves to get us to believe so we stay in our sin and never find healing.

What happens when we don’t confess our sin? In Psalm 32 we can see how it affected David when we kept silent about his sin.

“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 as by the heat of summer.” (Psalm 32:4)

When we keep silent about our sin it “eats us alive.” As believers it grieves the Holy Spirit who dwells within us when we sin and keep silent. (Ephesians 4:30) We cannot fulfill God’s plan and purpose for our life when we are harboring unconfessed sin. Unconfessed sin affects our relationship with the Lord and with those around us.

But what happens when we confess our sins? Again, in Psalm 32 we can see what happened when David confessed.

“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)

When we confess God says he will forgive us! 1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” There may still be natural consequences of sinful choices we made but we are forgiven and God cleanses us from all unrighteousness. We can have life in our bones again and be able to fulfill God’s purpose and plan for our life. Our relationship with him will be close and those he has placed around us will benefit from our obedience to him.

Along with confessing our sins to God there is another aspect of confession that we need to take notice of and that is confessing our sins to one another as well. It’s one thing to confess our sins to God, which is great and we need to do. It’s a whole other thing to confess our sins to our fellow believers. This is where pride and/or shame is revealed in our hearts.

But there is a reason for us to confess our sins not just to God but also to one another. In James 5:16 we see that confessing our sins to one another brings healing. When we confess our sins to other believers that is when true healing can take place. When we hide our sin from others this allows the enemy to keep his power over us. But when we confess those things to God he forgives us and then when we confess them to other believers they are brought into the light and the enemy no longer holds any power over us.

I know this has been my own experience in my own life. Shame kept me hiding my sin for a very long time. I confessed it to the Lord often but never talked to anyone else about it which kept me in a vicious cycle. But once I obeyed the Holy Spirit and confessed my sin to other believers that is when the healing and growth started happening. The enemy no longer held any power over me.

It can be a scary thing but I promise once you take that step of obedience you will see how healing it is.

(I do want to add that it is extremely important to make sure you have safe believers you can confess to. Sadly there are people even within the Christian community who are not safe to share these things with. Make sure those you choose to share with people are safe and mature in their faith.)

Here are some Bible passages that are different prayers of confession. (Note that Daniel 9 is a prayer of confession for others and Ezra 9 becomes a corporate prayer of confession.)

Psalm 51

Daniel 9:3-23

Psalm 32

Ezra 9:5-10:1

Psalm 139

1 John 1:9

Luke 18:13