Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. (James 5:16 NLT) I grew up in a denomination that encouraged weekly 'confession' in a confessional with specific 'penance' being assigned based upon the thing confessed. I don't believe that is what this passage, though. The term 'confess' carries the meaning 'to agree with' or 'to admit'. When one confesses their sin, they are really saying they agree with God's perspective on their actions or behaviors. In other words, we admit we haven't lived according to his standards. We do this simply by acknowledging our wrong behavior with a penitent heart and a willingness to change. Sometimes our battle with a particular sin is kind of ongoing. We struggle to break free from the wrong behavior. For example, if you have been a gossip all your life, relishing all the juic...
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7 NLT) God's peace is no further away than our prayers. When we share our heart with Jesus, acknowledging our failures and opening up to him about more than our 'wants', we will find his peace entering into our troubled spirits afresh each time we spend this time with him. His peace isn't something we 'earn' by reciting various prayers - it is something we experience because we have opened up in honesty to him. We surely will never understand how God can take the most frustrating of circumstances with their jumble of emotions and give us a settle peace deep within. It isn't that we figured out the solution. It isn't that the situation changes. It is that we are changed o...