“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 NIV

I don’t know about you, but this kind of verse and idea would have sent me running for the hills, back in the days of my youth! In fact, running from confession was probably one of the many things that, in the early days of my marriage, made it very messy.

Here’s how it typically went down . . .

Healing Turning Point

God wanted so much more for me in my life and marriage than to pretend that everything was fine when it most definitely was not. Living that way only kept me imprisoned and chained to a self-protective facade, rooted in my sin nature.

You know … the one that Christ set me free from when He saved my soul!

So how exactly does confession bring healing?

The first way to confess your sins to one another is to remove all the hiding, posturing and denial that keep us from owning our sins. It humbles our hearts so that God can reign and rule in our lives, instead of keeping our egos front and center.

The second way God uses confession to heal is through the prayers we lift up for each other. After all, how can we pray for each other, if we never know what to exactly pray for? God works through our humble and honest disclosures to open our hearts like a heart surgeon’s clamp holds the chambers of the heart open so that repairs can be made.

Best of all, you can find this healing for your own life, by simply following the instructions packed inside this powerful verse! I hope you'll join me in running toward healing, instead of away from it, by confessing our sins to one another!

How often do you run toward this confessional path of healing in your life and relationships?