Confessing the Sin of Relationships 🧑🧑🧒🧒
If you Confess, He will Forgive
Once, I heard a great series of talks on love. That day, I went home with a new perspective. Looking around, I noticed I had filled my house with things I love. Like a squirrel with nuts, I’d stuffed it full of items I find lovely. I ask my bride to stack our fridge with what I love—bacon, eggs, and 🍺. (Don’t judge me!) I fill my living room with the toys I love—the leather chair of my dreams, a smart TV, and a table for art and puzzles. I even have rooms for the people I love. For the moment, my kids still live in theirs, and my wife lets me stay in her room most nights. For the loved ones who don’t have a room in my house, I display their pictures on my walls. Look around your house: if you don’t love it, it probably isn’t there. Why collect love? Because when a house is full of love, it becomes a home.
This feeling of “home” makes the song “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros so popular. It goes like this:
Man, oh man, you're my best friend | I scream it to the nothingness | There ain't nothing that I need. | Well, hot and heavy, pumpkin pie | Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ. | Ain't nothing please me more than you
Ah, home, let me go home | Home is wherever I'm with you | Ah, home, let me go home | Home is wherever I'm with you.
Those words strike me, “nothing pleases me more than you.” We’ve all felt this way before—or at least I hope you’ve loved someone that much. But did you catch the idolatry in the song? [Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ | Ain’t nothing please me more than you.] We have a way of idolizing the ones we love. I’ll go further: we even worship the ones we love.
As a pastor, I can tell you that no pastor enjoys quoting Matthew 10. I’ll let The Message paraphrase it for you:
Jesus said, “Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me.”
Even by today’s standards, this is a bold statement. However, in cultures where collectivism is the predominant ideology—like the Ancient Near East—Jesus’s words are even more severe. Let’s simplify it: Jesus teaches that loving Him must come before all else, even family. Choosing to follow Jesus takes precedence over everything, including your blood ties.
How is that possible? I don’t think it’s possible without Jesus introducing Himself to you personally. All are welcome to ask Him now to come into their lives. But for those of us who already believe, may we love nothing—and I mean nothing—more than Christ. Would nothing please me more than Jesus?
Let’s start by confessing our sins. I invite you to use the confession provided below:
Gracious Lord, we confess that we have often placed our love for people and possessions above our love for You. We have made idols of those we cherish and the comforts we hold dear, worshiping the gifts instead of the Giver. We have sought satisfaction in relationships, material things, and fleeting joys, forgetting that only You can fill our deepest needs. Forgive us, Lord, for the ways we have misplaced our devotion. Help us to love You above all else and to find our home in You alone. Teach us to center our hearts and lives on Christ so that nothing pleases us more than to walk in Your presence. In the name of Jesus, who gave everything to make us His, we pray. Amen.
In silence, continue to confess your sins.
Jesus, you hear our prayer and bring us forgiveness on the cross. Lord, we rejoice at your resurrection from the dead and our freedom from sin. We are grateful for your word in 1 John 4:9-10, which assures us of our faith, saying, “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
We praise you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; through faith in Christ, we are saved. Lord, encourage our assurance through our faithfulness to you. And thank you, God, for giving us the Lord’s Prayer, which teaches us how to pray, saying, “Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
Thanks for praying; God Bless You! I hope you’ll read more next Saturday @ 10.