Worship Forms: Confession
You’ve probably heard “trust the process.” Coaches, politicians, and the C-suite have all employed this phrase to reassure people that an outcome that may seem out of reach can be achieved if they would just submit themselves to a time-tested, proven plan. At City Church we riff on that and say “trust the liturgy.”
Within Christianity there are few topics more misunderstood than worship. It’s understandably overwhelming when you step back and consider what’s happening: finite man communing with the God of the universe. Thankfully we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Throughout Scripture and the history of the church there have been passed down forms of worship that have proven pleasing to God and beneficial to man. These make up the different elements of our worship service’s liturgy.
This month we’re going to explore these different forms of worship to better understand what they are and how they form us as the body of Christ. Our hope is that through this you will grow to “trust the liturgy”—to let it guide you when your heart is so full that you can’t put it into words and when it is so downcast that words fail.
About ten minutes into our Sunday worship service, things shift.
By this point, we’ve spoken God’s word together as he calls us to worship. We’ve sung his praises together, literally. We’ve listened and responded together as his word is read to us and over us. There’s momentum to it—a reliable rhythm that carries us into the experience that is worshiping God as a body.
Then we come to the Confession of Sin, the portion of the service our worship guide calls “An Opportunity to Be Honest with God.” At City Church, we do this as individuals and corporately—together.
Here our worship service is quieter. It’s slower. It can even be a little awkward as the personal and communal get wrapped up in each other: you sitting in silent contemplation of your own sin alongside others doing the same, and then voices join in corporate confession, stumbling a bit as everyone speaks the same words at their own pace and cadence.
It’s a moment in our service that can feel strange, but it’s essential.
Romans 3:23 tells us “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Then, in 1 John 1:8 we are told, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Confession is our opportunity to recognize these hard, human truths. But it doesn’t stop there. Confession isn’t a time to sit and stew in guilt over the laundry list of ways you or we have pushed God away. Something happens.
Our worship guide also says this of our time of confession:
“In confessing our sins, the Holy Spirit reveals those places in our hearts where we are worshiping something other than God. But Jesus, in his goodness, leads us from sorrow over sin to the sweetness of grace and forgiveness.”
During confession, the Holy Spirit—our Helper—shines bright, healthy sunlight on the dark corners of our hearts—not for God to see what’s there but for us to see it and to present it to Him with humility and repentance. It’s a moment of reckoning, a moment of naming: of our sin, of our need for rescue, of the One who took on both and is calling us towards his throne of grace. It’s a time of vulnerability, but a vulnerability that we can enter into with complete confidence because we know how it’s going to end every single time. We know because, as 1 John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Perhaps that’s why our time of confession can feel strange, even beyond the shift we feel in the worship service. When we confess our sins to God, we experience seemingly opposing realities—utter weakness and total assurance—in the same moment, the same breath.
Let’s soak that up. Let’s relish in its strangeness—the quiet and the stumbling of it all as we move through this part of worship together. And as we confess, let’s, as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”
For more on confession…
Read this article by Jamie Smith: The Gift of Confession
Listen to this song from Red Mountain Music: Come Boldly to the Throne of Grace
Listen (or re-listen) to this 2013 sermon from Erik: Have Mercy
Meditate on these passages from Scripture: Psalm 32, Psalm 51, Romans 3:21-26, Hebrews 4, 1 John 1:5-2:6
Introduction written by Harrison Ford. Text written by Val Catrow.