Confess Your Faults
James 5:16
What is the spirit of "confessing our faults one to another"? It is not confessing faults like men do to a so-called earthly priest. One, it is a spirit which believes our Lord is our only Righteousness. Two, it is a spirit which confesses our sins and our own inabilities: I can not turn you in the heart from your sin or from bodily sickness but need to be healed of the Lord myself. Thirdly, it is submission to one another, acknowledging not one of us is different from our brethren but we are sinners saved by grace. We could pray for one another but if our hearts are double minded rather than believing, if we do not confess our need for God to forgive us, for others to forgive us and we have no spirit of forgiveness toward others, then we have not the Spirit of God. God will not hear. Prayer is effectual and fervent when it is worked in you by the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit also makes intercession for us, and when Christ Jesus our Advocate with the Father intercedes for us (Hebrews 13:21; Romans 8:26; 1 John 2:1; Hebrews 7:25).