Break Free of Your Secrets

My wife is convinced I'm not good at keeping secrets. The reason is that I'm not very good at keeping secrets.

That's potentially the worst quality I can imagine for a pastor. But let me clarify. I'm not bad at keeping all kinds of secrets. I'm bad at keeping good secrets. Exciting secrets. If you tell me you're having a baby and not to tell anyone, I'm sorry, but I just can't agree to those terms. When my wife Kim was pregnant with our first, she specifically told me not to share the news at the youth pastors' breakfast I was heading to that morning. Three minutes after I arrived, everyone knew.

But the other kind of secret? The ones with shame or guilt attached? Those I can keep. And not just for other people. I can keep my own.

My guess is you can too.

The Weight We Carry

We're deeply motivated to keep those kinds of secrets. It's self-preservation. We don't want the image we've crafted of ourselves to get tarnished in any way.

Social psychology calls this impression management. We feel a strong need to control how other people see us. And even if you'd say, "I don't care what people think of me, I am who I am," you still have to reckon with something called cognitive dissonance. Even if you don't care what others think, you care what you think of you. When we act in ways inconsistent with who we want to be, it's internally uncomfortable. So, we shove things down into the deepest corners of ourselves and lock our lips. because the two options in front of us don't seem all that great.

One: We can tell others and get it off our chest. But then we lose social credibility and ruin the image we've spent years constructing.

Two: We can bury our secrets. But the weight of carrying it eats away at you. It robs your joy. Robs your peace. Leaves you nervous, wondering if anyone is on to you. Feeling like a failure. Feeling fake.

So how do we deal with our secrets?

Psalm 32

I want to take you to Psalm 32, written by King David.

"Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.' And you forgave the guilt of my sin." (Psalm 32:1-5)

Start with verse one: "Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven."

What comes to mind when you think of someone as blessed? Maybe someone with great genetics, perfect skin, or someone who takes expensive holidays. People who always seem to have more than enough. That's a shadow of what the word means.

In Scripture, blessed means fully happy. Happily fulfilled. A sense of profound peace and fulfillment that goes beyond material wealth or favourable circumstances. Who doesn't want that?

People spend their whole lives trying to achieve or buy that kind of happiness. But David tells us how to get there: the person whose transgressions are forgiven is the person who is blessed. Your state of blessedness has more to do with what has happened in you than what has happened to you.

The flip side is also true. The person whose transgressions are not forgiven is not blessed.

Three Kinds of People

In Luke 7, there's a story about Jesus eating dinner at the home of a Pharisee, a religious leader known for being strict, pious, and seemingly having it all together. While they're eating, a woman walks in. The Bible describes her as sinful, likely a prostitute.

She begins to weep at Jesus' feet and wash them with her hair.

The Pharisee is appalled. He thinks to himself, "If Jesus only knew who this woman really was, He wouldn't let her do this." Jesus, knowing his thoughts, tells him a short story:

"Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said. (Luke 7:41-43)

Then Jesus turns to the woman and says, "Your sins are forgiven" (Luke 7:48).

This story reveals at least three kinds of people.

The first kind believes they're basically good and don't need deep forgiveness. This is the Pharisee. There may be some discrepancies in their lives, but nothing serious enough to require radical grace. This is a common posture in our culture. We're the first society in recorded history that lacks consensus on what is right and wrong. There's no shared straight edge to determine up from down.

But just because someone doesn't feel guilty doesn't mean they aren't carrying weight. You may not believe in sin or hell or moral absolutes, but you still have your own standards you've failed to live up to. You still feel something is off. The Pharisee underestimates his transgression and remains unblessed.

The second kind thinks they're too bad to be forgiven. I imagine this group as the sinful woman's friends. The ones who didn't dare go into the Pharisee's house. They look at their past, their decisions, their choices, and decide they're ineligible for grace. The writings on the wall: too far gone, too much damage. This person overestimates their transgression and also remains unblessed. They miss out on the very fulfillment God designed them for.

Then there's the third kind: the woman. The person with deep sorrow for their sin who, instead of letting it keep them away from Jesus, brings it directly to Him. She is forgiven. She is blessed.

Which one do you want to be?

Why Confession Feels So Hard

Verse one of Psalm 32 also says, "Blessed is the one whose sins are covered." David is deliberately echoing Genesis 3 and the story of Adam and Eve.

"Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." (Genesis 3:7)

Sin always has this effect. It makes us want to hide and cover ourselves.

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had an illustration that captures this perfectly. Imagine you're in a room and you see a door with a keyhole. You bend down and look through. On the other side, there are people who don't know you're watching. You can see them, hear them, observe their actions, while remaining completely unseen. You're in the position of power. The unviewed viewer.

Then suddenly you hear a noise behind you. You turn around and realize there's another keyhole on the opposite wall, and someone is watching you. In an instant, the dynamic flips. You're no longer the observer. You're the object. And you don't like it. You can't control how that other person sees you.

That's why confession is so hard. It makes us feel uncovered. 

Like Adam and Eve, we scramble for things to cover ourselves with so people can't see us as we really are, so God can't see us as we really are. And we use our secrets to do it. We hide inside them.

But David says, "Blessed is the one whose sin is covered." He isn't talking about self-covering. He's talking about God'scovering. Truly happy is the person who doesn't have to hide anymore because God has done the covering for them.

At the very heart of God is the desire to forgive you. And that happens through confession.

"Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.' And you forgave the guilt of my sin." (Psalm 32:5)

What Confession Is and Isn't

Confession is the discipline of inviting God's grace into your life.

But here's where some clarity matters. We aren't saved every time we confess. Salvation isn't a status you toggle on and off depending on whether you've recently sinned. It's not a spiritual seesaw where you'd better hope you die in the up position. That's not how salvation in Christ works. It's far more secure than that.

Some Christians live with a permanent sense of guilt. Shame characterizes their faith more than joy or peace or hope. They feel like failures most of the time. If that's you, hear this: your salvation is built on something stronger than your ability to keep it together.

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Jesus has become your covering. You don't need to cover yourself in secrets anymore. You don't need to hide.

"For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." (Colossians 3:3)

So what's the point of confession then?

We practice confession to reconnect with the God who has already forgiven us in Jesus.

A few months ago, my youngest daughter drew on the front of her bedroom door. When I asked her about it, she adamantly denied it. I knew she wasn't telling the truth. Her older sisters confirmed it.

Did she cease being my daughter because she drew on her door? Did I kick her out of the family for hiding the truth? Did I stop loving her, even for a second? Of course not.

A couple of days later, she was getting ready for bed. She started to cry. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "Dad, it was me who drew on the door."

I didn't say, "I knew it, you liar!" I hugged her and said, "I know."

The lie that had been acting as a wedge between us dissolved the moment she confessed. The relationship was already secure. Confession restored intimacy.

That's what confession does with God. The shame we carry, the things we bury, the secrets that convince us we're fake or failures, all of it evaporates when God's grace is present. Plenty of people are saved by God's grace but lack any real sense of intimacy with Him. It's not because God is hiding from you. It's because you've been hiding from Him. Covering yourself with something other than Christ.

How to Actually Do This

So how do you confess? Three movements.

Invite examination. Confession starts by inviting God to look at you. He already sees, but the discipline begins when you say, "Show me. Show me what's there. Show me what needs Your forgiveness and Your healing." This is allowing yourself to be under His gaze on purpose.

Invite sorrow. Not worldly sorrow that pulls you away from God, but godly sorrow that drives you toward Him. If you have kids or work with kids, you know what a forced apology sounds like. Lip service. No real understanding of why it matters. Real confession is different. We ask God to show us how we've hurt others. We put ourselves in their shoes. We ask Him to show us how we've grieved His heart. But we don't stay in sorrow. Confession includes sorrow, but it always ends in joy.

Invite grace. This is the part where you let the grace of God flood your heart. Where sorrow gets replaced with the joy of the Lord. Where you reconnect with the God who has already forgiven you in Christ. This is also where you commit to avoid sin going forward, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Where you long to live holy. Where you want to be ruled by God alone, not by your own desires.

My heart for you is this: that you would reconnect with the God who has already forgiven you in Christ Jesus. That you would sense you are the most blessed person in the world because your sin has been forgiven and covered. That you would throw off the secrets you've been using as a covering and run to God and let Him cover you instead.