For 33 years my mother ran a daycare out of our home. I’ve gotten many good belly laughs over the years at her stories of the antics of the hundreds of kids she has worked with. One of my favorite involves a girl who had made the decision that she was never going to be potty trained by her parents, my mother, or anyone else. She was starting to push four years old and still refused to use the toilet out of sheer stubbornness. After an “accident” one day my mom, whose frustration beginning to bubble like Mt. Vesuvius, informed this girl that you really can’t call something an accident when you are choosing to do it over and over again. When the girl’s mother arrived that evening she asked her daughter if she’d had any accidents that day. The girl, remembering her stern talking to earlier, responded, “well, it wasn’t really an accident, but it sure was a mistake!”
Like this little girl we tend to work quite hard to shirk our responsibilities in life, claiming that we are the victims of circumstances, stress, the faults of others, etc. We really don’t want to ever admit that we truly do make mistakes. But, guess what? If you are breathing you are making mistakes. If you are alive you are making errors in judgment, doing things incorrectly, and doing numerous things every day that, like it or not, are sinful. 1 John 1:8-9 lays this out remarkably clearly: “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” See, the question is not whether or not you’ve messed up in life, the question is this: what are you doing to address the mistakes of your life?
Guys, we need to start taking ownership of the sins we commit on a daily basis. Confessing our sins should never be relegated merely to revivals, big events, and alter calls, but should be a daily part of our lives. I would challenge you to commit to setting aside five minutes a day to reflect on the sins you’ve committed that day, confess them to God, ask for forgiveness, and to make a plan to not repeat them tomorrow. We are going to make mistakes, so we need to take the only action possible: confessing our sins and letting Jesus “cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
