David: Karen, I’m not sure my observations are accurate, but a topic that’s not preached about all that much is sin.

Karen: Sin.

David: Can you recall hearing a sermon about sin recently?

Karen: Well, I grew up in a church that pretty much covered sin every Sunday morning. This is sort of an adjustment to positive theology.

David: Maybe people don’t sin as much as they used to and it’s not as relevant.

Karen: I don’t think that’s the problem.

David: Well, this time together I would like to talk about a specific category of sins and not to make people feel uncomfortable, but rather to be of help if this sin is one with which they struggle. Sound okay?

Karen: Sounds good.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David at Karen Mains.

David: Secret sins. That’s the category to which I was referring. Karen, who are biblical characters you think of when I say secret sins?

Karen: Well, sort of the big guy is King David. I mean, he was an extraordinary biblical character, a poet and a musician and a warrior and a leader of men. You know, an extraordinary story. I don’t know why there hadn’t been more movies made on the life of David, but he lusted in his heart after someone else’s wife and took her to bed with him and that caused him all kinds of problems because then he had to get rid of the husband who had come from war, not had conjugal rights with his wife, but she became pregnant. And so David then had to cover that. The husband was killed in battle because David commanded that the troops would withdraw from him in battle and leave him alone. So, well, quite a lot of secret sins going on there.

David: They profoundly affected his life and eventually the Prophet Nathan had to come and say.

Karen: “You’re the guilty party.”

David: Yeah, you’re the guilty party. Totally different type of thing, but I think back in the book of Genesis, Karen, the story of Joseph, a wonderful biblical character, but as a young brother, he was sold by his other brothers as a slave into Egypt. Actually, the brothers had wanted to kill him.

Karen: They were planning to murder him. Weren’t they the sons of one wife?

David: Several wives, yeah.

Karen: Several wives. This was the youngest son of their father’s favorite wife, but he was also in his old age when this young boy was born. So you can see how the jealousy lines up there.

David: Those brothers carried that secret sin in their lives for years.

Karen: So they sold him to traveling passers-by slave traders. Yeah, can you imagine what that did to the group dynamic?

David: I have one other observation as we get into this topic, but this is in the book of Acts, totally different, just tragic response that happened. This is Ananias and Sapphira.

Karen: The married couple.

David: Married couple. It was the early church.

Karen: Filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and new conversions, I mean, extraordinary stories come out of the, well, the Acts of the Apostles, actually, the stories.

David: These people sold a property and came and gave money from that property to the church, which was kind of common in that time, and said they gave everything. In fact, we’re asked about this. First of all, it was the husband. He said, yep, we gave the whole thing.

Karen: Was it Ananias? That’s his name, yeah. Okay, Ananias and Sapphira, you need to make a little gender distinction.

David: Ananias no sooner got the words out of his mouth and the Lord struck him dead. Then his wife, I think the scripture says while they were taking him out, pulling him by the feet probably, his wife came in and they asked her the same question, and she lied in the very same way. Bam, she was dead. Yeah. So a secret sin. That had a ramification.

Karen: So we’re asking our listeners to kind of go along with us here. Any secret sins that they are hiding in their lives?

David: We’ve been examining ourselves as we put these thoughts together.

Karen: Very much so.

David: Non-biblical names that come to mind related to secret sins.

Karen: Oh, they’re huge, aren’t they? I mean, our history seems to be filled with secret sins that get acted on. People who commit fraud. You got a specific name?

David: One of our hobbies is Shakespeare, and I’m thinking of the Macbeths.

Karen: Yeah, the great classic drama where Macbeth murders the king Duncan. Because the witches prophesy that he will be.

David: He’ll be great.

Karen: And that sort of grabs hit. To think about that, the three witches, and they’re never portrayed on stage as beautiful, lovely women. These look haggard and witch-like.

David: But they somehow capture his imagination of what he could be. I think of that scene where Lady Macbeth is walking in her sleep, and her conscience is terribly troubled, and she says, will these hands never be clean?

Karen: Well, she’s trying to wash the blood off of them in her sleep. I mean, it’s extraordinary.

David: We’ve seen that play a number of times. You can see the actress wringing her hands.

Karen: I think it’s an extraordinary.

David: All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

Karen: Yeah, and you wonder how many people in the audience kind of relate to her because of things in their past, or their present that are those secret sins, and feel like they’re never going to be clean from it. Wow.

David: I think in terms of our own country, I think of Richard Nixon.

Karen: You know that name is, of course, because of the recent impeachment dialogue that’s gone on, unendingly, for months. We’re going back into the other impeachments. And, of course, he was the president who resigned before he could be impeached. The handwriting was on the wall for him.

David: Do you think secret sins are a problem still, or is that just kind of heresy?

Karen: I think in our morally collapsing generation, we were raised where a man’s word was his bond. If you said, yes, you meant yes. If you said, no, you meant no. And so that kind of morality, that kind of respect for truthfulness, is just not a part of our age. It’s kind of who can get by with the most. So I would say, yeah, there are lots of people who have lots of secret sins, and we’re seeing it come out.

David: Let’s not just talk about other people. Let’s get very personal. We’re going to identify it in terms of secret sins.

Karen: Yeah, I really understand the concept. I think more in the past, partly because of the spiritual disciplines, people have graciously introduced me to, or going to scripture, and trying to be obedient, and then understand why obedience works in those cases. As far as what to do with our sins, the whole process of self-examination. I don’t know how much that is integrated into our everyday lives, but certainly very important, and certainly a topic that the church needs to be helping people develop self-examination, self-awareness.

David: Not to make people feel guilty, but to be helpful to them and freedom.

Karen: To free them from the power of secret sins in their life.

David: Yeah, in fact, these are the words of the psalmist you referred to before. “When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon 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.” So that’s what we want for people to be able to do.

Karen: And again, that psalmist was King David, who we talked about as a classic secret sinner, beginning of this podcast.

David: Well, probably to some degree all of us are classic secret sinners. Although I believe over a period of time, people like David can confess their sins and find freedom of that. Sometimes there’s the ramifications that will continue on for a long period of time. That’s unfortunate, but at the same time, there is a freedom that comes from the awareness that God has forgiven you those secret sins. If I reduce what we’re just wanting to communicate as a freeing process, it would be this simple sentence: Secret sins need to be named and confessed. Okay? So if we name our secret sin, and I think probably that’s the easier part for people. And if people say, well, there are a whole lot of them.

Karen: I’m not sure it’s easy for the novice. I think that what we do is rationalize our secrets. “I was mistreated and so I got back in a vengeful way and did something that I’m ashamed of now.” Or “I was raised in an abusive family and so I modulate my pain by drinking too much.” And yeah, okay, probably a little alcohol. So it’s that kind of thing.

David: Excusing it.

Karen: Excusing it or to explain it in a way rather than facing it right on, such as David did in that psalm.

David: He didn’t have much choice.

Karen: Well, he was cornered, as we’ve said before. But that’s often the way the Lord works, is he corners us until we really recognize our own errors and take responsibility for them and then begin to say, “I’m not going to do this anymore. God help me change my life.” So there has to be this transformative thinking process that needs to go on.

David: In that short sentence I gave, I’m going to emphasize the last word because that’s where people really find help.

Karen: Repeat it again.

David: Secret sins need to be named and confessed. And all that makes sense, except that I’m not sure most people know how to confess their sins to the degree that they feel like they’ve been released from this. They’ve been forgiven.

Karen: Well, I think when there’s self-awareness, procedure seems to be looking at my own mind. You confess it to yourself. You say, “Oh, wow, I really blew it. I cheated that grocer when they gave me too much money back, two dollars more than they should have, and I didn’t take it back. But I have a tendency to try and get away with this sort of stuff.”

So we say it to ourselves and then we say, “Okay, you can’t do that anymore. And that’s a lack of character. God will not be pleased with that.” But I think what we’re being taught to do is to, first of all, confess it to God, but probably have an open confession.

The rule is this. As long as things are secret, they have power over us. Anything you hide from others that is wrong or ill doing or what would become categorized as sin, if we hide it and keep it secret, it has power over us. When we take it and bring it into the light, when we name it for what it is, it frees us from the tentacles. It’s like someone has dug their fingernails into your soul. It releases us from the tendency of that thing to have power over us. So scripture gives methodologies whereby we can overcome these hidden sins in our lives. Their past power on us or they’re present power on us and that is confession and that generally for most of us is going to have to be open confession.

David: When you say open it doesn’t mean you’re standing in front of…

Karen: It might. It could.

David: It’s possible. But for the most part I think people we’re talking to. That probably means going to someone who is trusted and saying, “I can’t seem to find release from this just between myself and the Lord. So I’m asking you to hear me and I would like for you to pronounce that I have been forgiven because of God’s word.” And that’s usually going to be a minister, Karen, or a priest.

Karen: Well it can come in a lot of ways. It depends what’s going on in a person’s life. I mean a lot of what happens in the psychologist’s office is coming to terms with those things that have gone wrong in our past and then coming to terms with our own error. But that openness is great but sometimes there isn’t the reminder from those people because they work in a secular field and some are not faith based people.

David: And sometimes they’re wonderful people. And sometimes they’re wonderful in terms of their profession.

Karen: But they often have to pronounce the fact that you are forgiven. You need to hear that from another person’s voice.

David: That’s the role of the minister many times.

Karen: Let me go back to where this can happen. You can have a small group of people that you have met with monthly for three or four years. And so there’s a trust level and a safety level that has begun to build among these people.

A mixed gender group or it can be a group of men, a group of women. So at that point if you will say to them, “I’m being convicted of something that I’ve held in my heart for too long. Would you enter into prayer with me and so can I tell you what it is and will you hear my confession?” That’s a holy moment. And then those people will respond.

David: This is in James in the New Testament says, “Confess your sins to one another,” which is exactly what you’re talking about.

Karen: And that’s often what happens when one person leads with that kind of vulnerability. Then others lean forward and watch it in the group. There’s a body language. Lean forward. Eyes are intently focused on that person who is confessing. And then often people will say, “Well as long as we’re at it there’s something I wish you would pray for me about.”

It has impact on the group. Or it can be between spouses. You know there are times I say to you I was really cranky today. I’m sorry that I got cranky. I was overtired. And you accept that confession from me and that’s a hugely healing thing. However, the church provides a format and a formula for this. So you want to name some of those things.

David: Well churches have communion services. Sometimes they go by quickly and there’s not the seriousness that there should be. Other times confession is made very significant in that service. Especially if the sermon has been on that topic. And if you preach on that topic you are almost certain that you are dealing with people on a very intimate level. So the confession time, say at a communion when you go to the rail and you lean and you say, “Lord I don’t want to partake of the elements without you first hearing me say that I have been unfaithful in this given area. With my words or my actions.” In fact those things are already said in the formal confession of the church in many churches.

Karen: In the church.

David: Sinned against you and thought word and did by love and done what we’ve left undone. And as you say it with a congregation you’re saying it yourself along with the awareness that God knows exactly what is going on. You can say, “Father I have sinned.” or “Pastor I have sinned.” And that person can pray over you not even naming it. It may not be that’s the time to name that sin.

Karen: But it is a good thing to name it. It’s again releasing the power for hold a secret sin will have when it’s unnamed.

David: It’s also possible to get apart from the formal services of the church to actually set up an appointment with the minister.

Karen: And some liturgical churches can encourage that sort of thing to happen. We were going to an Episcopal church for the first time we were in broadcasting and had a large listening audience. It was estimated about two million people a day that was called the Chapel of the Air daily broadcast. But we realized that in maybe a quarter of our audience was from liturgical churches and we knew nothing about it. So we joined up a small group and started to attend a liturgical church and that confession was part of their process. Something they offered. So I remember the first time I dragged myself in to talk with our pastor, they’re married priests in the Episcopal church, about an error in my life. And as he was trained to do and has done probably hundreds of times, he listened to me confess to him where I was in error.

Now I was traveling all over the country speaking I’d written all kinds of books that was well known in certain religious circles. For me to humble myself and do that had true what’s called efficacy in my life. The very act of doing that was extraordinarily powerful but even more powerful apart from even his gentle presence being there as I made that confession. Well the words he spoke to me of the fact that God had heard my prayer and that he had forgiven me my sins and you’re basically told to go and said no more. I learned even though that was not a part of my traditional church background. I was Baptist growing up and that wasn’t a part of their tradition. I learned the power of confession in those moments in open confession. It was an extraordinary experience for me.

David: Let’s say someone is listening to us and says, “You just haven’t scratched my itch quite yet. You got a couple more words you can give. I’m not going to go to a high church. I’m not going to go to a liturgical church. I’m a part of the Assembly of God and Methodists you know or I can name many.”

Karen: I just find a worthy spiritual leader and just say, “I have this thing that’s been haunting me and I need to tell it to someone and I need as scripture is moving me to do to confess that and will you listen to me do that and pray for me. And there isn’t anyone I know who has spiritual depth who wouldn’t avail themselves to do that.” Even sometimes just good friends, David.

David: And even some that’s very fair and I’m very much a churchman. Even going to the church. No one’s there. You just go up and you kneel at the rail.

Karen: If there is a railing.

David: And if someone comes in you take it as providence and you say ,”I’m here because I’ve sinned and I’m just asking for forgiveness.” If the person says can I help you say yeah just put your armor on me and just stand there.

Karen: Your hand on my back. Yeah.

David: I may pray out loud I may not pray out loud but just be here with me. It’s taking those steps and you will know whether you are released because God has heard you and either the person will speak it to you if you have that need or God will speak to you and say you are forgiven. I love you. Go and sin. And whatever word from Jesus to the woman taking an adultery.

Karen: That’s such an extraordinary story and many of our listeners may not be biblically literate. So a group of men, hypocrites probably.

David: Probably some of them religious men.

Karen: Yeah, had brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. In the Old Testament law, you’d stone her and anyone who has watched on video the mode of stoning of people will know how horrific an act that was. So they brought her to this young rising Jewish rabbi, Jesus and…

David: Well they asked him this is what the law said should we stoner. Yeah putting him on the spot. And then Jesus story so beautiful. He doesn’t respond to them right away but he just starts to write with his finger in the ground. Probably dusty. And my guess is that he writes the name of someone. Plus that person’s secret sin. Then another and it says one by one they began to leave because they’re dealing with someone who knows them intimately now. And finally they’re all gone and then what does he say to the woman?

Karen: Well this interaction is drama at its highest. If you want to know the nature of Jesus Christ, nothing could be more compelling than the story so central to who he was. He looks at her and say “Does no one condemn you?”

David: And she says, “No one Lord.”

Karen: No one Lord. And what does he say?

David: Says, “Neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more.”

Karen: Ah it’s just an extraordinary, extraordinary story.

David: I have found in my own life that’s how Jesus is. He basically is very gentle and gracious. I understand I’m not condemning you anymore. You’re forgiven now go and sin no more.

Karen: Right so what we want people to hear as they’re wrestling with a secret sin. Is the fact that when they go to God and some of this is going in tears and agony. And saying, “I have sinned against you and I have sinned against my fellow humans. And this is the name of my sin. Will you please forgive me?” Then what they need to do is listen in their inner selves. Remember. Hear those words that Jesus spoke to that woman. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Outro: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us please send us an email at the following address hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2022 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.