James 5:16
16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
Devotion
Dan: Would you want to be my accountability partner?
Chris: Yeah … I would lie to you.
Dan: That probably wouldn’t work.
Chris: Nope.
For those who weren’t raised in the church, an “accountability partner” is someone who gets together with you to see how you’re doing. You share your struggles, your guilt, your self-disappointments. This is the verse where we came up with the concept. It’s not a mentor/padawan relationship, it’s equals – its real companionship. It’s not just specific to the church. It’s the basis for a lot of things that work. Aren’t diets easier when you have a partner? It’s why people exercise when they have a physical trainer. It’s why we set up our government with three (essentially) equal branches. It’s why we use a jury of your peers. It’s why we used to use the “buddy system.” It’s why we have wingmen. Some of the conversation you might see in the back during the church service is the tech team just reminding one another of what they need to do next. There’s strength in numbers, even when that number is two.
Coming out of a difficult church situation (a long time ago), that level of vulnerability related to my faith and others wasn’t something I could stomach. I didn’t have much trust left and I was trying to maintain my trust in God, I didn’t really have that much left for anyone else. So, I’m willing to give myself a pass on that incident I recited, above. Dan and I still laugh about it from time to time. That said, I do think we make a mistake when we decide that all we need for “this Christianity thing” is Jesus. James is relaying the word of God here – and God’s telling us to “stick together.” We can reach healing physically, emotionally, spiritually … when we stick together, when we pray for each other, when we’re vulnerable and honest with each other. Quarantining has isolated us in ways that I’ll be years to fully understand. We don’t really know exactly what the future holds, but as we come out of it – seek out your companions and allow yourself to be vulnerable and be healed; or if we walk back through it – seek out your companions and allow yourself to be vulnerable and (see what I did there?) walk through it together.
The whole book of James is a crash course in living a righteous life. Be kind, don’t tear down, help others, think about your motives, don’t drink blood sacrificed to idols, control your thoughts, be humble, listen, don’t embrace misery when life stinks. Here, James is throwing you a bone – don’t do life alone, it’s not healthy and it’s much, much harder. And keep an eye on the pairing of sentences in this verse. Why bother bringing up how cool “righteous” people are, when we’re talking about confessing our sins to each other – because, we’re stronger together. It’s not about confessing your sins to a Priest (but, yeah, that’s where that comes from, too) – God gives grace, God gives redemption, we don’t give that to each other. We go to God to be absolved, we go to each other to be healed. When we work together, when we’re healed – we’re powerful and effective.
So, if you’re reading this, and you don’t have anyone – e-mail Christian. He’ll find someone for you. We can do that for you. So, for the first time in forever you won’t be alone.
Prayer
God, these have been hard, challenging, and lonely times. You are here for us and you carry us through the hard things. Show me the people that feel alone. Bring me people who will seek me out to bolster me up. Help me let my guard down and be honest with the people that care about me. Help me to be a good and compassionate listener for the people that share with me. Amen.
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