Then he stopped talking, and we looked at each other.
It was obvious that my message was over, but God’s
message was just beginning. Dozens of young men in the
audience streamed out of their seats and came forward to kneel
and pray and to be prayed over by their campus pastors.
Who does this? Who openly declares to their peers that he
or she is struggling with a secret sin?
One who is convicted of sin by the living, loving God will
have those “white lightning” moments, when he or she sees a
sin for the first time as poisonous, deadly, and self-destructive
—as if his or her blind eyes have been miraculously opened.
They will come forward publicly, in humiliation. In that moment
they no longer care what people think of them or their sin.
They just want OUT. They want to come clean, feel clean, and
be clean.
God talks to you and me with words that convict us of
specific sins so that we’ll be set free from the lies, shame, and
guilt that are attached to them. He wants us to be liberated from
the habits that strangle us and sever our personal relationships
with Him and with others.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic book exploring
faith within a community, contains the simplest explanation of
how to let God heal and restore you after He has convicted you
of sin. Bonhoeffer considers the moments after conviction
incredibly strategic—where “breakthrough-to-new-life
occurs.” 1 He suggests taking immediate action in those
moments when you sense, hear, know, and feel God convicting
you by publicly confessing your wrongs to another human
being. He writes, “In the confession of concrete sins the old
man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother.