Honesty

The Bible has a lot to say about honesty. The ninth Commandment is to be honest, and to not "bear false witness". This Commandment comes from the second 'series' of Commandments, if you will; the first 'series' i.e. Commandments 1-4, is all about how you should treat your relationship with God by not worshipping false idols and so on and so forth. The second 'series' i.e. Commandments 5-10, is all about how to treat your relationship with others. The ninth Commandment, then, about not bearing false witness and being honest, is about your relationship with other people. However, this is not what I want to talk about today. My topic for today is about honesty with God.

I have noticed that honesty is often a difficult thing for us humans to get right. We often hold things back from God; 'beat around the bush', maybe. I've done this as well. But it seems a little pointless to hold things back when we pray; God knows the secrets of our hearts, and He already knows all of our troubles, so why would we not tell Him them? It could be argued that if God knows our hearts, then why should we have to tell Him? He already knows, He doesn't need us to tell Him. But this seems a rather cynical view in my opinion. Despite the fact that God does already know all of our troubles, spitting them out - even in a silent prayer in our heads - can really help.

At this point I would like to give you a personal testimony that I have experienced about holding things back from God. I have already mentioned that I have OCD in an earlier post. When my symptoms first started getting worse, I often went up for prayer at my church. But I would never just spit out what was wrong (although I should point out that at this point I was undiagnosed). I would never just say what was happening inside my head; I would give excuses like "I'm having unholy thoughts". Then I would get prayed for, burst into tears, and go home feeling - if nothing else - a little worse than I had been before. Then last year I went to Soul Survivor, and to a seminar called 'Help I Don't Like Myself'. I sat through the seminar and at the end the woman who had been speaking said that there were members of the Soul Survivor prayer team were there to pray for anyone who wanted to be prayed for. I didn't go up straight away, but sat there looking at my feet for a couple of minutes before I plucked up the courage to go up and get prayed for. A woman came over to me and asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted praying for; and I told her everything. I didn't do what I had done before, I simply told her that I had OCD (having been diagnosed by this point) and exactly what had been going in my head. When I got prayed for, it was different than any time before. I felt as though God had said to me, "I just wanted you to be honest with Me".

It's for this reason that I wanted to say that honesty in prayer is very important. If nothing else, it would improve our relationship with God. If we hold back, we are not giving everything we have to God and it's harder to develop our relationship with Him. I would really recommend trying to tell God as much as possible in as much detail as possible when you pray, cause believe me, it really helps.