The Healing Balm of ConfessionSample

We can all confess to being consumed with fear around this issue. True success in the area of reconciliation will require the mastery of our fears. This fear has people saying, “I can’t do it” before they even try. Whites are afraid to cross the divide because they might have to give up some of their power and status. Blacks are afraid because it’s a lot of hard work, usually with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Many of us who have tried to make the effort have found out that we’re still seen as “the lesser other.” But God’s Word speaks into our fears. The antidote to our fear is His love. It is His love empowering us to extend our hands and hearts to one another.

Believers in the first-century church who were burdened with fear were challenged by the apostle Peter to be willing to endure suffering. “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6–7). Rather than shrinking back and allowing their fears to overwhelm them, these believers that Peter spoke to were encouraged and empowered by this challenge. They refused to deny Christ knowing that their refusal would mean certain death. For many of them this “trial by fire” meant being tied to a stake, covered with tar, and set on fire to light the Roman coliseum as part of Nero’s madness.

Those who marched for equal rights in the 60s, both blacks and whites, were willing to risk their lives to end the scourge of segregation and Jim Crow in our country. They risked imprisonment, lynchings, beatings, and much more. May we have the same determination to risk life and limb for the worthy cause of bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth—that we might be one.