I’ve been doing a lot of sitting lately. I sit two days to three days a week in a chair at our home school table to teach my children. I sit in my car to drive them to and fro from after-school activities. I sit to eat meals with my family (we are together a lot these days), and I sit at sporadic moments throughout the week to visit with friends or family members.

But there’s another kind of sitting I’ve been doing, another kind of chair I’ve been sitting in. I’ve been sitting in the chair of confession.

Every morning as I make my way to sit in my chair in my study with my cup of coffee in one hand and my Bible in the other hand and I begin to settle in before the presence of the Lord, I begin to confess.

And there is quite a lot to confess to confess these days. Home school has a way of bringing out the very best sinner in me. The tone I use with my children. The impatience that edges in when certain subjects are taking too long. The self-pity that worms its way into my heart when days are tough and the road at home seems never-ending. The covetousness that creeps in of other people’s schedules, other people’s kids, other people’s seasons. The slander that slips through my lips under the guise of getting advice. The lies I tell to myself about myself to make myself feel better.

While sitting in my chair of confession, words like hypocrite, liar, slanderer, murderer, and idolater tumble from my lips to the listening ear of the Lord instead of my usual church words like holy, wise, patient, kind, humble, and sincere.

That’s what Home School has done for me so far this Fall. It has stripped away the outer veneer of “great mom, good wife, wise daughter, faithful friend” and showed me, instead, the true color of my heart. I have learned, to a greater degree, who I really am and not who I most often pretend or want to be.

But can I tell you something? I needed some stripping. I needed to take a good, honest look at myself and not the usual half-hearted, fingers crossed, wish-upon-a-star glance I usually take in the mirror.

And what I have found is that in the chair of confession, true freedom and liberation comes each and every morning. Because what I have found is the more honest I am about my sinful self, the more fully I can hold onto and believe my true self. The person God tells me I am in the pages of Scripture.

Just look at the character of Jacob in Genesis 32. The ultimate post-modern man stuck in ancient Hebrew sandals, Jacob wrestles with God, for a different kind of identity than the one he has been stuck with his entire life. Jacob was a deceiver, a liar, a cheat, a hypocrite, a spiritual failure in every sense of the word, and he spent his life on the run, looking for an identity and a blessing that went beyond what he actually deserved.

So when a stranger attacks him in the middle of the night and wrestles with him by the River Jabbok until the break of day, Jacob instinctively knows this wrestling match isn’t about getting new strength. This wrestling match is about getting a new name. And his opponent isn’t a mere man; it is God Himself.

“Then the stranger said, ‘Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ So the stranger said to Jacob, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ And the stranger said, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:26-27).

Before the wrestling match ends and the blessing begins, the stranger, God Himself, asks Jacob a question: “What is your name?” God knew the answer to that question; He just wanted to make sure Jacob did as well.

The Hebrew word for “Jacob” means “heel-catcher, supplanter, deceiver.” So in giving his name, Jacob is not only naming himself, he is confessing, before the face of God, who he really is: heel-catcher, brother-betrayer, father-deceiver, liar, hypocrite, cowardly runner.

And this is the moment God says, “Now you are ready to hear who you really are: you have always been one man on the run, searching for a purpose, searching for significance, hungry for greatness. So say good-bye to Jacob. Your new name is Israel: a nation of many men, destined for greatness, primed for significance; a nation who will give the earth her Savior, One who will change the identity of all those who wrestle, confess, and believe that He is Lord.”

I looked up the definition of confess the other day, and it means this: “to agree together with God or one’s own conscience, and to externalize that which is inside of one’s self; to profess, express in agreement with, to confess as the truth.”

I don’t know how much sitting you’ve been doing lately. Maybe you spend most of your days on the run, on your feet, wishing you had a chair near by to collapse into more often.

I can’t necessarily recommend doing more sitting in the physical realm; personally, I think it’s good to be on one’s feet. But I can recommend doing some sitting in the spiritual realm.

Because it is only when I confess, it is only when I externalize that which is inside of myself, it is only when I come into agreement with God about who I really am and what I have really done that I am free to receive and accept who He tells me I am in His Word:

• Yes, I am a hypocrite, but when I confess, I am free to step into the truth and live in the light instead of cowering in the darkness.
• Yes, I am an idolater, but when I confess, I am free to hear the word and feel the embrace of “daughter,” one He died to save and who He will never let go.
• Yes, I am a slanderer, but when I confess, I am free to wash my lips clean and embrace the identity as “healer,” healing first my heart and then the one whom I hurt with my words.

So today, or tomorrow, get up a little earlier or stay up a little later and sit in the chair of confession before a good God who is waiting to trade the old identity for the new. All He is waiting to hear is…your confession.