Christian Singles Secrets

Many Christian singles walk around with the burden of carrying personal secrets bottled up deep in their hearts. Whether the secrets are unconfessed sexual sins, painful memories, regrets, shame-filled experiences or totally whacked out thoughts, God did not design us to deal with such raw issues by ourselves.

From the Garden, the Lord created mankind for intimate fellowship with no room for secrets. Adam’s hiding from God after eating of the fruit is the Bible’s first recorded secret. Do you ever wonder what God would have done if Adam and Eve confessed their little “secret” instead of hiding from their Lord? Anyway, we have been keeping secrets ever since, with negative consequences for ourselves and our relationships with others.

The Bible has a neat answer to secret keeping: It’s called confession. Over and over in Scripture, we see see a connection between honest confession and spiritual, emotional and physical healing:

• If you confess your sins to God, He promises forgiveness and spiritual cleansing (1 John 1:9).
• Lack of confession leads to physical and emotional turmoil; honest acknowledgement to God brings relief of guilt (Psalms 32-2-5).
• While only God can forgive, He wants us to confess our sins to each other so that we may pray for each other and experience healing (James 5:6)

Only recently has modern psychology caught up with the Bible in terms of connecting private confession with physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Dr. James Pennebaker, psychology professor at Southern Methodist University, documents a study which found that confessing our secrets can be good for the soul, lower blood pressure, lessen depression and increase your general sense of well being.

There is certainly no reason why we should not confess our secrets to our Lord, who loves (John 3:16) and sympathizes with us despite knowing all about us (Hebrews 4:13-15).

Despite the fact that confession leads to healing, there are many reasons why single Christians fail to confess secrets to others, whether they be a lack of an appropriate outlet, fear, embarrassment or unreal expectations from our own churches.