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This little hashtag cracked me up, #NotMySuperBowl, as in I didn’t vote for either of these teams, so I’m now launching a protest and a boycott. This idea was driven home yet again when the kid asked dad about the Superbowl and which team we were “voting” for.

Cheering, we’re cheering, not voting.

Sigh. You would think it would be a simple matter explaining that football is more of a game of skill and chance, outcomes being far more random than something based on our own approval or disapproval, our personal endorsement. We don’t vote on winners or losers in football, not so much, there’s a lot more random happenstance and synchronicity at play. Sadly, that mindset, that the whole world operates on whether we approve or disapprove, is so representative of the modern world, so today there is My Will and then there is plain old Wrong.

I was thinking of this is terms of confession. Confession really just means to come into agreement with. In this case we are coming into agreement with God. It can involve some wrong doing like snapping at someone and we are agreeing with God that we were wrong, or it can mean coming into agreement with God when He says we have such worth and value He gave His very life for us. That’s truth, that’s His word, so “to confess,” to come into agreement with, in that case is to acknowledge the sin of having allowed the world to teach you something contrary to God’s word. To have failed to recognize your own value and the investment God made in you.

To confess, to come into agreement with God, can simply mean to recognize one’s weaknesses, one’s own powerless to force outcomes beyond our own control. That’s one of those faultless sins, as in perhaps you hit a deer and you are totally blameless and yet you may need forgiveness just the same. I tend to be that way, I’m sorry for cars, I’m sorry for the loss of this animal, I’m sorry I was unable to stop. I hate the whole human race, I hate pointless death, I hate not having control……I can go deep, and deeper still into confession and intercession.

Don’t laugh, I hit a raccoon once and it took me six weeks of prayer, confession, and intercession. And the poor raccoon actually hit me, before running back under the car three more times.

Confession is not always about wrong doing in the obvious and glaring sense. It is about submission and surrender, coming into agreement with God, recognizing our great need for Him, admitting His ways are greater than ours, His will is vastly superior, and then trusting what He says about that, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

We can call those things that are beyond our control, “God’s will.” As in often we have to surrender our own will and accept outcomes we did not always “vote for.”

perfume