Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Yoking Confession and Assimilation

Assimilation and confession of the Word are two of the major components of the Prayer Center message.  We often treat them as separate activities, so we spend time assimilating, then do our confessing later.  Why not yoke the two together?  

What prompted this thought is that Gary Carpenter has been encouraging people to use the "In Him" confessions that he has prepared.  These confessions are based on scriptures that state truths about our identity in Jesus Christ, and so they have phrases such as 'in Him," "in Whom," "by Whom, " etc.  By confessing these truths, we build within ourselves an image of our new nature that we gain when we are born again.

However, the document Gary produced is 26 pages long.  That is too much for anyone to start confessing the whole document every time, so he recommends doing it in stages.  When Gary recommended this, I was reading through Philippians. I knew most of the "In Him" confessions come from Paul's letters, so, I thought "Why not connect the confessions to the book I'm assimilating at the time?"

Well, I didn't complete the Philippians confessions before moving on to the book of Colossians.  Now for the rest of this month whenever I finish reading Colossians, I immediately read, out loud, my Colossians confessions.

I'm still new at this - marrying confession to assimilation - so I don't know yet what the effects will be.  The only negatives I can see is possible is that my soul gets overloaded and I go on a full-tilt goon binge, or I melt down in a Pinatubo-scale hissy conniption fit.  A more likely scenario is  that my transformation is accelerated. Maybe this will be something that helps the fast go faster.

If you wish to do this book-based confessing , I suggest you create your own confessions.  To help you get started, I will give you the first paragraph of my Colossians confessions:

I have heard the word of truth, the gospel which has come to me, and it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, as I have heard and understood the grace of God in truth. I am filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that I will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified me to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light, for He rescued me from the domain of darkness, and transferred me to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

If you want to use Gary's "In Him' confessions, or if you want the scriptures he created them from, you can find links to them here: