When I read my last post about confession to my wife, she reminded me that I minister to her all the time, and she takes that ministry and uses it when she talks to other people. That’s enough for me.

Pastor Rick Warren reminds us that when someone dies quickly, say from a heart attack, it’s better for them but not so great for the family. When someone dies slowly, say from cancer, it’s not so great for them but far better for the family. There is time to talk, to repent, to try and make things right, to prepare for the inevitable, to minister to those closest to you.

My wife reminds me that I still have time ahead of me for ministry and that my “true and faithful witness” to the goodness of God in the midst of cancer can still have an impact on the eternal destiny of the people around me. That is also true.

When I say that confession is brokenness, I am not saying that confession is only regret, even though many people may take it that way. Regret assumes that nothing can be done about it moving forward even in the power of the spirit. I don’t accept that. Remember that the message was to say that without the help and intervention of God, repentance and reconciliation are beyond my power to do on my own. I am truly powerless.

My mess is even greater than I could describe in those few words, the pollution of sin deeper than I even know myself, conscious sin, and betrayal more numerous than I can count. In that sense, I regret my sins, my decisions, my broken relationships, and my poor witness to the presence of God in my life. I regret the past but look with hope toward the future not because of myself and my ability to do anything about it but because I cannot deny that the Holy Spirit is within me, no matter how grieved, no matter how repressed, or how cast aside at times. And because of that truth, there is hope.

My wife also asked me why I had not included her in my list of confessions and regrets in the previous post. There is a very good reason for that, and I want to tell you about it now. You see, there were two times in my life when I tried to throw God out of my life. The first was after my first marriage failed, my dream of making a difference as a pastor was trampled into the mud, and I abandoned myself to fulfilling my own desires, dreams, and depravity without God in my life.

I remember living with my friend, Jack, a taxi driver with a withered arm who took a liking to me. He was always trying some new business opportunity and I joined him for a time, trying to make some extra money. We rented a very nice house, and he had parties every weekend. I tried to live a life of debauchery but wasn’t very good at it. It was rather pathetic actually.

I remember having a Thomson Chain Reference Bible filled with my notes and highlights from years of studying and placing it on a fire in the backyard of our rented house. It was an act of defiance and despair I now realize, because I was angry at God for letting my life get so out of control. Yes, I knew it was my fault too, but other people were involved from my ex-wife, and one of my brothers, to the board of the church that wanted me to conform to their idea of what a pastor should be, to the lack of empathy or understanding from the denominational “pastor of pastors” who simply condemned me out of hand.

Over the next couple of years, I ended up in Argentina trying to reconnect with my family and see my children. I already told you about the difficulties of getting a divorce in a foreign country and losing shared custody of the kids but what I didn’t tell you is that I began a friendship and later fell in love with my present wife, Vero, who is my best friend. She was God’s way of bringing me back from the brink of despair but that doesn’t mean that I was reconciled to God yet. That needed another crisis to resolve.

I went back to church with Vero, got involved and started to sing worship songs again, and even wrote The Temptations of the Cross, my first novel. When you are in love, you are inspired (at least I was). But there were still problems that I had to resolve in my own heart.

Living in Argentina was wonderful in one way. The people are great, the food even better and the culture interesting. But doing business in a country with record-breaking inflation and rampant corruption is no easy task. Being an English teacher for peanuts was not my idea of a good career choice. I tried to go back into church work with the encouragement of my Pastor but was rejected by the church board which went on a witch hunt to find out everything remotely wrong with me and was ultimately betrayed by my Pastor. That’s a whole other story.

Enough to say that in 2001, Argentina went into an economic meltdown, bank accounts were frozen and the economy ground to a halt. Argentina went into sovereign bankruptcy, the first country in modern history to do so. I lost my job and we decided to go back to Canada. I had two very young girls with Vero, but I didn’t want to leave Argentina without my other two kids also coming with us. My ex-wife decided to return to Canada with our two kids more or less at the same time and we all made the move in the same year. We all ended up in Calgary, Alberta.

Of course, we were broke and that didn’t help but I felt that I could do things in Canada that I couldn’t even think about in Argentina. I started out driving a taxi and delivering pizza just to make ends meet. A friend rented us a house at a reasonable price, and we got started once more trying to make something of our lives. I had learned a few things from my previous work in raising money for commercial real estate and decided to try it on my own.

Over the next few years, I was able to raise 8.6 million dollars for an alternative energy project (among other things) but it didn’t work out. We moved to Florida to open the US Head Office for our company but since I was not in charge and had no power or authority to decide on the direction of the company, things didn’t go well, and I had to walk away from that toxic environment. To this day, they have not made a single penny in profits.

We had to leave the US and I gave my wife the choice of going back to Canada or moving back to Argentina. She chose Argentina. After all, that was her country. That was where her family was. And the weather was better in Buenos Aires than six months of snow every year in Calgary. I didn’t blame her. But, over time, I realized that for me it was the wrong decision. We both needed to be in Canada. That was where I had my work, where I had to resolve the problems that I had created, and where I was raising more money for other projects to try to make a profit.

For the next two years, I spent three weeks of every month traveling and only one week at home. That was not healthy for anybody and the deeper I got into debt and the more failure I stacked up trying to solve the problems I had created by trusting the wrong people, the more I resented the fact that my wife wouldn’t join me in Canada. Looking back, I realize that she was right but that was beside the point at the time.

It put me into another tailspin spiritually and I resented her and was consumed with bitterness that she didn’t love me enough to follow my lead and join me back in Canada where I could get some stability back into my life. I distinctly remember believing that I was going to hell anyway for all the mess that I had made of my life and now my second marriage. Now I see it as an attack of the Devil but at the time, I truly believed it and so nothing mattered anymore. Again, I pursued my own desires, dreams, and debauchery (again mostly pathetic half-hearted attempts). I remember confessing once to my wife that I missed Jesus the most. She told me that I could always come back to him. Now who was ministering to whom?

The worldwide credit crisis of 2008 put an end to any further attempts to solve my financial problems. We were living in Argentina, so I just sold whatever I could and went home. That doesn’t mean that my marriage was reconciled right away but God brought me to a point where I sat in front of my wife in the local shopping mall eating a McDonald’s meal and I confessed to her everything that I had done wrong for the past two years including a night of adultery. I had betrayed her. I stood up to leave, assuming that she was done with me, but she asked me to sit down again and told me she didn’t want me to leave.

She loved me. She forgave me. God used her to save me again. I realized later that it was a moment of great healing for me. My first wife used my confession against me even though I hadn’t committed adultery. She told me that she had married a pastor when I was under the impression that she had married me whether I was a pastor or not. My second wife accepted my confession as an indication that the Holy Spirit was still in there somewhere doing his work. She loved me as I was and accepted that God wasn’t done with me yet. She didn’t necessarily trust me yet, but she trusted the work of God in me. That difference makes all the difference in the world.

Not that she didn’t feel guilty for a long time about not wanting to move back to Canada because she did feel that guilt. I forgave her, of course, and told her that it was the right decision all along. Not that there aren’t consequences to staying in Argentina. I had no career, no income source other than as an English teacher and we steadily sank into a deeper and deeper economic hole over the years. Just like everyone else in Argentina.

But I had made a decision. I had confessed my sins, found forgiveness and love, and decided to change my ways. I also had a long talk with God about it all and realized that my path of obedience was to stay in Argentina with my wife and family and make that process of reconciliation my highest priority. That is what repentance is and that is why it wasn’t included in my post on confession.

It had been dealt with, confessed, repented of (on an ongoing basis), the path of obedience clearly before me and, gladly, I followed that path of discipleship the best I could. It doesn’t mean that everything went perfectly. There were still consequences, but that is to be expected. The point is that there are no regrets, nothing more needs to be said about it. The path of discipleship in this situation, based on this confession, for this particular relational sin, has transformed itself into love, forgetful of all past hurts, based on the work of the Holy Spirit in each of us, “keeping no record of wrongs, patient, kind, always protecting, always persevering” (I Corinthians 13). In other words, the relationship has been healed and strengthened because we followed the Way of the Cross in confession, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

You see how difficult it is to separate these four stages of the cross in real-life situations. Without a powerful source of forgiveness that leads to true reconciliation, neither confession nor repentance has any benefit to it. But still, we will try to describe them one by one.

Repentance is discipleship in a particular situation, based upon a specific confession for the healing of a broken relationship.

If you ask me why my relationship with my wife worked out so well, I’m not sure I could tell you. I loved her and she loved me despite the fact that we were hurting each other. But it was more than that. God was at work. I remember that it was despair that drove me to confession that day, a despair that I had lost the only good thing that mattered to me, a despair that I was truly abandoned by her and by God.

It was her love that God used to keep me tethered to the cross, to give me hope that I had something inside me still that made me different, that made me a Christian. She was the human symbol of the divine forgiveness that God was extending to me simply because she did it God’s way, based on the cross, based on love, based on not wanting to let go of what she valued the most.

I needed the contrast between my first and my second wife to believe that I was still loved when there was every reason not to be. I needed to believe that God could still heal relationships, that confession, as terrifying as it was for me, was the only path to wholeness, even though I expected it to fail, and I stood up to go because she would have been totally within her rights to ask me to leave. Rejection has been a big part of my life, from my childhood until today, no doubt my own fault but there it is. But there was no rejection from her or from God, just love and forgiveness and the long road of repentance and reconciliation.

Repentance isn’t just saying that you are sorry. We all know that it means a complete change in direction, a decision to change a way of life, a deep awareness that healing is in the opposite direction and there is no other. Repentance is discipleship about a specific thing. It isn’t general, unfocused, confused, or unclear. Repentance is discipleship towards healing and needs to be specific, focused, clear-minded, and concise to accomplish anything.

And if you think that you can do it on your own, you are sadly mistaken.

Of course, we need the help of the Holy Spirit within but, even more, we need the help of the Holy Spirit within the other person whom we have wronged. They will need to forgive and forget over and over again. It is also a battle for them, and they will need their own support and prayer group. It is a path that we walk daily, this Way of the Cross, not a one-time effort. It is discipleship. It is what Jesus meant by taking up our cross, our ego and sin and pride, every day and crucifying it again and again through confession, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

So where does that leave us with the previous post with its depressing litany of regrets and broken relationships that are such a tangle of sin and disobedience over so many years that I don’t even know where to start? Of course, we start with prayer and putting it all before the Lord in the brokenness of our pride in confession and acknowledgment that only He can be the author of our faith and the one who presents us spotless before the throne.

This isn’t a question of salvation but rather of witness and significance. This is about healing relationships so that the name of God is not dragged through the mud. This is about getting out of the way and allowing the people I’ve hurt to see something else in me than just the mismanagement of funds or the dishonesty of my words or the betrayal of my relationships.

And here is where it gets hard.

In order to heal relationships, you have to talk to people. That is easier said than done. Some people haven’t spoken to me in years and don’t want to. There is a lot of anger, a lot of mockery, a lot of rejection. I hate rejection. I’ve had my fill of it. Everything in my being revolts at the thought that I have to risk it again, from my family, my friends, especially my kids.

But it must be done. I have come to the conclusion that the pain of rejection, anger, and mockery is a price that I must pay whether or not it works out in terms of healing or not. Over and over again, until the day that I pass away, I must continue to try. That is the path of obedience. I must accept the pain of rejection as part of my suffering for the gospel and embrace it with joy because I am following the Way of the Cross set before me by Jesus himself. Yes, the rejection is my fault, no doubt, but now the rejection is in a different context. It is not the rejection due to betrayal and sin but the rejection due to confession and repentance.

Not all suffering is suffering for the gospel but suffering for the gospel can become an integral and powerful part of all suffering if you are walking the Way of the Cross.

So, it is time to embrace the rejection I so fear and rejoice that it is now transformed into a healing process. It is time to accept mockery, just like Jesus did, though he did not deserve it for himself, but for me. He became sin and I received his righteousness. That means that the rejection and mockery and anger he received from the crowds, the religious leaders, the political enforcers, was due to him as the representative of sin, as sin itself. It was my rejection that he received, my mockery that he endured, the spit on his face belonged to me, the anger and pain and suffering was mine, but he took it upon himself so that I could be free from it.

But am I free from it?

Didn’t I say that we must suffer for the gospel together with Jesus in order to be glorified with him? Yes, of course. The rejection, mockery and anger, although it came through the people was, for Jesus, the rejection not just of the people but also of God against sin. We do not receive rejection, mockery, or anger from God, but we must join Jesus in this great ministry of reconciliation, this great healing process which includes rejection, mockery, and anger and, thereby, suffering for the gospel with him.

So, although I am free from it in Christ, I can still receive it in the flesh if I sin. That is normal. But it is also true that although I am free from it in Christ, I can, in the path of obedience and discipleship, still choose not to be free from it as I join Christ in his great rescue operation of reconciling the world to God through the cross.

It may be true that I have to start with my own mess, with my own destroyed relationships, with my own sinful behavior, but that is to be expected. Suffering for the gospel starts with my own relationships that need healing because that is the heart of my witness to the transformation of Christ within me.

One more thing needs to be said about this process of repentance. When you go and talk to people, do not try to educate them on the Way of the Cross and how they should respond as Christians. You may be right, but it doesn’t work. I know. I’ve tried. I am a natural-born teacher and I have to explain everything to everyone in detail. This is neither the time nor the place. Let the Holy Spirit educate them in some other way or simply accept that they may not respond, at least at the beginning, as Christians following the way of the cross, but as they are in the flesh (whether Christians or not).

Secondly, do not try to rationalize or justify what you have done. Confess it as plainly as you can and as concisely as you can together with a commitment to make things right so far as it depends on you. The Way of the Cross is not about justice but about mercy. Even if you were not the one at fault, take the blame upon yourself, as Jesus did, and confess what you can confess. You don’t have to confess to things you didn’t do, but the log in your own eye is generally far greater than the spec in theirs.

It isn’t about fairness or justice but about mercy. You do not want to go to the throne of justice because you, too, will be judged there. You want to go to the throne of mercy, which is the cross where mercy and justice are joined into one powerful throne of grace upon which the King of Glory now sits.

Thirdly, don’t forget to pray, beforehand, after hand, and ongoing. Prayers for healing, for the presence of God in the meeting, for your healing and sanctification, for their healing and sanctification (and maybe even salvation). Get others to pray as well. The ministry of reconciliation is spiritual warfare. Don’t take it lightly.

Now that you are in the process of the healing of the gospel, your prayers are powerful and effective before God for that person. Deal first with God. Get right with him. Then deal with the other person before God, forgiving them for all their sins against you, forgiven by the blood of the cross. Then deal with the other person, face to face if at all possible.

Finally, there is the question of restitution. That is a big deal, especially in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus is our redemption. If you couldn’t pay your debts, you were sold into slavery, but someone could buy your debt and “redeem” you, as Jesus did for us. But how does that apply when you owe someone money (and I owe a lot)?

They may not accept the restitution that Jesus provides. There may not be any healing right away (or at all in this life). You have to be prepared to make restitution so far as you are able. I am at a loss as to how to do this in my present situation. Not that I don’t have some projects on the table that, with God’s favor, could pay all my debts over time, but I haven’t had that favor from God in terms of business ever. Not even once. I’m not sure how to interpret that.

Right now, I am reluctant to accept any more investment money no matter how much I think my projects are worthy of it. Not only do I have cancer and I can’t tell you how that will affect my ability to work, much less how much time I have left, but I have never been successful in business. What does that say about me? Am I just a manipulator? Do I take advantage of people and just bilk them out of their hard-earned money? Honestly, I don’t know. It was never my intention and I always believed in what I was doing.

Or is it a spiritual issue and now that I am trying to walk the Way of the Cross, God will give me the favor that I need to be able to pay everyone back what I owe? I hope that is the case, but I still don’t know. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I thought I was doing something pleasing to God, that was deserving of his favor, and it fell apart.

There is no guarantee that it will work out. That much I’ve learned.

I spoke to my potential investors and told them that I had Stage 3 Colon Cancer, and that chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery would happen over the next six to nine months. I gave them a chance to walk away and even encouraged them to do so without guilt but they both chose to stay, so far. Of course, they could still get cold feet but that is also up to God.

Without the investment money from at least one of them, I will not be able to make restitution to the people I owe money to, and without that, a conversation will be very difficult if not impossible. So, I pray for favor, not to become rich but so that I can heal the relationships that I have broken and possibly restore the name of God in their eyes. Right now, they are no doubt thinking that if I am supposed to be an example of a Christian, then they would want nothing to do with God. I can’t say that I blame them.

So, what do I do?

Pray for favor and keep moving forward in faith. Yes.

Will it all work out the way I want it to? Maybe. Maybe not.

But my job is to stay on the path of obedience the best I can and make amends whenever and wherever I can for each particular case because repentance is the faith walk of discipleship in loving obedience along the path of healing based on the cross. My faith is not that it will all work out the way I want it to but rather that I can trust that this is the right path to follow.

And the rest I have to leave up to God.