people from whom there are no secrets

Confess your sins to one another, that you may be healed.

James

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.

Paul Tournier

There is so much content for Christian men today, yet still so little transformation.

We churn through books, podcasts, and sermons at a staggering rate, but deep down, this often does little to address our deepest fears, sinful tendencies, and pain.

So much content, so little change.
                                                           
I was recently at a Christian Leaders gathering talking about why this is when a pastor shared a part of his testimony that has had me thinking about it for a few weeks.

This pastor talked about the Pareto Principle of transformation.

You are probably familiar with the Pareto Principle, the idea that 80 percent of the result comes from 20 percent of the work, but I don’t think many of us have applied that to our walk with God amid all the religious options out there.

Much of the modern church is geared towards participation, but not transformation. 

We show up, serve, give, and do, but this often deals with external actions, not heart motivation.

This leader continued by sharing a radical idea. He said,

“The parent principle of transformation is around vulnerability, confession, honesty, and refusing to keep secrets. Most of the change and transformation in our lives comes from being honest with our struggles, vulnerable when we sin, and refusing to cover up and pretend things are fine.”

Sin management and hiding are exhausting. Confession brings relief. 

I have written about the danger of secrets in this email before, but given the many public failures and our own private ones, I want to bring this up again.

Can you imagine if Ravi Zacharias had said to a trusted friend…
“I need to tell you a secret”

You can imagine what would have happened if Carl Lentz had said… 
“I need to tell you a secret”

Can you imagine if Robert Morris had said…
“I know you know some of the truth, but I need to tell you a secret”

Now, as a Lead Pastor of a church, I know church dynamics can be complex.
There is pressure to look good, worries about our reputation, and image management.

But these are an illusion.

The Bible says that the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the wicked and the righteous. The truth is, we can never keep our secrets from God. At some point, it will all come out, but HOW it comes out is up to us.

We can hide in shame and cover things up.
Or, we can bring them into the light and mercy of God.

Sin won’t destroy you; Jesus' mercy and grace can deal with that. However, covering your sin will destroy you if you try to manage it on your own. In Joshua 7, Achan’s whole family was destroyed because he had a secret hidden in his tent. 

Sadly, the same happens time and time again in our modern world.

In the conversation about the Pareto Principle of transformation, the pastor said that true transformation happened for him when he stopped keeping secrets. It wasn’t the preaching, all the community groups, serving the poor, and church services that changed him. It was opening his heart to a couple of trusted friends and sharing with them his deep secrets.

Healing comes when we are honest about what has wounded us.
Hope comes from being honest about our despair.
Freedom comes by naming what’s keeping us in bondage.

The recovery community has much to teach us here. “You are only as sick as your secrets” has changed the lives of so many. 

It can be terrifying for men to be truly vulnerable today. 
We can fear rejection, betrayal, weaponization of the information shared, and loss. But even worse than that is being destroyed by shame, exposure, and God's judgment. 

Frederick Buechner wrote,

“What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are, because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier, for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own.”

The earliest disciples knew this, too. John wrote, 

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, thatGod is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

In the light. 
Fellowship with one another. 
Cleansed from all sin. 
Known, accepted, seen, and loved. 
This is the invitation of the gospel to our hearts.

My deepest prayer for you is that God will give you two brothers from whom you keep no secrets. Those you can share your heart with in full. Those who will share your joys, weep with you in your pain, rebuke your foolishness, and drag you from your rebellion back into the light.

After all, isn’t this what Jesus did for His disciples?

If you are looking for a practical way to start this, we created a simple tool called Core Communities that you can use to go deep with a few other guys.

Download the short guide, review the tool, read this email to a few brothers, and then commit to meeting regularly and being fully open. Your secrets may kill you or save you, but it depends on whether or not they are shared in community or hidden in shame. 

We need friends from whom we keep no secrets.
We need to be friends who will listen to the secrets of others.

May God give you grace to be and find these life-giving friends.

Here with you in the risky and radical pursuit of being a vulnerable man.

Cheers.

Jon.