The worst preacher, or parent, or teacher, or counselor, or leader,

is the chief encourager –  positive thinker.  “You can do this.”  The next best is the chief accuser –  helping people see the sin to which they are blind.  But the best – the one most likely to be used of the Spirit to transform lives, is the chief confessor.  The chief remover of logs from their own eye.

The chief confessor creates a safe environment in a congregation, home, classroom, counseling session, organization, where the defensive can look inside to see how much worse they are than imagined, where they can eventually join the chief confessor in coming out of the closet about being bigtime failures at following Jesus, and see afresh their bigtime need for Jesus, and be freshly overwhelmed with Him and His imputed worthiness, so His unconditional grace/love is freshly amazing to them.

How does a preacher, parent, teacher, counselor, leader, become a chief confessor?  Only by the work of the Spirit, freshly convicting of sin, especially the sin of independence/confidence-I-know-what’s-best/dissatisfaction-with-Jesus-and-His-imputed-worthiness.

–ShepherdDave, who is never the chief confessor, unless he’s been freshly convicted of the sin of independence, so he’s momentarily DumbSheepDave, liberated about what others think about him, and what he thinks about himself, enjoying the bliss of Jesus-dependency/humility/cluelessness-he-knows-what’s-best, so the nonbelievers around him might experience the other-worldly humility and other-worldly love of Jesus

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