Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭13‬:‭5

Confession is an age-old habit that has proven helpful in religious circles when used properly. Even so, many are put off when they see it as part of the suggestions of recovery.

Step four has us take a moral inventory which we then share with another person in step five.

Confession takes at least two ingredients: the honesty to look back and the willingness to admit wrongs.

We have accumulated a messy track record. And we want to be thorough as we clean things up.

The first step in cleanup is assessment. And so, we take pen to paper and get to work.

If we are to be clean at the end of this, even relatively so, we are going to have to get dirty during the inventory.

Some of us can fill reams and some of us can fill a page or two. But we all have junk to expel.

This is where we get down to some root issues and are invited to look at our lives from a different perspective. From this vantage point we begin to find that we were not entirely victims—though that’s certainly a part of many stories.

So, why? Can’t we just move on?

An honest, thorough look back informs how we continue to grow forward. Steps four and five both are not intended to be dwelt on for weeks and months as they are sometimes worked today.

Get the inventory down quickly because it will be unpleasant to sit in for long. Modern recovery has gotten lazy with the absence of time limits.

Better a quick, honest inventory than a perfect, never finished one.

This is a means to an end after all. We should get practiced in taking daily inventory—looking for how we have navigated each 24 hours. And doing a proper fourth step is sometimes the first time that we’ve turned the mirror on ourselves.

God, help me obediently take inventory.