What does it mean to confess our sins?

Once a person is saved they are to confess their sins to God in order to seek forgiveness for those sins (1 John 1:9).  The reason we are to confess our sins to God is because we need to admit that we have done those things not to just God but to ourselves as well.  In doing so we keep our fellowship with God intact and are not lying about how well we follow Him (1 John 1:6-7).  Now we do not need to go around confessing our sins to other people.  The Bible tells us to confess our faults, but not our sins (James 5:16).  We can tell people that we have trouble with certain things, but we need to save the details for God and allow His forgiveness to cleanse us and not turn back to them again.