When We Feel Guilty - Part 1

Welcome to the intensified Catholic town for Thursday, January 20 you have a hard time letting go of the past and forgiving yourself for believers. Christ offers to be the source of our strength when we feel guilty when you have done something wrong. You know it's wrong.

How do you feel what you feel guilty but have you ever had those same guilty feelings.

When you haven't done anything wrong. Sometimes we do and when a person does not know how to deal with guilt. They struggle with guilt. It can be devastating throughout their entire lifetime and wobbled a little talk about in this message.

I will talk about Jesus Christ being the source of our strength when we are struggling with those guilty feelings, guilt can be devastating to a person's life to their productivity to their fruitfulness in life unless they know how to build it because some guilt is false. Now some things that happen in our life with things that we do will cause guilt but all guilt is not the result of sin. So somebody should say would say then well anybody knows how to deal with guilt all you have religious confession of sin.

That's the end of but suppose the guilt is not the result of sin, then what you do with and sometimes if you not understand what the source of something is up. While we experience it, then we can deal with it probably much easier, so I want to talk about why we have these feelings of guilt. One of them is this one of the primary reasons for feeling guilty is a wrong view of God. When you have a wrong view of God you can be harassed for years in your life with feelings of guilt in this. That is, you feel guilty, something's wrong, which can't quite figure out what the problem is so limited again begin with my own personal life I was say that about the age of 12 years, and so I do know too much about God and so God was so distant to me not having a father. My father died is about nine months of age and so I did have that male image in usually get your idea about God from your father, and then the stepfather came along and I certainly hope God would like him and so I had a very bad beginning and so I remember thinking I know that God is up there and I'm down here and if I pray to him. He'll hear and answer my prayer and so when I got to figure out is how do I get him in heaven into what I am thinking about as a kid and so he was always remote and distant to me and I remember the first thing that ever happened in my life that made me realize that God wasn't all that distant that he really and truly cared for me personally and that he was involved in my life I was taking a bath when they lived in the basement apartment and was a small bathroom and so I'm getting ready to get out and get myself dried off and dressed and and sought to reach out. This is a long black cord. When will those brass lights or you screw the lightbulb in little black knob on so reach out to grab the light socket I'm standing in water over my ankles. I reach up to get in the telephone rings normally you would just cut it off to, but I still remembered the split second I remember dropping my hands getting out go to the phone. Picking it up in the run three times or four times. Nobody was there no click know nothing. There's nobody there by thinking about you, but I put it down, walk back when I walked back into the kitchen where the doors to the bathroom, framing that and that light socket. The doorframe all of a sudden I thought that looks like an electric chair if I do reach the grab that socket and cut the light off. You never known me and I'll never known you because out are to be in heaven for the first time in my life. God wasn't way up yonder. He was down here and he cared something about me that I wish I could say that from that moment on, God was as warm, intimate, personal father to me, but he wasn't.

And the reason he was.

It was because that's not what I was given in life.

I read the Bible, I prayed. I did the things that I thought I was supposed to do and try to eliminate the things I wasn't supposed to do that and always do that. I sinned against God, like in the teenager would I he kept me out of a whole lot of things because I was scared to death, and I suppose made that was good for me. All I'm saying is my view of God isn't something I developed my view of God is something that was given to me. The first Bible always a big Thompson chain reference Bible the top of second Bible on big Thompson chain reference Bible always notes in it and my mother gave him if my birthday and I remember what I wrote in the flyleaf. I wrote given to me by my godly mother who taught me both the love and the wrath of God.

I should've underlined in circle wrath because that's the part I heard because I didn't hear much about the love of God. I remember I coming during those years.

Hearing a sermon about the fact that God loved me, never hurting thing about the grace of God I think about a heard something somewhere along the way. It would've registered but it was always what God was like sitting in his throne on his temple thundering and lightning and clouds and all of these things that made me realize that God was distant that he was this kind of a overlord to oversee and taskmaster who is keeping records. Who was it who is keeping points and if by some chance lived up to certain the measurements are done go to heaven and to make it even worse than that is that they believed you could be saved involved and have a ghost of a change because I couldn't be is holism wanted to be. I didn't know how much the read about how much the price I didn't know what to do to please him. I didn't have holy I had to be. I didn't know how to be holy and besides that I couldn't keep up with the bow shall not, so the 10 Commandments was a burden to me. God was a burden.

Everything was a bird and so I'll realize that I grew up beginning to feel guilty and this guilt had nothing to do with SI and it had to do with my image of God, and you see most people think of the New Testament is a book about sin, about guilt, let me just tell you something that you are on the Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John. You only go to find the word guilt.

The guilt it 10×6 of those times Pilate is saying that Jesus is guilty of nothing to those times Jesus is saying. The Pharisees were there guilt the Pharisees that is easy: hypocrites. What they were guilty of the other two times he's talking the same crowd about the blaspheming against the Holy Ghost, so that New Testament is not a word about guilt. The New Testament is a book about the grace and the loving kindness and forgiveness of God if I should send you how many times you think guilds in the New Testament you brought around lawful large number but it's not true and you see it is about God's forgiveness and his love and kindness toward us. Not about guilt and size of the one ask you if somebody said to you today. What is your image of God is he a loving, wonderful, gracious father who is concerned and intimately related to you and interested in what you doing want to wants to lead you like a father leads her small children or is he this judge of their taking records and taking points and keeping account of your life. So, in the judgment. He will be absolutely accurate when he can find you to something less than you want. That is no view of God at all. According to the Scriptures, but that is exactly the way many people see him. Maybe not to the same degree, but to some degree a general view of their image of God is that he is a judge, and that he condemns sin and that he is really and truly not on our side.

The more sin there is in your life because the more you gonna feel that way while unconcerned about is those people struggling with guilt when they get that reason for that guilt is there poor view of God, not because of their sin. What is a second reason I think that people struggle with guilt and that is the missing message of grace they grew up in churches. For example, I do not teach the grace of God there are many men who preaching the gospel, who will tell you that they believe you saved by the grace of God. But when they present the method by which a person is saying his what they will say in order to be saved. You must repent of your sins.

Well, what is repentance repentance is a turning away from something and turning to something. How does a person get say a person doesn't get saved by cleaning up their life a person doesn't get saved by repenting of their sins.

Repentance is what I do because of what is happened in my heart is what Paul said Paul said about your contest with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in non-heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved is faith in the person of Jesus Christ as God's son, and faith in what he did at Calvary that makes it possible for person to be forgiven of their sins and become a child of God.

Repentance in the life of the believer is what we do once we have received by faith in Jesus Christ is in cleaning up my life getting rid of this in getting rid of that that gets me say that's receiving Christ and once he comes in my life gives me a brand-new heart and a brand-new perspective on life born again and all the things that neither do not match who I am now must go. That's where repentance is in the life of the leap and so there are many people who believe they got the following things to get say that repent of this repent of that repent of the other and so when you start think about all the things in your life that you need to get rid of his what happens. Often times, people who desperately feel the need of God in their life and they hear a sermon. If you don't get saved you got to give up your this and give up that give up the other person listen I think about this you think about how hard it is sometimes as a believer who started trust in Jesus Christ to deal with habits and things in your life and and and you got God, and you know that you have the spirit of God to enable you.

What about the people out there who are lost as they can be absolutely helpless feel condemned under this load of guilt and then somebody says to you that you want to get right with God. You got to give up if they had the power to give up all these things that we need God. They don't have the power to get up. This is the message of grace is this. I don't have to measure up. I don't have to perform. I don't have to jump the high jump any higher because at the cross Jesus paid my sin debt in full. Now the cleaning up business is a result of what God has done in my heart he's made me a child of God, those things that I once enjoyed.

I live enjoy amenable.

I don't want him in my life and the more I choose to get rid of those things that I'm not cleaning up to get acceptable on cleaning up motivated by a love for Almighty God. That's grace and not works and I'm here to tell you if somebody tells you that you got to do anything else but place your trust in what the Bible says about Jesus Christ as the son of God and trust his work at Calvary and they have added something to God's redemptive plan. Forget it. If thou should confess, believe, agree with him about the death of his son, for your sin and you accept the fact that he died in your place, and that God accept you on the basis that you accept his son, and your sins are forgiven and you become a child of God. But if you grew up in churches, like most of us did and were told in order to be pleasing to God. You go to the following things if you will be saved to the following things that what we do we live this false sense of guilt and we struggle with his guilt of trying to be sure we haven't missed anything that was supposed to do and I think about people who live on the base year after year after year struggling with this.

These feelings of guilt. But if they had to identify something specifically except maybe something happened today or yesterday, but this is this cloud of guilt that hangs on them all the time.

I tell you my friend.

God never intended for us to live with that because how can I abide in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and he says when I abide in him. I'll have his jointed module will be full. How can I be full of joy at the same time walking under a cloud of this generalized guilt that I can't put my finger on.

I can't catch hold to. I don't know what to do with it and it causes an incessant struggle in the lives of many people will there's 1/3 thing that I think causes us to feel at night as we don't know what to do with sin.

What you say shared about nose with Lucent know the don't you see when you not sin against God.

The Bible says we are to confess it to him. Now that confession is not what gets me my forgiveness. What gets me my forgiveness is what Jesus did at Calvary. Don't ever say. Don't ever forget that the only means of forgiveness is what Jesus Christ did at Calvary when he shed his blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Now my responsibility is to accept that my responsibility is to confess my sin. My responsibility is to turn away from it.

But listen to my forgiveness before Almighty God does not rest on my performance are whether I come to him and plead and beg and do all the things that people do forgiveness is mine is my sense of estrangement that I am released from.

It is my feeling of guilt I am released from. It is my feeling that that fellowship is broken that I am released from. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Even after you and I sin against him.

God does not condemn or judge his listen he says there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus you know I demented you, making it often is her papers and get away with it, nor didn't say that because he says what are we so we generate is is that God judges know that you're certain principles that God's putting this university, what to protect you and me from wrecking and running a light and so what he's saying is don't send, don't send, don't sin not because if you don't get a judge, you condemn you and wipe you out. Don't send because here the consequences of your sin and the best examples. The first book of the Bible, God said Adam and Eve looking to look what his garden absolutely fantastic and beautiful all the divine words he could use to describe this and every bit of this is yours just kept yourself just enjoy yourself at a meal, even all of your perfection and all of you and this is just really have yourselves a wonderful time that there is one tree over there. Don't mess with that because if you do hear the consequences if you do that this was going to happen you if you do so. What happens they disobeyed him, it isn't.

God said you had it out on you believe you know he drove them out of the garden because he said before there with it. If you do it you going to die best is the consequence of doing it that just certain consequences. The sin isn't suddenly that God is my loving father all of a sudden becomes this tyrant in heaven who is not judging and condemning us.

We don't know what to do with sin. We confess, listen we don't have pity parties over how we don't grovel and just try to feel real bad. We sin against God. We do not face week we say Lord I want you to forgive me God please forgive me all father forgive me God I know I'm sending it Lord and we just go home and asking God to forgive us, or you may said today and tomorrow and the next in the next and the next the next day and some of you still confessing sins that you committed years ago. Let me ask a question. If God is the heavenly father. He says he is, how many times do you have to bake plead your heavenly father to forgive you of something one time in most nations of the world their God is a God of judgment, and people live all of their lives trying to appease this God tried to please him because when they die they will something good to happen and they never know where they are the know nothing about the grace of God, because there's no such thing as the grace of God and the other religion in the world and so people who heard it though and I'm talking to many of you who know what the meaning of grace is you know what it is is the goodness and kindness and graciousness of God that is nothing new without worth or a merit and it's in spite of what we deserve is God loving others and forgiving us and making as a person's we ought to be and so you don't have to get on it being plead. I memorized the crop to God and tell him why you're forgive me try to convince them to do… You don't have to convince a loving father to do something that he just wait to do what you see, if you don't know what to do.

This sin, you beat yourself over the head with it and you did you just you won't forgive yourself and you see, God forgives us we come to terms and sale of the first time, but it's a problem we know, forgive ourselves and so here's what Satan know sentences are hard could it be had. He takes that as a hammer.

You know what does he do picture in the head with an everyday look at you look at your past. Look what you've done. Look at you, look at you, look at you, look at you and what happens you live under this gloomy cloud of guilt which has absolutely nothing to do with truth and their people who live on the bed live under it and live under and somehow they never understood the grace of God has taken care of it past present future. The guilt is gone. That's what the cross is about. If you send today what provide your forgiveness confession abandons no the blood of Jesus.

My confession is not coming to him so he can release me from these feelings of guilt, estrangement, separation broken fellowship so that once again he and I can fellowship together is because he walked away we walk away and the best example that is the prodigal son.

When the prodigal son said, give me what's coming to me. The father said all right. He knew what was going to happen. He didn't say you had, they might just go all the strongest. Just forget it. No, he gave his son what he asked for, and then he waited for him week after week, month after month, year of you who knows how long the story doesn't tell us that and when he saw him coming down the road. He did say under is coming back.

She just wait till you get back Yamane. You have really had no he went running down that road is this boy trying to confess and repent of his sin, his father's kissing and hugging on, waving his hands and get listen killer try to Bring up the rope get the diamond get the ring get the sandals. My son was lost. He's come home again.

Did you know that every time you not come to him to confess our sin. That's the spirit of God.

He is a loving father not a condemning judge. He is a condemning judge those who are wicked who have absolutely read used his son. But listen, they're not his children.

There is an immense, we who are his children, we come to a loving father listen, that doesn't motivate us to give us license to sin that motivates me want to be obedient of his father, who is so gracious and loving and kind and generous willing to forgive and willing to cleanse willing to make us right that's with the grace of God is all about. Thank you for listening to part one have when we feel guilty if you like to know more about child family for intense ministries that might enhance data lighting. This podcast is a presentation of intense ministries and mandatory