Guilt

Guilt

Scripture: Psalm 32:1-5; Romans 3:22-24

The title of my message this morning is “Guilt.” I do not know about you, but there are times when I lay in bed at night thinking about things that I have done that were not right and actually hurt others. I think about the repercussions of decisions that I made in the moment that impacted my life years later. This is the one thing that connects all of us – we all have a past, a present and a future. These three things, while different, are the three things that everyone who has ever walked the earth shares in common. Our past is different from our present which is different from our future. But even though there are differences between the three, each one is connected by what preceded it. Our past impacts our present while our present will impact our future. How our past impacts our present and future depends on the decisions we made at that time. I want you to listen closely to me now; our decisions only affect our future. The decisions you made thirty years ago are affecting your present and will also impact your future. But those decisions did not impact what happened prior to it. The decisions we make today cannot change our past. It can only impact the future. This is why guilt takes such a heavy toll on the person carrying it. The mistakes of our past – we can do nothing about any of them. All we can do today is make better decisions for our tomorrow. But, those memories lingers. The pain from the results of the decisions lingers. Knowing the impact on the people we hurt lingers. It’s like we are walking under a cloud with the belief that the only way out from under it is to go back in time and undo the moment which we know can’t happen.

I was reminded recently about something that had happened in my past. This was during a time when I did not always make the best choices. When I was reminded of this incident, the one thought that attempted to move into my heart was: “you have not changed; you will always be the way you were then.” Have you ever had that happen to you? Have you ever had your past failures flash before your eyes just when it seemed like you had made progress dealing with the past? We know that our enemy uses our past in an attempt to keep us in bondage, but since God has given us a way out, I believe that more often than not, it is not our enemy who keeps us in bondage to our past. We are the ones holding on to the past. We are the ones holding on to the guilt. Now do not get me wrong – yes, our enemy can be involved, but we freely help him out. If we could get to the point where we are no longer helping him keep us in bondage, half the battle is won. This morning I want us to focus on the impact guilt is having on our lives and how we can begin to move towards being free of it. Remember, we have no guilt about the future, only about things that have happened or decisions that we “have made” which could affect the future. We can have feelings of guilt about a decision we make about something upcoming, but the guilt does not take hold until the decision is executed.

So let’s talk about guilt. Guilt is defined as, “an awareness of having done wrong or committed a crime, accompanied by feelings of shame and regret.” In this sense, guilt is a good thing because we are aware that we have done something that we should not have done. This opens the door for us to acknowledge the mistake and learn from it. And herein lay the problem for some of us. When we make mistakes and we do not seek to fix it, it eats at us. When we step outside of God’s will and we do not repent because we felt justified or because it was so normal in the world that we did not feel the need to repent, it eats at us. You see, the Spirit will convict us even when we are trying not to hear. David captured this clearly in Psalms 32. He wrote the following, “(1)….How blessed is he whose wrongdoing is forgiven, whose sin is covered! (2) How blessed is a person whose guilt the LORD does not take into account, and in whose spirit there is no deceit! (3) When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. (4) For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality failed as with the dry heat of summer. Selah (5) I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not hide my guilt; I said, ‘I will confess my wrongdoings to the LORD’; and You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah” (Psalms 32:1-5)