There are five things you can do with guilt, four of them don’t work, but the fifth one does.
FIRST
You can blame someone else for your sin. Lay it on your upbringing. After all you have enough terrible childhood memories to cover your bad behaviour for years. Or how about your mate? If you can’t blame your parents or your mate, how about society? Society is sick. It’s easy to excuse yourself. But it doesn’t work.
SECOND
You can lower the standard. Look at the people around you. You’re not doing anything different from what millions of others are doing. Why should you feel guilty? Times have changed. People don’t live by the same rules anymore. Many are dealing with guilt this way. It seems to work well for a while, but it doesn’t last.
THIRD
You can run away. You can move where nobody will know you. Some people try escaping from their past in this way. But can you really hide from yourself? Guilt sticks to you. Your sins always find you out.
FOURTH
You can punish yourself. You can sweat under the weight of chronic regret. You can say with Lady Macbeth: “What’s done cannot be undone”. Some people can’t forgive themselves so they imagine a God who can’t forgive them either. They don’t love themselves, so how can they conceive of a God whose love is so huge that it can set them free from the burden of sin? Their harsh self-judgment only leads to neurotic guilt.
FIFTH
You can let God take care of your guilt. There are two kinds of guilt feelings: Those that make you focus on your weak-
ness and render you powerless, and those that make you confess your sin and focus on the power of Jesus. The former is the work of Satan; the latter, the work of God.
Everybody feels they have to pay for their own guilt. The Bible is written to tell us that Jesus came to make that payment for us. On His Cross Christ took upon Himself all our defeats and corruption.
Calvary was for you. God wants you to experience its full benefits. God can forgive you, not because of what you do, but because of what Christ did. For “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53: 5). Take God at His Word. When you do, you know your sins are erased forever.
That knowledge comes by the Word of God.
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. (1 John 1:9).
Your sins can never be greater than God’s forgiveness.
YOU CAN COUNT ON THAT!
M. Horban.
Thank Sri 🙂