Guilty! - Part 3

Friday, October 7, 2022

When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.  Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.  My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.  Psalm 32:3-4

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.   1 John 1:9 ^(NRSV)

So far in this series, in part 1, we’ve looked at how Reuben and his 10 brothers were consumed with guilt over selling their youngest brother into slavery, and Peter’s well-published guilt over denying the Christ he said he’d die for.  Added to those were the contrast of the sociopathic thief on the cross next to Jesus who mocked, and the remorseful penitent who asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus entered His kingdom.  We said with Isaiah that nobody is righteous; we have all fallen short with our sins:  We feel guilty because we ARE guilty.

In part 2 we looked at how false it is to develop our ways of dealing with guilt –  denial, or blaming others for what was (clearly) our choice.  The little boy in his white Sunday suit, who was told to stay clean, chased the family pet beagle, Buster, with a can of green paint, and wound-up caught, busted…paintbrush in hand.  Peter was caught in his betrayal.  King David was nailed by a prophet’s bold accusation.  Guilt consumes us from the inside-out, and there’s no such thing as a secret sin!  There’s no wondering about where the old saying comes from:  No peace for the wicked.   

Friend, if you’re eaten-up with guilt over something and have not confessed it to God, you will never feel forgiven because you aren’t forgiven!

So…what to do?

Here are a few simple, but vital steps to take

1.  Make certain you confess your sin

Don’t rationalize (hide the evidence or shift blame)…God already knows you’re a sinner… just confess, admit it to Him and be forgiven.

2.  Be humble – learn from past mistakes

You cannot do anything about what happened yesterday, but God rejoices in your confession, and loves to forgive and rebuild you!

3.  Pray for growth to use your past for kingdom good

Stand ready to help others in the areas you’ve been blessed by forgiveness.

4.  Spend time thanking God for his blessings

This is why we have the Lord’s table…come, ye forgiven, and beloved sinners...and rejoice!  

For You Today

Guilt was never God’s intended inner profile for His human children.  That’s why He came to us in a manger, innocent, and ready to die for us, so we can be forgiven, cleansed, washed whiter than snow…and restored to fellowship with our Creator.  Don’t miss THAT!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Old Brooms & Common Sense   and   Black Ice

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

Guilty! - Part 2

Thursday, October 6, 2022

When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.  Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.  My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.  Psalm 32:3-4

Dealing with understanding the issues we have with guilt is a hard, but necessary medicine.  We have all sorts of techniques for getting rid of guilt, but, underneath, we still feel guilty.  Frankly, we hardly need to have someone tell us we did wrong; we are hardwired with free will, and that is enough to help us understand the conundrum of needing forgiveness, but refusing to admit we need forgiveness.  We don’t feel forgiven because we aren’t!

When a person simply tries to get rid of guilt for the sake of trying to feel better,  trying to hide the evidence, or shift the blame, we never accomplish what we’re after.  

A little boy was dressed by his Mom in his best Sunday suit – white!  She told him to go outside and wait by the car; she’d be out in 10 minutes….and don’t get dirty!  Thirty seconds later he’d found a bucket of dark green paint and was chasing after Buster the family beagle.  Paint sloshed everywhere, but he just couldn’t catch up with Buster.  As Buster ran for the safety of the front porch, the little guy followed in hot pursuit, just as the front door swung-open wide.  As the now green-paint-covered white suit and green-haired little boy screeched to a halt, he looked up to see his angry Mom staring down at him.  Bucket in one hand, brush in the other, and beagle cowering in the porch corner, the little guy stammered, I didn’t paint Buster!

Until we deal with the source of our guilt (sin) we can never feel forgiven, because we aren’t.  It’s like an elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge.  Sin stands between us and God like a dark green paint stain. 

This was Peter’s agony.  In the Gospel accounts it tells us that when Jesus’ trial ended, they took him from Pilate’s house.  Peter was hiding in the courtyard, watching from a distance.  His and Jesus’ eyes locked and Peter knew he’d denied Christ.  He went out and wept bitterly.[1]  After the resurrection ^{John 21} it is recorded that Jesus had a conversation with Peter that searched deep into Peter’s soul.  It was a simple conversation, but forced the fisherman to deal with his guilt.

In King David’s case it took the prophet Samuel looking the king square in the eyes, calling him a murdering adulterer.  Until David faced the truth about his own behavior and confessed his sin^(Ps32:5) he was never going to be free.

For You Today

When we feel guilty we often default to using excuses for why we did what we did, none of which changes what God has said about our sin.  Sin will always be dealt-with!  And it will always be on God’s terms, never our excuses or denial.  Like the “heroes” King David, Peter, and others we read about in Scripture, there is never peace in our minds or hearts, when we live in unforgiveness.

Tomorrow we’ll wrap-up where to go with our excuses, rationalizations, and denial…how guilt doesn’t have to eat us alive from the inside, like a dark green paint splash on a Sunday suit.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Waiting in Pain   and   Better Than Guilt   

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

---

[1] Mark 14:72

Guilty! - Part 1

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

We are going to deal with understanding the issue of guilt the next three days.  In Genesis^{Chapter 42} we find Joseph’s brothers, who had hated their brother, sold him into slavery, and brought the misery of decades of guilt down on their heads.  They’re discussing why they’re having a bad time, trying to understand their own guilt:

Speaking among themselves, they said, “Clearly we are being punished because of what we did to Joseph long ago.  We saw his anguish when he pleaded for his life, but we wouldn’t listen.  That’s why we’re in this trouble.”  “Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy?” Reuben asked.  “But you wouldn’t listen. And now we have to answer for his blood!”  Genesis 42:21-22

Added to Joseph’s brothers (and the rest of humanity), the prime example of a man who clearly understood his own guilt was a thief dying next to Jesus.

But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die?  We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.”  Luke 23:40-41

Guilt is something that plagues everyone, like the man who wrote to the IRS; he enclosed a check for $500, with a note explaining that he couldn’t sleep because he had cheated on his income tax the year before.  At the bottom of his letter he added:  if I still can’t sleep I’ll send the rest. 

Unresolved guilt is debilitating.  It affects our health, our attitude, and productivity in life.  It also affects our worship and service. 

The basic answer to the question of why we feel guilt is that:

We feel guilty because we are guilty!

Paul tells us that everybody sins:

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.  Romans 3:23

Innocent?  We know better than to claim that when standing before holy God.  John’s epistle specifically states that if we try to claim we are not sinners we’re only deceiving ourselves.[1]

There are all sorts of techniques for our denial; the main two are:

1.   We try to hide the evidence.

Joseph’s brothers hid their sin of selling their younger brother into slavery.  But God knew all about it and eventually brought everything out in the open.  There is no such thing as “secret” sin.

2.   We try to blame others.

Of the eleven brothers who sold Joseph, Reuben (the oldest) tried to shift the blame from off his shoulders by blaming the other ten; that didn’t work for Adam and Eve either.  (If you recall, Eve blamed the serpent.  That was bad enough, but Adam blamed Eve AND God.  He said, “…it was the woman YOU made for me, Lord.”)

Now, with all our techniques for getting rid of the guilt, we still feel guilty.  And we will talk about why we don’t feel forgiven tomorrow.

For You Today

It’s tempting to use the excuses for why you did what you did.  Or, worse, to just flat-out deny that you did anything wrong, or it was less of a sin than someone else…none of that changes history in the sight of an all-knowing, and all-seeing God, who is all-righteous, and holds us accountable.  Sin will be dealt-with!  And it will always be on God’s terms, never our excuses or denial.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Clean Sweep, But Not Swept Away   and   It's Not My Fault   

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

---

[1] See 1 John 1:8

A Short Journey with Grief

 

Monday, April 25, 2022

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.    

1 Corinthians 15:19

My friend and fellow-pastor, Charles, lost a dear friend some time ago, when she lost a struggle with incurable tumors.  Charles had become caregiver and counsellor to both Michelle and her parents.  It was an exhaustive battle that lasted more than a year.  You become weary driving hundreds of miles a week between Linwood and Durham.  With the doctors, Pastor Charles, and Michelle, a vibrant follower of Jesus Christ, waged a battle for her life.  Often it was only the bond of Christ that offered any hope or solace for what was coming.

Michelle died the week before Annual Conference for the Methodist Church.  Charles recalled:  I buried my friend on Sunday, left for annual conference on Monday, and played golf with my friend (Rick) on Tuesday instead of attending the meetings.  That day on the golf course, Charles was engulfed with guilt over doing something he normally enjoyed; it had only been two days since he buried his best friend. 

On one of the greens, Charles was preparing to putt, and 7 butterflies gathered around his feet and the golf ball.  He looked at his friend, Rick, and said:  It’s Michelle saying it’s ok.  The grief had been building for more than a year, as Charles was anticipating the loss of a treasured friend.  Suddenly it was released by the serendipitous gathering of butterflies.

So…was it Michelle?

There is a long human-family fascination with the beauty and presence of souls departed, and butterflies, which stretch across virtually all cultures and epochs of mankind’s search for meaning.  The Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and even Native American stories include religious accounts and beliefs of transformation, soul rebirth, resurrection, hope, and beauty personified in the winged harbingers of comfort we call butterflies:

The Blackfeet tribe believe butterflies are a conduit for peaceful dreams, and individuals use visual representations of butterflies to have a restful sleep.

The Aztecs believed the butterfly was a symbolic representation of the soul of the dead similar to other civilizations, but they also believed them to be symbols of resurrection and transformation.

Native American traditions are still followed to this day as every year, monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico around the Day of the Dead. The lore associates the butterflies with the returning souls of deceased ancestors and allows families to honor the souls and memory of their loved ones. [1]

Not everyone has an experience like my friend Charles and Rick shared that day with the butterflies on a North Carolina golf course.  But the comfort of a moment to release the weight of a year’s anticipatory grief, in the face of such loss, tells us it was certainly God at that moment caring for one of His own.

For You Today

If you’ve struggled with grief a little too long, I’m not recommending golf (it has its own struggle and brand of frustration).  I do commend, however, remembering we were never meant to live in these bodies forever. 

The worm, within its chrysalis stage of struggle and change, reminds us of transformation, where everything beautiful and ugly (or painful) in this life is made holy and eternal by the God who is behind, above, below, and alongside every sufferer.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

---

[1] This and following historical lore:  Symbolism of the Butterfly

Time to Beat the Bell

 

Friday, April 22, 2022

In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives.  Treat your wife with understanding as you live together.  She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life.  Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.  1 Peter 3:7

My friend and colleague’s father hated the little tinkle of the bell his wife rang to get him to come in the room.  She was bed-ridden, and it became the “intercom” buzzer.  He felt guilty when she finally passed, that he’d been irritable over that bell.  The problem was not a bell, but guilt over being frustrated.  Being stuck in grief and raking up every one of his shortcomings, or guilty piece of remorse over irritations, is a hard way to continue remembering your loved one with honor. 

Apostle Peter was a man whose conscience was glad to show him his failings repeatedly.  And he reminds us that guilt, left unaddressed will hinder your prayers; not saying your prayers, but having them get past the roof of your living room.  God doesn’t hear from a heart cluttered with unconfessed sin.

When his Dad expressed how guilty he felt over hating that bell, my friend put his arm around his dad and said:  You know, Dad, it’s ok if you want to beat that bell.  And that’s exactly what they did.  They took that bell out in the back yard, and, through tears, smashed it to pieces, sending it off to bell heaven.  Somehow beating that bell released all the pent-up guilt over a shortcoming of patience, which was nullifying the honor and memory of many times of answering the bell with service.  Beating that bell was a prayer of confession.

For You Today

“Beating the bell” is a picture of what we do in confession – we get it out in the backyard, in the daylight, clearly seen, acknowledged, and owned.  And then we smash the thing on God’s altar, just like you’d break an idol to pieces as an expression of faith in the one, true, living God.

Confession is good for the soul…if something is hindering your prayers, perhaps it’s time to beat the bell?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Waiting in Pain

[i]

Monday, February 25, 2019

O Lord, don’t rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your rage!  Your arrows have struck deep, and your blows are crushing me.  Because of your anger, my whole body is sick; my health is broken because of my sins.  My guilt overwhelms me—it is a burden too heavy to bear.  My wounds fester and stink because of my foolish sins.  I am bent over and racked with pain.  All day long I walk around filled with grief.  A raging fever burns within me, and my health is broken.  I am exhausted and completely crushed.  My groans come from an anguished heart.  You know what I long for, Lord; you hear my every sigh.  My heart beats wildly, my strength fails, and I am going blind.  My loved ones and friends stay away, fearing my disease.  Even my own family stands at a distance.  Meanwhile, my enemies lay traps to kill me.  Those who wish me harm make plans to ruin me.  All day long they plan their treachery.  But I am deaf to all their threats.  I am silent before them as one who cannot speak.  I choose to hear nothing, and I make no reply.  For I am waiting for you, O Lord.  You must answer for me, O Lord my God.  I prayed, “Don’t let my enemies gloat over me or rejoice at my downfall.”  I am on the verge of collapse, facing constant pain.  But I confess my sins; I am deeply sorry for what I have done.  I have many aggressive enemies; they hate me without reason.  They repay me evil for good and oppose me for pursuing good.  Do not abandon me, O Lord.  Do not stand at a distance, my God.  Come quickly to help me, O Lord my savior.  Psalm 38:1-22(NLT)

Waiting is always hard; just ask a 4-year-old who is trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.  But waiting when you’re in pain and have no answers is the hardest assignment known to humankind.  And what makes it harder is when the heavens seem silent and indifferent to your pain.

King David understood his life was on the verge of collapse, physically, mentally, and, worst of all, spiritually.  Relationships, respect, and his very life were at an all-consuming low.  He’d offended God, and everyone imaginable, and he was paying for his sins in overwhelming, consummate grief; David existed just a breath away from all kinds of death, with an elephant sitting on his chest, laughing at how the former conquering darling of Israel, now struggled to get just one more filling of air into his lungs.  The words describing his anguish roll like an inventory of judgment:  crushed, groaning, heartbroken, convicted, weakness, dim vision, disinterested, pursued, trapped…and forsaken.  He was waiting in pain with no answers.  In response to David’s circumstances was that thundering silence of the absence of hope.  He knew there was no way out. 

Amid this Psalmist’s prayer we hear the cry of desperation:  You know what I long for, Lord; David longed for an end to it all.  The only question was how long will this take, and how shall it end?  Visions of a whole bottle of pills danced through David’s imagination; or would it be falling on his sword, or an enemy’s sneak attack while he slept, or perhaps just start the chariot in the closed garage and wait for the fumes to do their blessed work.

The prayer came quickly at the end, but it was attached to a lifetime of having placed himself firmly, unquestionably in God’s hands.  David, despite his sin and shame that the whole nation knew, was still a man after God’s own heart[ii] and he was committed to not speaking another word in this life if God didn’t answer.  His prayer was four words long:  COME   CLOSE    QUICKLY    SAVIOR!

That was it; no defenses, no excuses, no bargains, no claim of victim status; David knew his condition was his responsibility; he had no mitigation to offer as reasonable, and knew he needed the mercy of God; he only asked forgiveness.

And in the end, he got just that…and more:

Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!  Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!  When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.  Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.  My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.  Interlude  Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt.  I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”  And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.  Psalm 32:1-5(NLT)

For You Today

Need we even say it?  Confession IS GOOD for the soul!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

Go to VIDEO

---

[i] Title Image:  via Pixabay.com

[ii] Acts 13:22