It Came From Within: Guilt
Introduction
We often look for things external to ourselves as the causes of our problems. While sociologists and psychologists are correct to point to the ways in which things like our families, religious experiences, neighborhoods, and the like shape who we are there comes a place in life where we must look within ourselves and take responsibility for ourselves. When we find ourselves stuck in life, in our relationships, in cycles of habits, or addictions, if we are ever going to change and maintain that change there is a question we must ask ourselves, "What role do I play in keeping this thing stuck?"
Sometimes we spin our wheels for years pointing fingers at others when God is inviting us into the Light of His Love for a self-examination.
Self-examination, and submitting to help in examining oneself, is something that has helped increase the physical lives of our present world. Women have caught potentially destructive health crises through regular personal breast exams and mammograms. Men as they age begin to have prostate exams. Then there is the dreaded colonoscopy. Often times in these regular exams nothing is discovered. It is as if the doctor says, "Just checking."
But there are moments when because of self-examination or intentionality that a world of hurt is overcome.
We began talking about heart issues using the physical heart as an illustration of that invisible part of us that the Bible calls the heart, the spirit, or the inner person. We said that this heart is the source from which all of our actions and motives flow. The writer of Proverbs said that it is from this heart that our lives issue and so we should guard it. Jesus said in Mark 7:20-23:
Mark 7:20-23 NIV
20 And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”
In our first lesson, we described four enemies of the heart that cause us to stumble:
Guilt
Anger
Greed
Jealousy
We learned that each of these is related to debt, and can be debilitating to our relationship with God and others. As long as these blockages remain in our hearts they keep us stuck. There are areas of the blessings of God that we never fully realize until these are dealt with.
Guilt says "I owe you."
Anger says "You owe me."
Greed says "I owe me."
Jealousy says "God owes me."
Dealing with guilt comes through confession.
Dealing with anger comes through forgiveness.
Dealing with greed comes through giving.
Dealing with jealousy comes through worship.
This evening we will slow down and talk specifically about guilt. You may want to take some time to do some self-examination to see if somewhere there is some guilt deep in the depths of your heart that is blocking you from the flow of God's blessings in your life. It may be a painful procedure or it may just be routine, but if we want to stay healthy it is necessary. Once we see anything there we want to offer it to God through confession trusting that he will make everything right through the power of his blood.
How often do nouns become verbs? How many times last week have you Googled something? Guilt is a noun that gets turned into a verb often. Have you ever been guilted into doing something? How many times have you guilted someone into doing something else? The reason guilt can go from a noun to a verb in this way is because of the power of debt. We feel that because of some past action we owe someone, and there are some people in our lives that will take maximum advantage of the guilt that we carry deep within our hearts.
Guilt says "I owe you."
Guilt is the result of having done something we perceived as wrong. Every wrong we do can be restated as an act of theft... If I steal from you, I owe you. So the message of the heart laden with guilt is, "I owe you!" (Andy Stanley)
When a spouse runs away with another individual and abandons their children they may not realize it at the moment, but they are actually stealing something from every other family member. Contrary to what we may think our lives are not isolated and we are not so individual that we can make choices that only affect us. Our choices affect everyone we are in a relationship with and it may continue to affect those after us. When Adam and his wife stole the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, they were not only stealing from God, they were stealing from us.
Your decisions can have consequences for generations. The man who runs out on his wife or the wife who runs out on her husband steals their spouse's first marriage. They steal their future, their financial security, their spouse's reputation. They have stolen from their children things like Christmas, traditions, family dinners, financial security, emotional support, and the list goes on. Those spouses and children are now owed a debt and guilt ensue. The person may not think of it this way when they make the choice that they think will make them happy, but one day they realize that they owe their former spouse an apology, that they owe their children an apology for the lost time, and... And sometimes there is nothing to pay, but we need some type of currency and so we use the words, "I'm sorry..."
Then we try to "make it up." We do this in so many of our relationships for so many different reasons, but they all have to do with a debt that we owe. We may try to "buy love" or "buy peace." The person who is owed often continues to get the raw end of the deal. Money cannot buy love, and it cannot pay the spiritual and emotional debts that we owe. Sometimes in an attempt to make it up to those we owe, we become permissive and allow them to do any and every unhealthy thing. Ultimately the only way to pay our debt to those we owe is to do the thing that we owe, we cannot replace it with something else. But, all too often even when there is a weight of guilt and shame it is not enough to motivate us to just do the right thing and so the person we have offended pays the price, our children, our spouse, our friend, our church, our parents... This is soul-searching, heart examining... Those things that defile us, come from within. Sometimes we want to turn the light out... But if we are going to change, if our heart is going to become right.
Proverbs 22:7 says that the borrower is "slave to the lender." Authority in our lives belongs to those we owe. Sometimes it is haunting to think about. It is hidden deep down within. There is nothing less than paying the debt we owe that will relieve our guilty hearts. Like the narrator of the tell-tale heart, we can hear the lub-dub from below... The guilty heart has a debt that must be paid or must be canceled if we will ever escape the turmoil that keeps us from true peace. We ask the question, "How?" Thankfully when we examine ourselves in the Light of God's Word, he is not a doctor who has no solutions.
My son had a little doctor set as a small child and he would pretend to examine us. He would hold his tiny plastic stethoscope on my chest and pretend to listen. I would ask him about his diagnosis and he would reply, "I don't look good." The Bible is not bad news, but good news. God offers us a solution to the debts we owe.
John Wellwood said, "The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something more basic than any technique: a change of heart."
God looks deeper than our actions, and deep within our hearts. And he is able to change the heart of stone into a heart of flesh!
All too often however we are like the patient who visits the cardiologist and hears the worst-case scenario. We hear that surgery is not necessary now, and if we will make some lifestyle changes right now we can avoid it in the future. Our heart is not right, but if we will begin exercising and change our diet, we have caught it beforehand. The solution is exercise. As is the physical, so is the spiritual. God gives us a new heart when we are born again, but we must exercise it to keep it healthy.
Some people argue with their doctor. But, I don't like exercise. I feel like I am going to die when I try to exercise. I don't look good in the exercise outfit. I look silly when I am running and everything is jiggling. We can all be this way spiritually sometimes. We ask God to change our hearts. God gives us a prescription and we commence to arguing with him. We say that's just the way I am! It's a family trait. And God offers us a simple, but sometimes effort-filled, solution. He is wanting you to be healthy and whole, but the power of developing new habits. And the time to do it is now. God is writing you a prescription for dealing with your guilt. Here it is:
1. Secret Confession
We all have a:
Public self - everyone sees.
Private self - family sees.
Secret self - Only God and self sees. Sometimes we are blind to all that we are.
Secrets lose their power when exposed to the light. The light that exposes our secrets and frees our hearts from the oppressive power of guilt is confession.
It is not the normal confession that we are used to. Sometimes we admit a wrong just to get out of consequences. Sometimes we confess merely to ease our consciences. But we have secrets that are unexposed deep within that we hide that only further fuel our feelings of guilt.
The confession that leads to true change is the kind found in 1 John 1:9:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
At first glance, we look at this Scripture and love its simplicity. We embrace the overwhelming generosity of God. We realize that we are saved by his grace, period. That the work of salvation was finished in the Incarnation, through Jesus death on the cross we are reconciled to God, we are saved by his resurrection life! It is a work that he has accomplished for us that we can add nothing to. We identify with him in the good news by accepting the new birth. We are buried with him in baptism and raised to walk with Him in the newness of life through his Spirit.
Maybe you are like me. There have been moments in my life where I have interpreted this verse to mean that I spend time listing my sins to God in prayer asking for his forgiveness. And, there is something to be said for admitting our wrongs to God. But, maybe you are also like me and there have been moments in your life where you confessed something that you really were not sorry for, and deep within your heart knew that you would do it again.
This is not the kind of confession that God is ultimately looking for. God desires repentance along with our confession. Repentance means a change of mind, a change of heart that leads to a change of action.
Sometimes our confession is merely like admitting to the cardiologist that we recognize that we have a problem, but walking away from the doctor's office only to not implement the change that will cause us to be more healthy in the end.
My dad has some healthy habits currently, but there has been a running joke for years about when he goes for his annual checkup. Dad has an enviable ability to lose weight when he wants to. He can shed the pounds quickly. And so when he knew that the time was coming for his appointment he would begin weeks ahead to stop eating so much. He would walk and drink more water. That way when he sees the doctor, the doctor is wowed by his shape. We have joked that sometimes when he is driving home from the doctor he stops to buy a bag of potato chips.
The kind of confession that will truly alleviate our guilt involves words, but it goes deeper within than our words.
Overcoming that deep sense that we owe someone something sometimes involves more than a confession to God. We are justified freely by God's grace. We know that Jesus paid it all, and all to him we owe, but sometimes God is not the only offended party.
In order to be whole, our secret confession must come into integrity with what our family and the rest of the world see. There is a place for:
2. Public Confession
Secrets lose their power when exposed to the light. The light that exposes our secrets and frees our hearts from the oppressive power of guilt is confession.
James 5:15-16 NIV
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
Mark 1:4-5 NIV
And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
The church should be a safe place where confession can be practiced and we can support one another through our struggles. You should have a prayer partner that you can confess your sins to. And someone that you can share a little deeper than you usually share.
Early in my Christian walk, something started happening to me. I would pray and pour out my heart to God and then walk away feeling better, but sometimes there was not a complete sense of relief from my guilt. Ever-so-often God would remind me of something that I had done to someone else. There were probably times when I thought that these memories were brought on by the enemy, and he will try to flood your mind with condemnation, but what I realized was that if there was going to be true relief I was going to have to make it right with those other than God that I had offended by my sin.
A true friend will encourage you to make right the wrongs of the past that you can make right, even if all that you can do is admit you're wrong and ask for the person's forgiveness.
Jesus tells us about this inconvenient but vital practice in
Matthew 5:23-24 KJV
Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
Can you imagine the scene? This person has brought his sacrifice into the temple. He may have stood in line behind all the other people who had come to offer their offerings and confess their sins to God and before the priest publicly. It was a powerful moment and God's grace was at work in it, but then Jesus says, "Stop! Leave your gift there and go find the person that you owe. You owe someone other than God. You are guilty. Go make it right with him or her and then come back."
A deep part of Christian spirituality that we miss is this. We must be right with our sisters and brothers and fellow human beings. We cannot slander one another, and rail on one another, and neglect one another, and hurt one another and then come to church and say, "Sorry, God" and then think that all is well. We know better in our heart of hearts. We wrestle with guilt because we have not made it right with others that we owe. Oh, it's deeper than surface living it comes from within, from the depths of who we are, and genuine revival is deeper than our actions, it goes to the heart.
Think about this before we go on to our final point. Your confession to that other person who you owe will relieve you of guilt, but it may also relieve them of anger and bitterness! Imagine the wrong that has been done to you in your life. What would it be like for that person that owes you to come to you and in all of its awkwardness and discomfort, look you in the eye and acknowledge what they have done? What would it be like to hear their voice saying that they realize that they can never repay you, but they want to apologize and ask for your forgiveness? Oh, there is relief on both sides! The Bible says to do unto others what we would have done unto us. How would you like to hear those words and find closure? Jesus has forgiven you and the flip side of the cross is that you should make things right with others. Do you want to be free of that nagging guilt? Do you want that person that you owe to be free of that anger and bitterness? Sometimes it involves more than words. Sometimes it takes more than confessing to God.
3. Restitution
Numbers 5:6-7 NIV
“Say to the Israelites: ‘Any man or woman who wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the Lord is guilty 7 and must confess the sin they have committed. They must make full restitution for the wrong they have done, add a fifth of the value to it and give it all to the person they have wronged.
Proverbs 6:30-31 NLT
30 Excuses might be found for a thief
who steals because he is starving.
31 But if he is caught, he must pay back seven times what he stole,
even if he has to sell everything in his house.
In both these verses, we learn that God is a God who wants to settle scores. God is a just God. And confession is a large part of that, both private and public, but the next level is restitution. Restitution is defined as "an act of restoring or a condition of being restored: such as; a restoration of something to its rightful owner; a making good of or giving an equivalent for some injury." (Merriam Webster)
We are so grateful for the outrageous generosity of God that we often forget that sometimes even forgiven sins have consequences. Confession is not an end-all for the temporal consequences of sin. God may, and he does often, cause our harvest of wild oats to fail. But, not always. When we have offended another person it is our responsibility to go to them and confess and if there is a way for us to make it up to them, it is our Christian duty to do it. Real revival will happen in your life and in your family in proportion to your willingness to make things right in your relationships. When Zacchaeus hosted his dinner for the gracious Lord. The Heart-Knower allowed Zacchaeus to experience his warmth. Zacchaeus confessed his sins. But he went a step further... I am going to give back to those I have stolen from what I owe.
Luke 19:8 NIV
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Do you want to be free? Are there words you have said that you should not have said? Are things you have done to others that you should not have done. Perhaps, even in this congregation, there is a person that you know you are on the outs with because of something you have done.
God is calling to the deep of who you are. He wants you free of guilt. He wants there to be relational vitality in this church. He is wanting to restore some things to this assembly, but the restoration does not start outside of you or me. It begins in the heart.
The Habit of Confession:
Confession is not a single event. It has to become a lifestyle. Like exercise is to the heart, so confession is to the core of our being.
Confession is not all about relieving your feelings of guilt it is about reconciliation and being in the right relationship with God and man.
Spend some time praying and asking God to remind you of people that you have wronged that he wants you to make things right. Write their names down. Begin the process of getting those things dealt with and watch your guilt begin to melt away.
Then start keeping a very short list of those you owe. Paul says to owe no man anything, but to love one another.
Once you make it right, keep it right, through the power of confession. A confession that is not an empty apology, but a commitment to change.
Conclusion and exhortation
God's grace is here. When he reveals things to us it is not to beat us up, it is to help us up. Let us pray.
