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Guilt began with Adam in the Garden of Eden. God's voice echoed through this early Paradise crying out, "Where are you? Where are you, Adam?" And when finally God confronted this first man hiding in the trees, Adam said, "Lord, I am afraid..."
Guilt is fear - pain - hurt. If you cannot find forgiveness from both man and God, it eats your heart out.
Guilt can be good if it produces change but hell if it doesn't.
Guilt of course is that feeling you get when your insides admit you have committed a wrong.
An incident between a father and his little girl helps to explain. She wanted to go to the zoo. He said he couldn't because he had to work on his invoice. Talking to her mother about it, the little girl said, "Daddy can't take me to the zoo because his conscience is bothering him."
Whether
you it an invoice, conscience or talking i8nsides, when you feel guilt
and can't find forgiveness, it is one of life's deepest and most painful
experiences.
What leads to guilt is not just what I consider sin but what you accept as sin.
Some people walk the straight and narrow. Others try to pave the whole countryside.
In his book THE CURE FOR ANXIETY, William Elliott writes, "The man who feels no guilt has never seen God." The prophet Isaiah said, "Woe is me! for
I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King o,
the Lord of hosts."
Job said, "Now (that) mine eyes seeth Thee...I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."
The Apostle Peter fell at Jesus' feet and cried, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man."
Guilt can cramp a man's style. It takes a lot of fun out of sin. Thieves have to go to work; gossips have to go to silence; all kinds of sins have to be relinquished or suffer the consequences.
It is then to imply that there are two avenues open to solve the problem of guilt. Damn God and accept the Devil or admit sin and accept forgiveness; become totally depraved, or humbly surrendered.
By the first you kill a conscience; by the second, you redeem a soul.
In short, you rid yourself of it by saying, "I don't care," or by affirming "God does."
The cure and excessive guilt is loneliness. Until you have found forgiveness from man and God, you feel ostracized. If you have ever asked another person to forgive you, you have meant, "Take me back. Let us have what we once had. Let us have what we should have.
Once we were close and now we re not."
Guilt does something to a relationship. If it is man, you may lose a friend; if it is marriage, you may lose a mate; if it is God, you may lose a faith.
God will give as much forgiveness as you will take. That his limit is your choice. One author writes that God concerns himself with "the lost...the last...and the least."
The Scriptures are specific, "As far as the east is from the west, as far hath he removed our transgressions from us."
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
G.
K Chesterton writes of God's forgiveness in this way: "God paints in
many colors, but he never paints so gorgeously as when he paints in
white. "
The
prophet Isaiah, said the same thing in yet another way, "Though your
sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red
like crimson, they shall be as wool." (Isa. 1:18)
And
God forgets as well as he forgives: "I. even I, am he that blotteth out
thy transgressions and I will not remember thy sins (Isaiah 43:25). It is all there but it takes one final scripture and your affirmation of it, to tie it all together. "In God have I put my trust; I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me." (Psalm 56:11)
Do that. Bury your guilt. Let yesterday be a teacher, not a tyrant. Let tomorrow be an opportunity, not a regret.
In short, trust God and build a new you from such a foundation of trust.
The below was posted on Wyrick'sWritings)
ARROGANCE AND HUMILITY
To read the rest of it.... click on the following
Think
on this, 100 years after Voltaire died, he who had vowed to exterminate
all traces of Christianity in France , the house in which he had lived
was purchased and became a Bible publishing house.
Yes, God loves you the way you are but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Click
on the URL below to WATCH NEIL IN HIS WORLD FAMOUS ONE MAN
DRAMATIZATIONS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BEN FRANKLIN, CHARLES WESLEY AND
MARTIN LUTHER
To Order and Read Neil's 9th book THE SPIRITUAL ABRAHAM LINCOLN
GO TO amazon.com
QUOTES ABOUT THIS WONDERFUL INSPIRING INFORMATIVE book
STILL RECEIVING RAVE REVIEWS 8 YEARS AFTER IT'S PUBLICATION.
"Positive,
powerful utterances...skillfully enhancing our understanding and
appreciation of Lincoln while revealing the Divine source of his
strength."
Lt. Colonel C.A. Olsen (Ret.) Asbury College (Professor Ret.)
"The Spiritual Abraham Lincoln is an
extremely well written book that investigates what might be termed the
spiritual side of President Lincoln. It's both scholarly and very
readable. I came away impressed at Mr. Wyrick's portrayal of the
President and with an altered and enlarged vision of the man:'
William Hoffman, Award winning fiction writer; author of Blood and Guile, and Wild Thorn
"Wyrick
has authored a wonderful examination of the spirituality of one of
American history's most devoutly religious leaders...a pleasant and
readable book that has a rich depth of information."
Maynard Pittendreigh Presbyterian minister
"When
it comes to invoking religion in support of any of their decisions,
politicians need to sit at the feet of Abraham Lincoln. Reinhold Niebuhr
once called him 'America's greatest theologian.' Why so great? Because
he invariably distinguished between human works and the works of the
Almighty. As Wyrick
says, 'He wore the mantle of humility easily: because he was more
impressed with what God was doing in the world than with what he,
president of the United States in the midst of an awful crisis, was
doing. That is why in his last major speech he distinguished between
both human causes in the Civil War and the Almighty's 'own purposes.'
Lincoln would have agreed that it is better to leave God-talk out of
politics than to decorate human proposals with divinity. This is a book
for our American time. Through his careful study of Lincoln's career,
Wyrick compels us to remember that piety belongs in politics only when piety transcends politics."
Dr. Donald W. Shriver
Emeritus professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Author of An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics
"v. Neil
Wyrick's fine work allows the reader to appreciate Abraham Lincoln's
Christian commitment and his prophetic role in American history. Should
have a wide readership."
James H. Smylie Professor of Church History (Ret.) Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia
"Neil Wyrick's The Spiritual Abraham Lincoln should be read
by anyone attempting to understand the man who was probably the most
complex person to ever hold the office of president of the United
States. Dr. Wyrick is intent on demonstrating that the spirituality so
often expressed in Lincoln's writings and speeches was not merely lip
service to a Deity, but rather expressions of a profound faith in a real
God. It was this faith that provided the wisdom, compassion, insight
and sometimes steel that Lincoln would need in full measure
as he led the United States through the Civil War. Dr. Wyrick's clear
and unpretentious style of presentation is very much in keeping with the
character ofhis subject, and in so doing, Wyrick makes his point very
well that Lincoln, his beliefs, and the faith that formed them, are as
relevant to a troubled America in 2004 as they were in 1863."
Daniel Allen Butler, author of "Unsinkable"; The Full Story of the RMS Titanic, The Lusitania and The Age o f Cunard
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